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This week’s hike: Lightning Lake in Manning Provincial Park
This weekend promises some cool relief from the high temperatures, and if you live near Vancouver, BC you should consider getting outside to the lovely Lightning Lake Loop, a hike that’s great for all ages and weather conditions. It’s an easy walk through subalpine fir and Engelmann spruce to a lake with views of the surrounding peaks, including Mount Frosty. Wildlife abounds, with opportunities to spot Douglas squirrel, pikas, beaver, moose, and bears.
Read Craig Romano’s detailed trail description, complete with route info and driving directions, online here at Cascadia Magazine.
Cascadia Magazine original:
Elegy for Tahlequah’s Calf
Paul E. Nelson’s poem “Elegy for Tahlequah’s Calf” — about the orca mother grieving in the Salish Sea for its stillborn calf — expresses the sorrow and rage many of us feel at the decline of orcas and the failure of humans to take the steps necessary to protect these intelligent creatures. Read the poem online at Cascadia Magazine.
Pearl Jam concert draws attention to homeless crisis
Charles Cross, writing for Crosscut, reflects on the series of concerts Pearl Jam recently gave in Seattle to raise money to fight homelessness, noting that the city he once knew has changed drastcially. Real Change has an interview with Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard about the crisis, and what can be done. KUOW interviews a public health official who believes we should treat homelessness as a disaster on a level with an earthquake. And climate scientist Sarah E. Myhre takes aim at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who urged repeal of the city’s employee tax to fight homelessness.
What happens when a mental health facility stops taking patients?
Portland Mercury reports on a sudden crisis in Portland, now that an important mental health facility, Unity Center, has announced it’s no longer taking new patients.
Upstart parties challenge status quo in Vancouver
Over at The Tyee, Christopher Cheung reports on new political parties emerging in Vancouver’s upcoming city elections — parties that claim to be “non-partisan” but which in fact have clear policies, from opposition to new bike lanes to support for market-based housing solutions.
Learning lessons from sea star wasting disease
Hakai magazine looks at the lessons researchers are learning from an epidemic that hit sea stars on the BC coast in 2015 — and what they’ve discovered about the inter-linked network of coastal ecology. The Tyee has more on the ecological disaster that nearly wiped out sunflower stars.
Young Seattle photographer dispels myths about Muslims
Seattle Globalist profiles 16-year-old photographer Garo Guyo, who is launching a book “Not Your Typical Muslims” that features photographs of Muslims in Seattle who defy stereotypes. “Basically I’m trying to show awareness… to bring awareness that most Muslims aren’t only Arab majority”
A very big poem by Portland’s Matthew Dickman
At the Poetry Foundation’s website, you’ll find Portland-based poet Matthew Dickman’s “Lakes Rivers Streams,” an amazing and verrry long poem that meanders, eddies, and turns back on itself. It’s a gorgeous, observant, and linguistically playful journey through a suburban landscape and its dry lawns, commercial products, itinerant wildlife and the sticky, messy business of raising children:
“. . . Or an elliptical wastebasket where my son might pick out a glow
worm or a lime green flashlight fish
The day has its limits
The yard looks the same now than it did just an hour ago
Same rush of Oregon grape same hurry of salmonberry
The names for things slip away. . . ”
Read the full poem here.
That’s today’s wrap-up of news, poems, arts, essay, and other stuff from all over Cascadia. Have a great weekend. Next week I’ll be reporting from Spokane so tune in! –Andrew Engelson
Photo credit: sunflower star by Carolyn Coles via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0