Sometimes restoration activities can take months or even years to appreciate the results. Tree-planting for example, can take ten years to even look like new trees—or longer. Stream restoration can take several seasons for the first fish to return. Road removal however, can have nearly instant results—at least to the eye.   This past summer and fall, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust removed 11 miles of unused roads on the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest and surrounding... (Read more…)

My children love grabbing piles of old-man's-beard to drop ceremoniously on an evening campfire. "We're making a smudge," they say as they pile it on, relishing the thick white smoke that rises diligently upward, participating in the forever ritual of fire and smoke and idle chatter at the end of an earnest day out. Like many, if not most Montanans, their sense of home is not only here within the confines of our house, our community, our small-city world, but... (Read more…)