Welcome to the home of Western Civilization
What is this web site about?
This web site is a resource for life, science and civilization in Okanogan County and North-Central Washington.
These web pages were created to encourage more outdoor education and research. There are resources here for ecology, botany, invasive species, geology, chemistry and conservation. This website is also a networking tool. Okanogan County has an amazing natural and cultural diversity that makes it easy to learn about life sciences. As I gaze out my window in Twisp, the foothills of the Chelan-Sawtooth Range are visible to the west and the Okanogan Range can be seen to the east. The Methow and Twisp Rivers join together here on their way to the Columbia River.
Our good fortune to live in a natural place is no longer possible in much of urban America. Trout-filled rushing rivers aren't always available in paved-over environments. Some kids have grown up thinking life's essentials come from a box. Too many people have lost touch with their families, and don't know where their food comes from. But country folks still get to live and breathe in a natural world and there is still a lot of country in Okanogan and the North Cascades. The picture on the right shows Twisp Park. You can hardly tell it part of a town.
The biological diversity of Okanogan County makes this an open classroom. Although you can get pictures on the web and on Google Earth, you might get the mistaken impression that we are just a tourist destination or a western theme town. The web can't convey the smell of the sagebrush, the chirping of the crickets on the rimrock cliffs, the slap of smoke that is the first hint of a wildfire or the warm glow of a campfire. This is a great place for a little bit of creative enrichment.
Here is a short story about the importance of field research. Long ago, before everyone flew around in airplanes, a geologist named J Harlan Bretz discovered that the landscape of North Central Washington had been marked by cataclysmic ice-age floods. Palouse Falls shown on the right is just a tiny trickle compared to the size of the deluge that carved the chasm. But Bretz was a field geologist and what he saw first-hand might as well have been a fairy tale as far as the rest of the geological scientists were concerned. So when he announced this to the world, he was scorned and cast out from the Geological Society, whose leaders decreed that floods of Biblical proportions did not belong in science. For decades, Bretz never faltered from his theory, while these wise men of the east continued to criticize him from afar. Bretz offered that they should come see the evidence for themselves, but this did not occur until he was an old man. When long-time critic James Gilluly finally came to Eastern Washington and saw Dry Falls for the first time, he recanted with the words, "How could anyone have been so wrong?" After nearly 50 years, in 1965 the Geological Society concluded that Bretz had been right all along. But this only happened after the other geologists saw the evidence for themselves.
Most people know what Web 2.0 is, but we need Science 2.0. Sadly, even scientific information has become locked in the ivory tower of academic libraries where it is practically inaccessible to the public. Arguably, if information is proprietary, then it is not really information. The publishing monopoly on science journals is changing slowly, but for now, the public and even scientists are still largely hampered from open access to scientific information.
The point is, our culture is being replaced by buttons and machines. We are getting homogenized. Our distinctive identities are becoming milque-toast icons. Are you an icon? The term "icon" has changed from its original meaning of something great, to mean just a small symbolic picture of something. Homogenization of culture isolates some people from the real world and from each other. Even though the internet has widened our connections with friends, there is no internet replacement for a hug. Nor have our technological advances kept pace with consumption and development. Our civilization is so complex that we are drowning in our own entropy. If we want to do something good for humanity, then let's learn how the world works and go with the flow, not against it. We should take the time to listen to the Okanogan Tribes who have been living here since the dawn of Western Civilization.
The best science lesson comes from the real world. Dry Falls didn't exist in the minds of the Geological Society members until they saw it. But Bretz never lost his sense of humor because he knew that one day his colleagues would see it and would they ever eat crow. The take home lesson is that if we are willing to pay attention to nature, we might actually be able to save our civilization which depends on it. But this means you are going to have to visit the Okanogan, home of Western Civilization.