52 Ways to Nature: Washington


Book Description

"...a colorful, easy-to-read, information-packed reference that offers a full year of fun in nature" -- Seattle's Child Details each activity along with related history, flora and fauna, and cultural notes Includes recommendations for different places to visit around the state to try the activity "Nature Notebook" journal prompts to inspire you to record and make the most of your adventures "Connect with Nature" ideas for experiential learning Organized by season, 52 Ways to Nature: Washington features immersive activities to keep you engaged with nature throughout the year. This twist on a Northwest guidebook offers ideas to get you outdoors and encourages you to keep track of those experiences through journal notes. Discover a geocache in your own neighborhood, drop a crab pot off a dock on Hood Canal, observe the northern lights through Goldendale’s hilltop telescope, or experience sledding paradise at Mount Rainier National Park. Newcomers and long-time residents alike will find new ways to revel in the natural world with the inspiring and accessible activities in 52 Ways to Nature: Washington.




Trail Notes


Book Description

Announcing the return of analog--gifty blank journals for recording your outdoor adventures




Last Child in the Woods


Book Description

The Book That Launched an International Movement Fans of The Anxious Generation will adore Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's groundbreaking New York Times bestseller. “An absolute must-read for parents.” —The Boston Globe “It rivals Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer “I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” reports a fourth grader. But it’s not only computers, television, and video games that are keeping kids inside. It’s also their parents’ fears of traffic, strangers, Lyme disease, and West Nile virus; their schools’ emphasis on more and more homework; their structured schedules; and their lack of access to natural areas. Local governments, neighborhood associations, and even organizations devoted to the outdoors are placing legal and regulatory constraints on many wild spaces, sometimes making natural play a crime. As children’s connections to nature diminish and the social, psychological, and spiritual implications become apparent, new research shows that nature can offer powerful therapy for such maladies as depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder. Environment-based education dramatically improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages and develops skills in problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making. Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that childhood experiences in nature stimulate creativity. In Last Child in the Woods, Louv talks with parents, children, teachers, scientists, religious leaders, child-development researchers, and environmentalists who recognize the threat and offer solutions. Louv shows us an alternative future, one in which parents help their kids experience the natural world more deeply—and find the joy of family connectedness in the process. Included in this edition: A Field Guide with 100 Practical Actions We Can Take Discussion Points for Book Groups, Classrooms, and Communities Additional Notes by the Author New and Updated Research from the U.S. and Abroad




They Just Don't Get It


Book Description

No more politics—just the truth about what we can and must do to protect ourselves. Fox News military analyst Colonel David Hunt has dedicated his career to fighting terrorism. A twenty-nine-year U.S. Army veteran, he has helped take out an active terrorist camp, trained the FBI and Special Forces in counterterrorism tactics, and served as security adviser to six different Olympic Games. And Colonel Hunt is angry. Why? Because even after the terrorist attacks on our country and on Americans around the world, the people charged with protecting us—the politicians and the bureaucrats in military and intelligence—still aren’t getting the job done. They Just Don’t Get It provides a much-needed wake-up call to all Americans. As politicians posture and pundits bicker, we’re losing sight of the fundamental problem: We’re still not equipped to win the War on Terror. In fact, the terrorist threat is far worse than we feared, as made frighteningly clear by the fifty pages of documents published here for the first time—including a shocking manual taken from the terrorists themselves. But instead of just complaining, Colonel Hunt tells us exactly what we must do—without regard to political game-playing—to emerge victorious in the challenge that history has given us. These are changes we can make at every level—as individual citizens, as a government, and as a military power. As he shows in this book, while the government and our military lead the fight to protect us, ordinary citizens can and must contribute. They Just Don’t Get It reveals: • What you can do to keep your family safe • How many of the government’s recent “reforms” are mere window dressing or, worse, counterproductive • How we can fight this war and still safeguard our civil liberties and the American way of life • How to fix the intelligence disaster (and yes, the politicians in D.C. still haven’t fixed it) • How we got into this mess in the first place: it’s mostly because our government let the problem fester for three decades Colonel Hunt is no cautious bureaucrat or finger-pointer looking for political gain. He is a straight shooter with deep insight into what’s happening in the War on Terror—on the ground and in the government. They Just Don’t Get It lays out in clear and compelling terms the steps we must take—all of us—to win the War on Terror and ensure our survival as a free, proud, and strong nation. From They Just Don’t Get It We’re fighting a war for our very survival, so we’d better figure out how to win. That’s why I’m writing this book—to show us how we can win, how we can protect ourselves. As a Fox News military analyst, I’m paid to offer insight into how our armed forces are conducting the fight against our enemies. But this book shows that to win the War on Terror we need to concern ourselves with more than just military tactics. For one thing, we need to look at what our political leaders are doing. The sad truth is that they still don’t get it. Then there’s intelligence. You’ve heard about our intelligence failures, but I doubt you know how bad it really is—even after the “reforms.” I’m going to tell you. And another critical dimension to this story usually gets overlooked—what you can do. The fact is, you can do a lot. Hell, you must do a lot. A selection of American Compass




Olympic Mountains


Book Description

The only climbing guide devoted to Washington's Olympic National Park--now completely updated and expanded with more than thirty percent additional new material.




The Nature of Gold


Book Description

"In this first environmental history of the gold rush, Kathryn Morse describes how the miners got to the Klondike, the mining technologies they employed, and the complex networks by which they obtained food, clothing, and tools. She looks at the political and economic debates surrounding the valuation of gold and the emerging industrial economy that exploited its extraction in Alaska, and explores the ways in which a web of connections among America's transportation, supply, and marketing industries linked miners to other industrial and agricultural laborers across the country. The profound economic and cultural transformations that supported the Alaska-Yukon gold rush ultimately reverberate to modern times." "The story Morse tells is often narrated through the diaries and letters of the miners themselves. The daunting challenges of traveling, working, and surviving in the raw wilderness are illustrated not only by the miners' compelling accounts but by newspaper reports and --




52 Ways to Walk


Book Description

'Fascinating ... Connected both to old wisdom and new scientific frontiers of discovery' Lauren Laverne ________________________ 'We can all learn something from 52 Ways to Walk. I know I can.' Michael Ball, BBC Radio 2 ________________________ Walking strengthens our bodies, calms our minds and lifts our spirits. But it does so much more than this. Our vision, hearing, respiration, sleep, cognition, memory, blood pressure, sense of smell and balance are all enhanced by how we walk. For instance: · Walking in cold weather burns extra fat and builds more muscle. · Walking alone strengthens our memories. · Walking in woodland helps us sleep. · And there's nothing more restorative than a romantic nighthike. Our choice of location, time, direction, duration, walking companion and gait, as well as the weather we opt to walk in, can transform our daily stroll. Here, Annabel Streets shares the thrill of 52 different ways to walk, explaining the latest science behind each one, and providing practical tips for making the most of your daily steps. 52 Ways to Walk is a revelatory and informative handbook for anyone stuck in a walking rut, curious about the lesser-known benefits of walking or merely in need of some on-foot novelty and adventure.




Medical Apartheid


Book Description

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • The first full history of Black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to read this masterful book. "[Washington] has unearthed a shocking amount of information and shaped it into a riveting, carefully documented book." —New York Times From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.




Finding the Mother Tree


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.




Dirt


Book Description

Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.