community clubs
Get together, expand your knowledge of the natural world, meet other folks, and have a good time!
Tracking Club and Nature Book Club meet monthly, are free, and are open to all.
Tracking Club and Nature Book Club meet monthly, are free, and are open to all.
Tracking Club
Raccoon tracks found at Tracking Club
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October 31: Families and Kids!
Outdoor comfortable costumes are welcome but optional for this family-friendly Halloween Tracking Club. Fun for kids of all ages, we'll also have a Trick-or-Treat Treasure Hunt! November 28: Gratitude Celebrate, give thanks for, and explore the bounty of wildlife whose tracks and sign can be found along the Sandy River. December 26: Trailing Trailing wildlife - or following the tracks they have made - can show you more than just where the animal was headed. It can also teach you how they interact with the landscape, how tracks from one animal can look different in different substrates, and maybe even a little bit of why they were going where they were. |
Join us as we explore along the Sandy River for signs of wildlife!
The floodplain at Oxbow Park hosts a diversity of wildlife. Some of the tracks and signs we've encountered there have been left by mountain lion, coyote, bear, deer, toad(!), mink, beaver, otter, and more! You never know who you might find.
The floodplain at Oxbow Park hosts a diversity of wildlife. Some of the tracks and signs we've encountered there have been left by mountain lion, coyote, bear, deer, toad(!), mink, beaver, otter, and more! You never know who you might find.
Last Sunday of every month, 9am-12pm
Where: Oxbow Park. Meet at the Floodplain, which is the first parking lot on the left after you enter the park.
Cost: Free - but $5 entrance fee to Oxbow Park per vehicle.
Where: Oxbow Park. Meet at the Floodplain, which is the first parking lot on the left after you enter the park.
Cost: Free - but $5 entrance fee to Oxbow Park per vehicle.
Tracking club is open to everyone. Whether you're an experienced tracker, completely new, or somewhere in between. Led by two Cascadia Wild Tracking Leaders, this is an informal gathering where you can practice your tracking skills and learn from each other. It is a space for people to get together, learn and share knowledge, encourage each other along our journey, and have fun.
Not only is tracking a skill you can enjoy no matter your experience level, this is also a great activity for many ages and levels of physical ability. Much of the time is spent at a casual pace as we look for tracks and sign, or spent huddled over something interesting! The terrain at Oxbow is relatively flat and is a mix of sand and grass floodplain, with a few (usually dry) channels to walk across. The shore of the river is sloped and has some river rocks in the wet sand or mud. There is a bathroom facility at the meeting area. Wear sturdy shoes if you need them and always dress for the weather.
Each month will have a different theme to inspire exploration of different aspects of tracking and to welcome different parts of our community.
*Wear a mask and practice physical distancing at this event. Please do not carpool with members outside your household/social unit. Do not attend if you are feeling even the slightest bit sick. Maximum group size is 8; if this group size is met we will split into smaller groups. Thank you!
Not only is tracking a skill you can enjoy no matter your experience level, this is also a great activity for many ages and levels of physical ability. Much of the time is spent at a casual pace as we look for tracks and sign, or spent huddled over something interesting! The terrain at Oxbow is relatively flat and is a mix of sand and grass floodplain, with a few (usually dry) channels to walk across. The shore of the river is sloped and has some river rocks in the wet sand or mud. There is a bathroom facility at the meeting area. Wear sturdy shoes if you need them and always dress for the weather.
Each month will have a different theme to inspire exploration of different aspects of tracking and to welcome different parts of our community.
*Wear a mask and practice physical distancing at this event. Please do not carpool with members outside your household/social unit. Do not attend if you are feeling even the slightest bit sick. Maximum group size is 8; if this group size is met we will split into smaller groups. Thank you!
Nature Book Club
This club is a great way to keep up on your nature learning, meet new people, read new books, and participate in discussion about the ways nature writing shapes our experiences and relationship to the natural world.
New folks are always welcome to join!
Fourth Tuesday of each month, 5:30pm-7pm
Where: Online, contact us for the meeting link
Cost: Free
New folks are always welcome to join!
Fourth Tuesday of each month, 5:30pm-7pm
Where: Online, contact us for the meeting link
Cost: Free
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October 26's book will be Wolves in the Land of Salmon by David Moskowitz.
Long considered an icon of the wild, wolves capture our imagination and spark controversy. Humans are the adult wolf’s only true natural predator; its return to the old-growth forests and wild coastlines of the Pacific Northwest renews age-old questions about the value of wildlands and wildlife. As the vivid stories unfold in this riveting and timely book, wolves emerge as smart, complex players uniquely adapted to the vast interdependent ecosystem of this stunning region. Observing them at close range, David Moskowitz explores how they live, hunt, and communicate, tracing their biology and ecology through firsthand encounters in the wildlands of the Northwest. In the process he challenges assumptions about their role and the impact of even well-meaning human interventions. David Moskowitz works in the fields of photography, wildlife biology and education. He is the photographer and author of three books: Caribou Rainforest, Wildlife of the Pacific Northwest and Wolves in the Land of Salmon. He has contributed his technical expertise to a wide variety of wildlife studies regionally and in the Canadian and U.S. Rocky mountains, focusing on using tracking and other non-invasive methods to study wildlife ecology and promote conservation. He helped establish the Cascade Citizen Wildlife Monitoring Project, a citizen science effort to search for and monitor rare and sensitive wildlife in the Cascades and other Northwest wildlands. |
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November 23's book is The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the World of Consciousness by Sy Montgomery
In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food. Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds. Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and author of thirty-one acclaimed books of nonfiction for adults and children, including The Hummingbirds’ Gift, the National Book Award finalist The Soul of an Octopus, and the memoir The Good Good Pig, which was a New York Times bestseller. The recipient of numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association, she lives in New Hampshire with her husband, writer Howard Mansfield, and a border collie. |
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We're taking December off from Book Club to give us time for January 25th's book, Horizon by Barry Lopez!
From pole to pole and across decades of lived experience, National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez delivers his most far-ranging, yet personal, work to date. Horizon moves indelibly, immersively, through the author’s travels to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica. Along the way, Lopez probes the long history of humanity’s thirst for exploration, including the prehistoric peoples who trekked across Skraeling Island in northern Canada, the colonialists who plundered Central Africa, an enlightenment-era Englishman who sailed the Pacific, a Native American emissary who found his way into isolationist Japan, and today’s ecotourists in the tropics. And always, throughout his journeys to some of the hottest, coldest, and most desolate places on the globe, Lopez searches for meaning and purpose in a broken world. Barry Lopez is the author of three collections of essays, including Horizon; several story collections; Arctic Dreams, for which he received the National Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist; and Crow and Weasel, a novella-length fable. He contributed regularly to both American and foreign journals and traveled to more than seventy countries to conduct research. He was the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Lannan, and National Science Foundations and was honored by a number of institutions for his literary, humanitarian, and environmental work. He died in 2020. |
Check the calendar for upcoming meeting dates and the books that will be discussed.
