As an artist and Spokane native, I am endlessly inspired by the beauty of our local landscapes. To sit beside an alpine lake and watch the sunbeams kiss the mountains, to slumber amongst giants in an old growth forest . . . such places, just beyond our doorstep, are breathtaking.

I was raised on the trails, mountains, and lakes of our surrounding area and took my son for his first backpacking trip at the age of seven. After my son graduated this year, being an empty-nester and not even 40 got my wheels turning. There’s a big old beautiful world out there waiting for me to explore and paint!

I converted an old Chevy van into an art studio on wheels and decided to immerse myself in the wild places that offer me such inspiration. I set out to explore every inch of the Northwest.

Admittedly, that’s an impossible task. With millions of acres of public lands, from state parks, national forests, and wilderness areas to BLM, DNR, and county and city park land, I feel like a kid in a candy store. The Northwest has it all: vibrant colors, moody atmosphere, rich textures, and curious wildlife. The opportunities for adventure and beauty are endless.

I strive to create works of art that capture the places I visit and people I meet. But my deepest goal is to capture that feeling of love for the great outdoors with my paintings.

I paint not with brushes like most artists but instead by using my fingers and hands. You will often find mountain landscapes, vibrant sunsets, hikers, bikers, paddleboarders, and wildlife in my paintings. These works, in which I’m literally elbow deep in paint, are expressions of pure love, passion, and admiration for the outdoors.

The trails and public lands I’ve been visiting offer me such inspiration that I decided it was time to give something back. I began doing volunteer trail work with Washington Trails Association, and then after riding the trails at Beacon/Camp Sekani, I knew I wanted to paint a mural there.

I worked with Evergreen East and Spokane Parks & Rec to get permission for the painting, which ended up being on the garage door at the entrance to the park. Inspired by an image by Spokane photographer Aaron Theisen, I painted a vibrant, explosive piece depicting one of our local riders, Alex Anderson, sending it into the sunset. [Editor’s note: Theisen is also an OTO contributor.]

The mural at Beacon was my first public work of art, and while there painting, I was inspired by all of the people out enjoying the trails. This 46-mile trail system is one of the largest in the state and has rides for all abilities.

Unfortunately, much of Beacon’s epic trail system is still on privately owned land. Evergreen East Mountain Bike Alliance has been working with the public lands agencies that manage the land as well as some private land owners to raise the funds needed to acquire some of the properties that many of the trails pass through.

If they succeed, their efforts will combine what are now four separate chunks of park land into one large park and trail system that will be protected for generations of riders and trail users.

To learn more about Evergreen’s efforts to make Beacon public or to make a donation, visit www.evergreeneast.org/trails/campsekanibeaconhill.

The author’s backpacking gear, new mural at Camp Sekani, and mobile art studio. // Photos courtesy Christina Deubel.

Christina Deubel is a Spokane artist currently traveling around the Northwest in her van. You can find more of her work by following her on social media at @mnttidings or on her website Mountaintidings.com.

For more art-related stories, visit the OTO archives.

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Here are two stories from couples who love the outdoors so much that public lands were integral to growing their relationships, framing their wedding days, and inspiring their ongoing love stories. Their nuptials show that while identity is grounded in friends, family, heritage, and tradition, it can also be rooted in place—the geography of hills, lakes, trees, and ridges that inspire us.

An Elopement Among the Larches

Ryan Craig describes his elopement in October 2020 as “a scene out of a Nordic warrior film. Misty and stormy, windy with tall granite peaks over us and a really cold lake below.”

His wife, Alyssa Chamberlain, continues, “The big focal point was all the larches. I don’t know how we timed it so perfectly. It was all beautiful gold.”

The only person at their self-officiated private ceremony in the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth Wilderness was a friend and professional photographer, Brighton. Their plucky and adoring pup, Harold, also made the hike in. Harold was one of the reasons they picked that spot, since most places with larches don’t allow dogs.

Many couples experience a lot of pressure regarding where they should host their wedding. But Alyssa explains that the people who are closest to her know that “I’ve always wanted to elope. I think the ceremony is more about the person you’re with.” She feels that she’s not a strong public speaker and that saying everything in front of a lot of people would have been hard.

“COVID-19 gave us a nice cover.” She explains that they decided together, “Oh, now we really have to elope!”

The foursome hiked up together the night before the intimate ceremony. Ryan hung his suit on hanger in a garbage bag and attached it to the outside of his backpack. Alyssa folded her dress into a packing cube. She had hand dyed the bottom gold with the help of a friend to match what she hoped would be a stunning stand of fiery larches.

“When we hiked in, it was 55 degrees and beautiful and calm. We woke up to 35 degrees and rapid dropping temperatures and wind. It was pretty cold,” remembers Ryan. Alyssa wore leggings under her dress, hiking boots, and wrapped a warm blanket around her shoulders.

The words they shared that day were for each other, lifted up by the wind and carried over the hills and valleys. The symbolisms fits what their love is built on. For example, the dried flowers in their bouquet and boutonnière were plucked during hikes they had taken together on both the East and West coasts. Even her wedding ring represents their love of wild places, with a mountain skyline carved into it.

The couple just returned from a week in Vermont, where they celebrated their commitment to each other with East Coast family. It was a beautiful celebration, but after dealing with the stress of COVID-era travel, they are happy to be back hiking around local public lands with Harold.

Local Hike to a Wedding

Ella Kerner’s description of the weather on her November wedding day in 2015 is most brides’ nightmare: “It rained a little bit. It was windy.” Then, there was the tardiness of the guests. “We had to wait for 45 minutes for a couple stragglers to make it up the hill.” But, in her eyes, “It was perfect.”

She married Nathan Leach (now Nathan Kerner) “huddled behind the wind break of the boulders” at Rocks of Sharon, which is one of their favorite Spokane hikes.

“[Rocks of Sharon] is a very excellent viewpoint,” says Nathan. “It’s gorgeous and expansive.” It’s a view that both of them love in the summer and winter. Nathan continues, “On one side you can see Spokane Valley and the freeway leading to Spokane. You can also see the Palouse, and there are just a few barns and houses out there.”

About 40 people joined them for the hike and ceremony, and dozens more met them at their reception in town afterward.

The couple’s friends and families were not surprised that they chose a hike to commemorate their lifelong commitment to each other.  Ella explains, “We knew we wanted to get married on a mountain, but one that was accessible to most people. I had done the hike a dozen times before we got married. It’s such a great trail. It’s a great reward for not much work.”

One of the best parts of the day was watching guests mingle in an unconventional setting. “Everyone got to chat on the way up,” she says. “It was fun. Even [the stragglers] talked about that as a good day.”

At first, Nathan jokes about getting married in one of the bleakest months of the year. “I’d rather be cold than be hot.” But then he reflects on why it was so special to get married up there. “Buildings are temporary, but the outdoors is permanent. If we want to revisit the place we got married, it will still be there.”

Ella explains how the location has become a place of importance for their entire young family. “We took [our firstborn] Charlie (age 4) up when he was a baby. He was 6 months old, and we carried him up.”

They haven’t yet taken their newest arrival, Del (age 2), but they will soon—perhaps this November. They plan to do the hike every year on their anniversary, even though they missed it last year due to COVID-19 and child chaos.

As Nathan points out, it will always be there for them when they need a refresh and to get a perspective on what matters most.

Originally published as “Love in the Outback” in the September-October 2021 issue.

Summer Hess is the former managing editor of OTO. She still contributes content from her new home in Wenatchee.        

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Yellowstone’s Thermal Features

By Benson Side, elementary student at Pioneer School

Yellowstone National Park is home to four kinds of weird thermal features. The Earth is hot in Yellowstone because it is an active supervolcano caldera. Yellowstone is where half of the geysers in the world are found! There are approximately 500 geysers in Yellowstone National Park, and that’s a lot.

Geysers are cool (the water is not cool, though). They are activated by pressure and heat in a chamber below the ground. Water that collects there is heated up beyond boiling, which is extremely hot. It’s a big chamber with a little opening, kind of like a teapot. It builds up pressure until it can’t hold the pressure any more, and it goes ka-bluey!!!! There are two types of geysers: cone and fountain geysers. Fountain geysers are practically the same thing as a cone geyser underground. Cone geysers erupt in an upward spout from a mound or cone of sinter rock, but fountain geysers erupt from a hot spring. Fountain geysers look like a pool that has a bomb exploding under the water, if you can picture that.

Yellowstone’s hot springs are an amazing sight. They are beautiful puddles or pools of steaming water that often have colors. Those colors aren’t just for decoration, they are little baby bacteria that can only survive in different temperatures. The bacteria that needs the hottest water is dark blue, the second ring of color is turquoise and the second hottest, the third ring is yellow and is the third hottest, and the fourth ring is the fourth hottest and it is orange. These bacterias are called thermophiles, which means heat-loving. You are not allowed to swim in the hot springs because the oils on your skin will kill the bacteria, which is bad! 

Mud pots are weird and satisfying. They are satisfying because they bubble slowly and make interesting sounds. Mud pots can be stinky because of the hydrosulfide that is dissolved in the water. Mud pots sometimes don’t have much color, but when they do have color they are called paint pots. They get their color from minerals that mix in the mud pots. Fumaroles are vents that steam because of geo-heated water below the surface of Earth’s crust. There is some water deep in the fumarole, which evaporates before it gets to the surface. Fumaroles are found in many sizes. I hope that someday you will go and see the awesome geology at Yellowstone. It is so worth the trip!

Editor’s Note: These student essays were printed as they were provided by Pioneer School and were unedited by Out There. To learn more about the school, visit Pioneerschool.com.

Every other year, 4^th and 5^th grade students from Pioneer School participate in Expedition Yellowstone, a National Park Service program where school groups get to choose a theme, such as history, ecology, and wildlife for a hands-on learning expedition. Pioneer School is a K-5 accredited, non-profit school for gifted and highly-capable learners in Spokane Valley.

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In recent years, it’s been increasingly common to see Idahoans in regions experiencing rapid growth—the Boises, McCalls, and Teton Valleys—tagging their photos on social media with “Iowa.” It’s a 21^st century joke that stems from an older one, in which, for most of the country, Idaho and Iowa (and sometimes Ohio) were essentially interchangeable. Today, those locals would gladly have you trade their state for somewhere in the Midwest. Or anywhere else, really.

It’s all part of a broader “Tag Responsibly” movement, which asks that social media users refrain from highlighting the specific locations of their scenic shots. That movement comes in response to unprecedented growth in the Mountain West, whose cities occupy many of the top spots for skyrocketing populations and property values and whose parks see record-breaking visitor numbers year over year. The Tag Responsibly movement simply asks that social media users use discretion when highlighting sensitive backcountry areas where increased traffic could be disastrous.

The counter-argument suggests that concealing one’s location is a form of gate-keeping, of flaunting one’s privileged access to the best spots. But there’s a difference between gate-keeping and hanging out a neon sign, a difference between studying a map or guidebook or a local’s time-tested suggestions and baby-birding backcountry beta.

I used to sit on a state grant committee that allocated funding for, among other things, maintenance of public recreation sites. In 2017, the land managers for a subalpine lake in the Central Cascades that shall not be named came in front of the committee pleading for increased maintenance funding. They showed us photos of vehicles overflowing the trailhead parking lot and stretching more than a mile down the road.

Then they showed us a graph of visitor numbers: it looked like the tip of a pencil. Traffic to the lake had increased exponentially in the middle of the decade; land managers attributed it almost entirely to Instagram.

I’ve made a vocation out of guiding the public towards desirable trails and destinations. I often feel conflicted about that. On the one hand, many people can’t love and cherish wild places—and, in turn, advocate for their protection—without seeing them firsthand.

On the other hand, all those firsthand visits have resulted in places being loved, if not to death, at least to life support. But, divorced of all context, an endless scroll of location-tagged photos is nature’s clickbait, exploiting both the viewer’s curiosity and the landscape at the same time.

Many Central American churches prohibit photography within their walls, a practice stemming from Mayan beliefs that mirrors (and, by extension, cameras) steal a piece of one’s soul with every exposure.

In the same way, our wild places lose a bit of their soul with every location tag, diminishing what attracts us there in the first place—a form of backcountry gentrification.

The solution may lie less in tagging responsibly than recreating responsibly, picking our destinations not for their social media value but for their intrinsic value—for their ability to engage us rather than their ability to generate engagement.

After all, not everywhere can be as immediately attention-grabbing as Iowa.

Aaron Theisen has contributed to a number of mountain bike magazines, including Freehub, Mountain Flyer, and Dirt Rag. He wrote about biking in the Methow valley for the July/August Out There.

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Protecting land for its own sake—for the sake of the animals and plants that rely on it, for the sake of clean water and air, and for public enjoyment now and for future generations—rarely makes sense solely from a financial perspective. Thankfully, there are private land owner conservation champions who see former working forests and ranchlands as so much more than short-term dollar signs.

James T. Slavin Conservation Area, Spokane County, WA

“It went from a love/hate relationship, to more love than hate, and then once the county took over, now I can just love it,” says Jim Slavin, Jr., as he sidesteps a pile of skunk scat in the trail and points out memorable landmarks on the 628-acre conservation area that bears his family’s name.

Jim’s father, James T. Slavin, Sr., was the son of a hops farmer in the Yakima Valley who eagerly homesteaded his first 160 acres of farmland south of Spokane in 1965. Over the subsequent decades, he added to his spread when land became available, putting in a canal to channel water to hayfields and provide grazing land for cattle.

“This was his sanctuary,” Jim Jr. says of his father, who preferred to spend the day on this land with “a dog, a gallon of water, and a bag of apples,” over time at a country club or other public setting.

The Slavins’ four children and Joanne, the matriarch of the family, got used to driving old cars with doors prone to falling off since investing in their beautiful agricultural land was Jim Sr.’s top priority.

As the kids grew up, Jim Jr. was the only member of the family to live on the property, and he has many fond memories of coming home to his family’s own 600+ acre slice of heaven during his college and early career days.

“When he was in his 70s,” Jim Jr. says about his father, “it just became a lot to manage.”

In 1998, the land went up for sale and to be sure it didn’t turn into a subdivision or mobile home park, the family worked with Spokane County to protect it as a conservation area in perpetuity.

When the county purchased the land, they returned the water to its natural state, allowing a shallow, meandering wetland to host hundreds of waterfowl, migratory birds, eagles, coyotes, deer, and the occasional elk. In addition to working to put this land into conservation status, the Slavins contributed $100,000 in an endowment to help care for and maintain the area for years to come.

A striking part of the James T. Slavin Conservation Area story is how relationships with land change over the years. “I remember bucking hay bales and thinning trees,” Jim Jr. shares. “And that was hard work.”

Now, he leads tours of young people, community organizations, and friends who want to learn about the flora and fauna, the history of the land, or just enjoy watching flocks of geese and pelicans settle in during a Spokane summer sunset.

“This place is special, and he wanted to see it protected so the community could use it,” Jim says of his father, a stalwart farmer and lover of the land to his last breath.

Slavin Conservation Area is open year-round, with interesting seasonal changes: winter (top left); spring (top right) // Photos: Amy McCaffree; summer (bottom) // Photo: Lisa Laughlin.

Cabinet View Nature Area, Sanders County, MT

“I want to save little places where nature can prevail over human destruction,” says Judy Hutchins, daughter of environmental advocate Ruth Powell Hutchins. Much of her life has been dedicated to the business of real estate, just not for the usual reasons people get into real estate.

A wildlife biologist by training, after stints in New York City and Ann Arbor, Michigan, Judy Hutchins landed in Heron, Mont., and never looked back. “It felt like coming home,” she says of her first visit to Montana from her childhood home in western Colorado.

Western Montana beavers and other wildlife have Hutchins to thank for the 76-acre Cabinet View Nature Area, which is home to a thriving spring-fed beaver complex. Throughout her life, Hutchins has purchased or otherwise worked with land in Colorado and Montana in order to put lands in conservation easements, which are legal agreements that protect private land from future development.

Hutchins’ strategy of buying land, putting those acres into conservation easements, and then reselling the real estate, has protected 10 pieces of land including wildlife corridors, wetlands, and habitat, including the Cabinet View property.

While a board member of the Kaniksu Land Trust (KLT), Hutchins helped KLT transition to a community land trust model, and when she saw the need for public places in which to educate local residents about land and water, she knew she’d found the perfect buyer for this pristine wetland.

Thanks to funding through the North American Wetlands Conservation Act and tireless work by KLT, the land was purchased in June of 2019 and opened to the public. Mindful of disturbing the animals living on the land, KLT put in a trail system and signage to encourage responsible use and enjoyment.

“Although somewhat off the beaten track,” says KLT’s conservation director Regan Plumb, “the Cabinet View Nature Area has served local junior high and high school students as an outdoor classroom for many years. The land also offers a location for quiet walks and wildlife viewing for area residents and provides high-quality habitat for diverse wildlife species.”

From extensive water-storing wetlands to healthy timber stands, wildlife habitat, and scenic trails, this property provides myriad benefits to the two-legged and four-legged (and feathered) residents of our community, says Plumb. “And it would never have been protected without the generosity and foresight of the previous landowner, who recognized many years ago that there was something very special here.”

As the natural world around us changes rapidly, “It’s comforting,” says Hutchins, “to look up at the mountains and realize they’re unchanged. Things will change, but rocks, rivers, mountains will survive.”

Hutchins’ investment in those special places, those pockets of nature, give us hope and a fighting chance for the beautiful lands and waters we all love.

Phillips Creek, Dishman Hills Conservation Area, Spokane County, WA

Hiking down a path littered with bones, where the wind howls at night, even when everything else is still, is a lure so powerful that teenagers can’t resist. This proved true for Andrew Phillips as he and childhood friends tramped around the property his grandfather homesteaded in 1904. Nights spent sleeping under the stars—or, more accurately, lying awake wondering what massive night monster was about to have dinner at his expense—helped Andrew get to know and fall in love with the Phillips Creek land in Spokane Valley.

Phillips Creek, adjacent to the Glenrose Unit of the Dishman Hills Conservation Area, with its basalt outcroppings, grassy hillsides, and overgrown orchards speaks to the agricultural history of the area, but it also tells a story of Welsh immigrants who moved to Spokane Valley to build a future for their family—a future founded on farming and ranching.

“My sons made a camping area out there,” Andrew says as he reminisces about memories made on the land throughout his youth and then as he raised his own family. Although Henry Lloyd Phillips, the second-generation owner of the Phillips Creek property, had planned to sell the land for development, he was unable to because of zoning regulations.

When Phillips passed away and the family was working to settle his estate, they decided its value as green, open space was higher than yet another housing development.

For years, neighbors had used the Phillips Creek area as if it was public and the family’s concerns over liability grew. They wanted friends and neighbors to enjoy the beautiful place as they had, but didn’t have the capacity or desire to maintain it for public use. And so they decided to work with the Dishman Hills Conservancy and Spokane County to put the 179-acre piece of land into public ownership and management in perpetuity in 2018.

“I enjoyed growing up there,” Andrew says, “and I wanted to keep it natural—to give others the chance to experience it as well.”

Like Jim Slavin, Jr., Andrew says his love/hate relationship with the family farm—loving the place but not having the time for the endless hard work—has turned only to love since he can now hike the trails, listen to the birds, and look out across the valley, knowing the land is cared for and protected forever for the good of the community.

If you or someone you know is interested in creating a lasting conservation legacy for an important piece of private land wildlife habitat here in the Inland Northwest, contact one of our region’s hard-working land trust organizations.

Originally published as “From Private To Public: Conservation Champions Protect Open Spaces From Development” in the September-October 2021 issue.

Carol Corbin lives, plays, and writes in the Inland Northwest. She also works for Inland Northwest Land Conservancy, one of many non-profit organizations working to protect natural spaces throughout the region for wildlife, clean air and water, and climate resilience.

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MTB Trail Hero Bill Kinzel 

By Melinda Larson

A typical pre-ride checklist for a mountain bike trip includes staples such as a helmet, water, and snacks. For Bill Kinzel, that list also includes a hand saw and a trash bag. Kinzel is a volunteer whose efforts are well known and appreciated by local land managers and fellow trail users. He has already worked nearly 400 hours this year on our region’s trails clearing downed trees and brush and much more.  

Spokane County Parks special projects manager, Paul Knowles, put Kinzel’s recent contributions into perspective. “In the time of COVID, it’s been humbling to see trail volunteers like Bill continue to put in an incredible amount of their own personal time to improving and building out our community’s trail system.”  

Chris Conley, president of Evergreen East Mountain Bike Alliance, also praises Kinzel and others like him. “These trail heroes are working countless hours, often in remote locations by themselves because they possess a passion for keeping these areas accessible for all forms of recreation.”  

Kinzel became involved with Evergreen by participating in dig days at Spokane-area trail networks. He believes that the outdoors are a truly transcendent place. “A place to clear your mind and a place where time becomes irrelevant,” he says. “I believe as humans time is our most valuable resource and when you can go to a place where time is no longer a factor it really can make a positive impact on your life, your mental wellbeing, and your outlook.”  

When asked what motivates him to volunteer, Kinzel explains it’s “the opportunity to make a local impact, get others involved, and see a direct visible result from my work which benefits the trails and the communities in which we live.” Trails, he says, “provide recreational and outdoor health opportunities for all users.” Bill’s advice for other mountain bikers: “The best way to get involved is to become a member of Evergreen and come out to one of our monthly trail committee meetings or trail maintenance events which we promote on social media channels.” 

When not out working on trails, you might find Kinzel riding his favorite stretch of singletrack, Mount Spokane State Park’s Trail 140. 

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Diana Roberts: Steward and Friend of the Bluff

Submitted by The Friends of the Bluff

Diana Roberts always cared deeply for the land and its inhabitants. As a young girl on a tree farm in Zimbabwe she learned agriculture from her father. While working as an agronomist with Washington State University, she shared her knowledge with area farmers. In 2010, her love of the High Drive Bluff in Spokane led her to start the non-profit organization, Friends of the Bluff. 

Roberts’ passion and dedication provided the kind of spark that is needed to sustain a non-profit, all-volunteer organization. Over the past 10 years, the Friends of the Bluff have organized trail maintenance, fire suppression, invasive plant management, tree planting, park cleanup, and naturalist projects and events. The High Drive Bluff would not be what it is today without her wisdom and caring spirit.  

Roberts recruited the group’s original board of directors and hosted the meetings, where her dogs would always greet everyone at the door. These lucky animals not only attended board meetings and hiked the bluff, they were also skijoring and paddle boarding companions. Roberts even had her pets certified for visits to hospices so that they could provide comfort to the residents. Her love and compassion truly extended to all living things. 

Sadly, Roberts passed away in March, but she left a legacy of people organized and educated to carry on her work. She was truly one-of-a kind, and will be missed dearly. Whether you knew her personally or not, if you have been on the Bluff, you have felt her presence. Next time you find yourself on Spokane’s High Drive Bluff, smile at your fellow trail users while you’re out there. Say hello. Diana would have liked that. 

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Bill Way and the NEWTS 

It began with a simple outdoor adventure. In about 2013, Bill Way’s friend (who happens to be Out There’s own Derrick Knowles) asked if Way would hike with him to find an obscure trail he’d seen on a map of the Colville National Forest. The goal was to determine whether the trail might make for a good mountain biking route.  

“What Derrick found on an older map was the end of the Taylor Ridge Trail,” says Way—a feeder to the Pacific Northwest Trail on the Kettle Crest. Three miles of this trail, known as the “Tom Creek” section, had been washed out about 20 years ago “in a tremendous rainstorm.” Trail maintenance had ceased at that time. 

With some difficulty, they found the trail. To Way, a retired teacher who lives outside Colville, it was clearly full of potential for mountain biking, with the restored segment and potential future road access resulting in a 20+ mile, shuttleable ride with exciting shifts in elevation, big trees, and water access.  

First, though, would come a significant amount of work. Way formed The Northeast Washington Trailblazers (NEWTS), a nonprofit dedicated to promoting non-motorized outdoor recreation and establishing trails and routes in northeast Washington. It quickly grew to over 100 members. Way served as president for four years and is currently on the group’s board. Taylor Ridge was the instigator for the group’s formation. Once the members held meetings, though, other projects came to the fore and were also undertaken, notably including work on the Colville Mountain Trail and the Sherman Creek Wildlife Area.  

Much of the trail’s work is facilitated and coordinated through Kristin Ackerman, the Eastern Washington Regional Coordinator of the Pacific Northwest Trails Association. “Bill is great. He’s a champion. I wish we could clone him,” Ackerman says. “We’ve seen him handily outwork younger, less experienced volunteers. In and out of the field, Bill is an invaluable member of the trail community.” 

The work of volunteers and partnering organizations like the NEWTS, says Ackerman, is “super critical” when it comes to a functional and expanding trail system. “The recreation departments, especially in the Forest Service, they’re not getting as many resources as they need to take care of all of our trails.” 

Current NEWTS president Matt Monbouquette (owner of Colville bike shop Adventure Peddler) says he’s working to “fill Bill Way’s very large shoes…Bill’s leadership has been the cornerstone of the organization for a long time. His passion for the outdoors and creating new places for people to recreate is inspiring.” 

“The Taylor Ridge Trail is really the crown jewel of the NEWTS organization,” Monbouquette says. “Due to the persistence of Bill and the NEWTS group we did work on the trail with the blessing of the Forest Service, and now the Forest Service is sending work crew/trail parties to the trail to work on it annually. That is really our biggest achievement and the main focus of the organization the past few years.” 

Way cautions those interested in similar efforts to be prepared for physical work and to recognize that things probably won’t move quickly. “It just takes a long time sometimes,” he says, given that working on trails you’re likely partnering with trails organizations, the Forest Service, state or national parks, and/or the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, all with rules and regulations to follow. For those who’d like to tackle their own projects, Way recommends contacting an organization like the Washington Trails Association for advice—or, of course, a group like the NEWTS (Northeast Washington Trailblazers on Facebook, or email newasts [at] gmail [dot] com).  

For his part, Way finds that the effort and patience required for stewarding public lands are well worth it. “It has taken quite a bit of my time sometimes, but it’s been very rewarding to see things come together. It’s given me connections to people that have maybe similar interests but maybe I wouldn’t have known. I’ve learned a lot about how to get things done,” he says. “Plus, I love to go out and hike and bike and ski on the trails, too.” 

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“Will you bring the petting zoo?” Our far-flung kids ask this every time we head out to see them. Of course, the answer is yes. The ability to travel with the animals is one of the primary reasons we bought our van, so we’re happy to make room for the dogs and birds and their sundry provisions. Our two senior rescue mutts, Chili and Ellie, aren’t impressed that we went whole hog and bought a crazily expensive Winnebago Revel Sprinter van complete with solar panels and a nifty motorized bed. They just like being able to go with us on our adventures. 

Everyone likes a good view out the window, so my husband built a custom viewing platform for our short-legged dogs, which doubles as their bunk bed at night. Our parrot Lovey is happy sitting up front on the cupholder or perched on the swing in her cage where the motion of the van mimics swaying treetops. Having animals along for the ride requires you to tolerate nose prints on the glass and a certain amount of dirt, dog hair, and dander. The smell is negligible, but maybe we’re just used to it. 

One recent weekend we had no idea where we were headed, but we had a short list of must-haves. Hudson’s hamburger joint was a top priority, so we headed east to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. We enjoyed our lunch in the shade of a lakeside park and looked at a map—the paper kind. Our campsite had to be in the woods on public land, away from people and traffic but not too long a drive, and with a creek close by for refreshment. 

The area north of the freeway between Kellogg and Wallace looked promising, with vast expanses of Forest Service land laced with a multitude of watersheds and old logging roads. We followed our noses through gorgeous green countryside, occasionally consulting our map. There was no Internet and very little signage. 

After fruitlessly pursuing several narrow winding tracks that initially looked promising, we found ourselves bumping along in the deepening dusk, peering into the looming forest through a downpour. We began to trade away our must-haves in exchange for actually finding a place that would suffice. The animals were restless, and we were beginning to think it was a bonehead idea to embark on an excursion with zero planning.  

We ended up on forest road #152, a fairly decent road interspersed with deep ruts and pockets of standing water. No people, no cars. After a while, we spied a rugged sidetrack that led off into the woods on the right, where we suspected there was a creek. We were grateful for having four-wheel drive, because, Eureka! We hit pay dirt. A level, needle-and-moss carpeted space to camp, sheltering firs, and a small crystalline creek just steps away. 

Next morning, we explored the rest of FR 152, and found it ended at Settler’s Grove, a 2-mile easy hiking loop through old-growth cedar. The giant trees were stunning, the burned areas intriguing, and we didn’t see a soul. 

Invigorated after a little morning birdwatching, we headed home over King Pass, and dropped into Wallace after a picnic by yet another pretty little creek. We have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the variety and abundance of beautiful outdoor places to romp. Our recent quickie trip in the van shows that sometimes, all you have to do is pack up, grab a good map, and head out. And, yes, take the petting zoo!

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