crosscut.com : Recreation / Outdoors

More fun than Deliverance!

Crosscut — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:00:01 PDT

Spend your summer vacation in Eastern Washington, an exotic locale where lakes are slippery, the Scablands surprising, and wheat farmers are smashing stuff for fun.

Fishing for a family's food

Crosscut — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 05:00:01 PDT

An Alaskan whose family holds a subsistence fishing permit chronicles their annual trip to the Kasilof River, where they fish for sockeye salmon using set-nets.

Sausage Links, cougar-hunting edition

Crosscut — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:28:01 PDT

Praise the Lord and release the hounds — because our good state Legislature has enacted a law which makes it legal once again to use dogs to hunt cougars. Now, I didn't even know cougar hunting was legal in Washington — minus Cougars wearing crimson — but apparently, it is. While the bill was actually passed by the Legislature in February, the Department of Fish and Wildlife will hold a public meeting on Friday to discuss whether the pilot program should continue for another three years.

Meanwhile, Micheal Reitz of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation has compiled a list of some other curious laws enacted by the Washington Legislature this year. My personal favorite: Violators may face up to $1,000 or up to a year in jail for selling raw or unprocessed huckleberries without a permit.

Sausage Links, tree-cutting edition

Crosscut — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:09:01 PDT

Timber! The Seattle Times has a series of special reports about the lack of oversight in the logging industry and the cost to state taxpayers. According to the report, no one checked when Weyerhaeuser started clear-cutting unstable slopes, some of which eventually slid and cost millions of dollars to clean up. Naturally, David Goldstein at Horse's Ass blames Republican-led deregulation. ...

RFK Jr.'s plot to destroy the planet

Crosscut — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 18:00:01 PDT

Environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently paid a visit to Washington and sang its praises, but I'm not sure why he'd be welcome these days.

Shooting for money

Crosscut — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:00:01 PDT

Our Yakima correspondent tries out the Ljutic Mono Gun — and checks out the trap shooting tournament scene. Part 2

Trap gun tribulations

Crosscut — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:00:01 PDT

An ailing family business — whose trap gun was once the country's best seller — gets a hand up from a Yakima entrepreneur. Part 1

Sausage Links, "freedom to get drunk and blow stuff up" edition

Crosscut — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:23:01 PDT

Chris Mulick at the Tri-City Herald has today's top story, reporting this morning that Tim Eyman's Initiative 985 and the Service Employees International Union-backed Initiative 1029 would — if passed by voters in November — increase the state's budget deficit by an estimated $300 million.

Salmon on the Columbia: See you in court

Crosscut — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:00:01 PDT

The federal agencies are back for a fifth round in federal court, still cooking up very strained arguments for minimal efforts to save the fish. Two things might change the impasse: a new case for saving dams due to climate change, and the bestirring of Congress. Here's a survey of the high-stakes issues.

Finally, some good Seattle sports news

Crosscut — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:44:01 PDT

When I edited Seattle Weekly, I issued a ban on soccer coverage. Why edit a newspaper when you can't, very occasionally, act like a tin-pot dictator and shape it to your perverse desires? I left the paper two years ago but hoped the new editor would realize my no-soccer edict was a lifetime ban. Apparently not. There's a new dictator in town, and the moratorium has been lifted. The editor himself has written a column about soccer in Seattle. The good news: He's not buying the hype that it's the next big thing.

The 100-year gamble to save our quality of life

Crosscut — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:00:01 PDT

A close look at the ambitious "Cascade Agenda," which hopes to preserve the central Puget Sound region's natural systems from a Pugetopolis that sprawls all the way to the Cascades. The mechanisms are known, but it's not clear they can work well enough or soon enough.

When animals attack, and also when they don't

Crosscut — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:00:01 PDT

It's the time of year when animal-human encounters are on the rise. Bears are picnicking on hikers, moose are invading trailer parks, and muskrats are blamed for destroying entire towns. You could be next.

Polimedia lunch links, binge-drinkers edition

Crosscut — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:38:01 PDT

From today's edition of The Seattle Times comes this report from The Los Angeles Times, in what could be the first many reports profiling John and Cindy McCain's ties to the nation's big-time beer brewers. ...

Pagan or perv? Nude etiquette in Fremont

Crosscut — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:14:01 PDT

I went to the Fremont Solstice parade June 21 for the first time in many, many years and saw the famed nekkid bike riders. But I have a few questions about the etiquette of public pagan nudity in Seattle, so weigh in if you have an opinion.

Wilderness redefined

Crosscut — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:00:01 PDT

Wild Sky in Washington's Cascades is just one of a number of areas designated for protection that are not, in the strictest sense, primeval environment. But they are wild, and in modern times they're worth preserving, say environmentalists — even if unprecedented compromise is necessary.

A long wait for Seattle P-patches

Crosscut — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 19:00:01 PDT

Demand is greater than ever for a 10-by-10-foot urban farm. City officials say 1,650 people are waiting for a plot at one of 54 gardens.

A Northwest photographer who captured the untamed

Crosscut — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 05:00:01 PDT

Darius Kinsey began photographing the Pacific Northwest in 1896. Much of what he captured no longer exists, but his photographs, now on view at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art, tell the story.

Revisiting the American road trip: You can (almost) get there from here

Crosscut — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 05:00:01 PDT

It's summer, but gas prices might make you think twice about taking even the hybrid for a drive down the coast. Time for a new twist on an old American pastime. Imagine Washington to California and back, without a car: more than 2,000 miles, 28 towns, 11 public transit systems, 48 buses, and zero stops at the gas station. Part 1

Beach fires? Let's talk about real carbon footprints

Crosscut — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:42:01 PDT

The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department is considering a ban of beach fires at Alki and Golden Gardens parks — not this year, as first announced, but next year — stating that beach fires contribute to global warming.

If the parks staff is really concerned about global warming, perhaps they will also recommend no fires in the barbecue pits at Woodland, Lincoln, Carkeek, and other parks throughout our city. Or perhaps they will cease using the large leaf-blowers at Golden Gardens, which blows sand off the sidewalk and parking lot, or stop driving around Discovery Park in large trucks. In fact, there are dozens of things the parks staff themselves can do to reduce the carbon footprint.

The trail less traveled

New West — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:00:01 PDT

A walk into Western spaces can make you feel as if you're alone here, that the landscape is a blank canvas for your story. But yours is neither the land's first story, nor its last.