For fifty years, Bob Pyle has been visiting the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in search of butterflies, his own sense of the great tradition of Bigfoot, and natural history in general. In this reminiscence, he shares stories and revelations of the wildness and wonder of the GP as viewed through all these lenses, and asks what we are likely to leave behind for the following generations of lovers of the public woods.
The national forests have gone through many flavors of extraction and protection over the years, and the threats continue, whether through resumed logging targets, mining, or off-road motors.
While considering just which is the more unlikely phenomenon--butterflies or Bigfoot--Pyle has come to view both as barometers of the ultimate health and well-being of the Wild GP.
Signed copies of the new edition of Where Bigfoot Walks and The Butterflies of Cascadia will be available following the talk.
Robert Michael Pyle attended his first conservation hearing for the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge in 1967, when he was a young vice president of Seattle Audubon Society. He has been a resident of Gray's River on the Lower Columbia, and a student and writer of its natural history, for forty years.
His twenty-two books include Wintergreen, The Thunder Tree, Chasing Monarchs, Mariposa Road, two collections of poems, and one novel. Magdalena Mountain, coming in August.
The talk will be held on Friday, March 23 at 7 PM at the Kelso Senior Center. The Center is located at 106 NW 8th Avenue in Kelso, just across from Joanne's Fabric Store near Ocean Beach Highway. Doors will open by 6:45 and a donation of $5 is suggested