A Walk in the Wild Sky Wilderness
Rick McGuire, a key volunteer who has worked with Earth Share of Washington member Washington Wilderness Coalition (WWC) over the past 3 years to support the Wild Sky Wilderness proposal, was featured in an Everett Herald article on November 8th. The article, entitled "A Walk in the Wild Sky," chronicled Rick's commitment to Wilderness issues in Washington State over the past 25 years. He has also recently authored a new hiking guide highlighting trails in and around the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness in collaboration with the late Ira Spring. Rick's on the ground knowledge of the Skykomish area and constant energy has been an invaluable asset to WWC's work to protect the Wild Sky. Here is an excerpt from the article:
The Wild Sky Wilderness isn't even a real place yet: It's just lines on a map and proposed legislation in Congress. But the Wild Sky itself is as real as can be -- more than 106,000 acres of tall mountains, deep valleys, towering forests and rushing streams just up the road from all of us in Snohomish County.
And most people only know it from looking to their left as they drive up to Stevens Pass.
"I've seen a lot of mountains and I still haven't found any I like better than right here," said Rick McGuire. "Everything comes together in that area; the big trees, the alpine flower meadows, the salmon streams, the tall mountains. Lots of times that stuff gets taken for granted around here."
McGuire is the author of a new Mountaineers hiking guide on trails in and near the proposed wilderness area, "55 Hikes Around Stevens Pass; Wild Sky Country." A longtime conservation advocate and an avid hiker, McGuire wrote the book with the late, legendary hiking photographer and writer Ira Spring.
"Ira used to take pride in saying he was a trail guy, not an environmentalist," said McGuire, a self-described tree-hugger. "He was an environmentalist, too, though. It's too bad he died before this was finished."
John Spring, Ira Spring's son, said that preserving the Wild Sky was a longtime goal for his father.
"He had such a passion for the Wild Sky," John Spring said. "He was trying to encourage people, instead of sitting in front of a TV someplace, to get out and explore."
Springs' royalties from the book will go to the Spring Family Trail Fund, which supports trail maintenance, while McGuire is donating his royalties to the Alpine Lakes Protection Society.
A 46-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair and a well-worn pair of hiking boots, McGuire fell in love with the Wild Sky area as a teenager. Growing up in Everett, he used to look out the windows of Cascade High School and dream about the tall mountains to the east...
Continue reading on the Everett Herald website:
A Walk in the Wild Sky