National Audubon Society Honors Leavenworth Woman
Multifaceted Harriet Bullitt honored for long environmental fight
LEAVENWORTH, Chelan County - Astride her horse, Harriet Bullitt paused at the bank of Icicle Creek, remembering when the water tumbled freely from the Alpine Wilderness, rushing over rocks and sweeping into the Wenatchee River.
Those were the days before a series of dams blocked fish from swimming upstream and turned the currents into stagnant pools.
"That's 60 years of environmental degradation," said the unconventional Bullitt who, at various points in her 80 years, has been a socialite, a flamenco dancer, an airplane pilot and a tugboat captain, but always a champion of environmental causes.
October 2nd in Seattle, Bullitt received the National Audubon Society's highest honor - the Audubon Medal - joining a distinguished line of recipients that includes former President Carter, author Rachel Carson and actor Robert Redford as well as the late U.S. Supreme Court justice from Washington state, William O. Douglas, and Seattle's Hazel Wolf, who died in 2000.
The youngest of three philanthropic siblings -- her brother is Stimson Bullitt and sister is the late Patsy Bullitt Collins -- Harriet Bullitt always has been more comfortable riding horses and camping out in Eastern Washington than spending time in Seattle's exclusive Highlands, where she grew up.
Over the decades, she has helped clean up nuclear waste, prevented the logging of 600- to 800-year-old trees on Vancouver Island and preserved Siskiyou mountain wilderness areas in Oregon. She has contributed much of her own fortune and that of the Bullitt Foundation to such causes.
"She has a national and a global perspective," said John Flicker, Audubon president.
At Icicle Creek, in her own back yard, personal memories fuel her thus far unsuccessful attempt to fully restore the creek. She's taken that battle to congressional offices in Washington, D.C., and brought it to the attention of Department of the Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
Not just about fish
For the slight woman with the keen blue eyes and wide smile, it's about maintaining the creek of her childhood, which lulled her to sleep at the family lodge where the three Bullitt kids spent their summers from the late 1920s on.
"The strongest human emotion there could be is a sense of place," she said. Although she spent most of her childhood in The Highlands, it was here in Leavenworth where she camped, built bonfires and rode her sorrel gelding, Danger, through the woods.
"My mother never worried about me. She said, 'Just stay with your horse, dear. He'll take you home.' She worried about those boys at the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps camp] but not about anything in the woods."
Sometimes, she recalled, "We sat on a rock and listened to the splash of spawning salmon, watching as their fins scooped out a nest." The eggs were laid and then "the male covered them with his milt. It was very romantic."
It was the beginning of her appreciation for nature, which would lead her to give millions of dollars to environmental and arts groups, and to build her Sleeping Lady Mountain Retreat, which opened here in 1995.
She keeps an office here with a woodstove and a bed, for when she's snowed in and can't get to her home across the creek. She has cut her ties to Seattle, instead supporting the arts in Leavenworth, adding musical and drama groups at the retreat and converting an old church into a theater.
"She's a marvelous asset to the community and very deserving of that [Audubon] award," said Bill Taylor, executive director of the Leavenworth Chamber of Commerce.
"She contributes to the quality of the environment and life in this area."
Continue reading this story from the Seattle Times:
Multifaceted Harriet Bullitt honored for long environmental fight