Forest ranger, award-winning high school science teacher, committed grassroots wilderness advocate, experienced citizen-lobbyist on Capitol Hill, and eloquent witness at a U.S. Senate wilderness hearing --Mike Town has filled many roles. The current focus of Mike's advocacy is the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness, the peaks of which he can see from his solar-powered home near Monroe, Washington.
Mike originally planned a career in the U.S. Forest Service, for which he prepared at Huxley College of Environmental Sciences, part of Western Washington University in Bellingham. He began working for the agency in Eastern Idaho on fires, cruising timber stands, and the like. But with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, he concluded that for him the chances of pursuing a fulltime agency career had evaporated.
"If you had a moral calling for working in this field," Mike recalls, "you were left with no option." Like others among his agency colleagues, Mike decided that he could best contribute to the causes important to him by using his scientific training to teach environmental science to highschoolers. With teaching credentials gained in another year at Western Washington University, Mike followed this dream.
Twenty years later and having taught a wide range of sciences, Mike now focuses in teaching advance placement environmental science at Redmond High School. It is, he says, "the most important subject there could be for high school students, the most integrated, inter-disciplinary course they can take in high school, challenging them with diverse scientific content, math, history, political science, and the importance of strong writing skills." In 2004, Mike received the prestigious Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence, honoring exemplary K-12 science teaching.
Mike and his wife Meg can often be found pursuing their passion for outdoor recreation -- "75 to 100 days a year," Mike says. Living near the proposed Wild Sky Wilderness, they saw the need to educate local kids that such wild treasures are not just places to buzz around on motors. Leading outings led to a monthly column they wrote for the local weekly, Monroe Monitor and Valley News, each column blending guidance for a trail walk with background on the science and history that help make such outings a learning opportunity.
"Even as a little kid," Mike recalls, "I was the sort who could never leave a trail or road unexplored, wanting always to follow even the faintest old miner's trail to its very end, in order to know the land in depth and hone my observation skills." Mike has built up intimate knowledge of many potential wilderness areas in Western Washington.
All of this led naturally to Mike's work as a volunteer leader and activist, contributing his scientific understanding, past Forest Service experience, and deep knowledge of local wildlands to the local Sierra Club national forest committee. He is now a key leader of the local Friends of the Wild Sky Wilderness, making lobby trips to Washington, D.C. and, in June 2003, as a witness on this legislation before the Senate Subcommittee on Public Lands and Forests. The 106,000-acre Wild Sky wilderness was subsequently approved without boundary change and passed the Senate without a dissenting vote.
"The important thing about working to bring Wilderness Act protection to this kind of superb wild place is its permanence," Mike says. "The challenge to our generation is to retain as much of our wilderness heritage for future generations as we can." Having watched "the eye-opening impact" of youngsters learning in such wilderness environments, Mike Town knows the unique way in which wilderness can best help students "get it" about the fundamental interconnectedness of the natural environment on which we all depend.
