Pilchuck Learning Center’s (“PLC”) efforts involve early childhood education and rarely taught subject matter, the rescue and restoration of plant species, studio glass, and pioneer buildings, NW pioneer and Indigenous American history and native botanic diversity research. Visitors and students view 3-dimensional subjects in a 2-dimensional, flat-screen world, and they learn visually. PLC is a tax-exempt nonprofit. Visit our botanic and ethnobotanical gardens when open. We are located at Exit 215 on the I-5 Freeway (exits are numbered from the south on the I-5, the last Exit north is 276, Seattle’s exits are miles: 151 – 177).
Exit 215 is intended to be a gift to the next generations in a Land that has well cared for us “old SHS guys & gals” never forgetting that many of our ancestors came here to escape famine. We have seen the creation of plutonium (1940), the filling of ocean gyres the size of France with poison-absorbing, floating, microscopic plastic balls (1st noticed in 1962), climate change (we worked in Barrow, Alaska in the 60’s when 2 out of 3 years the Arctic Ocean icepack did not allow ship-supply/transit), the loss of insects (a major news item in late 2018, though we have not cleaned splattered windshields in years), transistors (1947) that led to today’s IT socially connected World, CRISPR -cas9 (1987) technology sold in UK hobby shops, the killer Candida auris fungi (2009), 3G, 4G, 5G 
the former found to heat insect chitin exoskeletons, the latter recently closing airports, our 1st plague in 100 years: COVID-19, and the post-Vietnam spraying of cut forests with chemical defoliants. In the State of Washington 50% our lands are forested, cut every 55 years, sprayed, slash piled, burnt and replanted with a single species; 20% of our land is agricultural that also uses herbicides and pesticides. Now we charge ahead with AI. The Gardens’ sponsored WWU SAM Project’s discovery of the recent loss of many NW native plant species, complemented with the absence of birds and insects, is and was discouraging. It was not our ancestors who did this.
CRISPR, plutonium, transistors, AI, climate change, social IT, plastics, Candida,
chemical defoliation, COVID-19, loss of birds, insects, and plant species
It all happened on our Watch!
Dietrich’s ultimate question (1942) for the responsible … “how the coming generation shall continue to live” and Sophie’s statement to the Court (1943), “Someone, after all, had to make a start” minutes before she was beheaded … ring true today. As does Religionless Christianity‘s question: If you trashed Earth while you were here, why would God allow you into Heaven?
Feel free to Contact us at any time.