New website semi-functioning

The website guide is up and running, though in a quite limited capacity at the moment. See the instructions from each of the homepage links first, then "Begin Your Quest". Scrolling over each map will allow you to find one active link on each until you get down to the Downtown Olympia page ... the last completed thus far. Check it out, send suggestions, get involved!

Project Update - volunteers needed!

The rubber is hitting the road, and the "Cascadia Guidebook Project" is moving closer to being an official non-profit, with hopes of drawing in both financial and volunteer support.

Perhaps the biggest news is that the project is now going to be focused on the creation of a website. This has been in the plans all along, but originally it was to come after the preliminary guidebook hit circulation. After much thought and discussion, it has been decided that the only logical way to go about gaining the needed input and info for the project (and considering the technological tools at our disposal), will be to have a website that will include both an interactive mapping system and a community forum at each level of scale of the bioregion.

So, indeed the need for place based stories, descriptions and submissions is as relevant now as before. The difference being, that when the website comes online, anyone and everyone will have the chance to add to the evolving descriptions of places within the bioregion and the identification of community assets that will set those communities on the road to sustainability and self-reliance. In the meantime, if anyone so desire to send in said stories and submissions, feel free. They will still be considered in their entirety for the eventual guidebook, and will be considered for use in part of the evolving descriptions on the website.

Also, we are currently seeking anyone who has experience with website design and graphic design, is a web host, or has other applicable website building skills that would like to become involved with the project - please get in touch!

Now Seeking Submissons

Coming soon: a contest of sorts to allow residents of the region to submit descriptions and stories about their places.
All submissions will be reviewed and some will be included in the forthcoming guidebook to the region. All will be added to the forthcoming website as part of a continuing project to create viable and evolving descriptions of place within the Cascadian region.
Some of the criteria and areas of interest being sought in submissions for the guidebook include:

* attempts (successes and failures) at "reinhabitation":

- How have you or your community attempted to localize and become "sustainable"
- Tell a story of eco-restoration, land stewardship, or community building

* description of a place or telling of a story:

- stories can be factual accounts of actual events or mythological stories that have origins in stories passed down through ones cultural heritage
- place descriptions relate to scale descriptions found below

* focused on one or more aspects of bioregionalism: local ...

- geology
- geography
- hydrology
- climate / weather patterns
- flora
- fauna
- human history (with a focus on activities that either degraded or enhanced local ecology)

* applies to one scale of the various degrees of scale within the Cascadian bioregion (see the website for select scale and place descriptions):

- local human community / watershed
- urban population center (city)
- small stream drainage area (or other relevant natural defining feature of place, e.g. forest, valley, mountain, grassland, lake, etc)
- watershed (mid-size, such as the average size of a county)
- ecoregion