Sunny Gaut (center) says it's a "privilege" to clean mossy headstones at Silvercreek pioneer cemetery with classmates Annie Wilson and Natasha Lee.

RANDLE, WASHINGTON-
THE SILENCE OF THE CEMETERY IS BROKEN ONLY BY THIS: THE RASP OF A RAVEN. THE CHIRP OF A CRICKET. THE WHISPER OF A SILVERY PINWHEEL SPINNING ON A GRAVE.
HERE, IN THIS QUIET CLEARING CARVED FROM A DARK FOREST, LIVES THE HISTORY OF A COMMUNITY.

Graves older than 100 years mark the passing of early settlers, some with descendants still dwelling beside the Cowlitz River in this valley called the Big Bottom. The cemetery known as Silvercreek is well tended. The trees are pruned, the grass is cut. But bird droppings mar many of the marble markers. Moss and lichen have taken hold in the dates and names engraved in the 687 headstones-names like McCain and McMahan, Zabotel and Blankenship, names as familiar to longtime residents as Rainier and Adams, Baker and St. Helens, the Cascade mountains that surround them.

Just a few yards down the road from Silvercreek, the students of White Pass High School are collecting scrub brushes and tub-and-tile cleaner for a task of honor and respect: cleaning the headstones of their ancestors. A fax from Centralia Monument has arrived in the school office, suggesting the best cleaning products and warning against working on hot days when the stones can be easily damaged.

"It's a privilege to be involved in this project," says Sunny Gaut, the senior who's organizing the clean-up for her leadership class. Gaut, born and raised in the valley, has parents who graduated from White Pass High and make their livelihood from the two top industries in the Big Bottom: timber and tourism. Her dad, a millwright at Cowlitz Stud Company, escaped last year's downsizing, which dropped half the labor force from the mills in Randle and the neighboring communities of Morton and Packwood. Her mom, a potter who mixes Mount St. Helens ash into her ceramics, has seen her business decline as the volcano's devastation passes into history. Her once-thriving shop has closed, and she now sells her pottery on consignment to other local merchants.

The Big Bottom valley is hurting. Twenty years ago, there were four mills in little Randle alone. Now there's one. "Economically, it's bleak," says Rick Anthony, Superintendent of White Pass School District. At least a quarter of the district's 900 students have a parent who lost a mill job last year, he says.

"You look at that statistic," Anthony explains, "and you say, 'Well, that's a fair chunk, but it's not humongous.' But the trouble is, there are so many ancillary jobs. If millworkers get laid off and move or don't spend their money, a lot of mom-and-pop businesses dry up. Those people have kids in the school system, too."

If Anthony has anything to say about it, the 300 lost jobs will amount to only a temporary setback, not one that will shake the foundations of life in the Big Bottom. That's because he sees the families in Randle, Packwood, and Glenoma-the three unincorporated clusters of homes and small businesses that form the heart of the district-as members of a community. For Anthony, community means more than just a common address. It means enduring bonds of place and purpose. Tough economic times can fray, but not break, the ties of a true commu- nity, he believes.

At the center of this community is the school district. Anthony and a committed faculty are unwinding strand after strand of collaboration, invitation, and innovation throughout the valley. Their hope is to create a solid network of linkages from one village to another, one generation to another, one person to another. It will be this network, Anthony believes, that will keep White Pass strong until the economy rebounds. No ghost town, no sorry victim of the logging crisis, here.

BIG BOTTOM
The Big Bottom valley wends through the million-acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest, following the fast, milky waters of the glacier-fed Cowlitz River. Rimmed by the white-capped mountains of Rainier and Baker to the north, St. Helens to the west, and Adams to the east, the valley is wild but not isolated, playing host to thousands of skiers, hikers, anglers, and boaters.

On wet days, mist hangs in the saw-scarred hills like smoke from ancient campfires. At Cowlitz Stud and Packwood Lumber Company, the mist mingles with plumes of steam pouring from the mills, owned and operated by Pacific Lumber and Shipping. Despite the slowdown in logging, trucks loaded with lumber and raw logs continuously roar up and down High- way 12, the road that links Big Bottom villages with the outside world.

Yellow buses, too, rumble along the densely wooded roads leading to the elementary schools in Randle, Glenoma, and Packwood, and to the joint middle and high schools that serve all three villages. Some students ride more than an hour each way in this sprawling district, which stretches across 650 square miles of forest land.

In a very real sense, White Pass Junior-Senior High School forms a nucleus for families scattered throughout the valley. By day, the cinder block building holds children learning to read, write, and compute. By night, the school doors are open wide. Local businesspeople learn computer skills from community college staff. Square dancers do-si-do. A new darkroom funded by a grant from Kodak draws local photographers as well as students. Literacy classes for displaced workers will begin soon. Anthony envisions a time when local businesses and civic groups will hold videoconferences and meetings at the school.

"I want this to be a total community learning center," Anthony says. "I want the whole community to feel that they are welcome, that this is their school, not just the kids' school."

"We don't just teach class during the school year, during the school day," says teacher Anita Jinks, who leads a work-based learning seminar at the high school. "We teach all learners in the community, adults as well as children, and we teach them year-round."

The White Pass school-community connection, however, is not confined to the schoolhouse. Nor does it flow only one direction. Sprucing up headstones-a project of English teacher Kathy Simonis' leadership class-is one of the ways students give to their community. The leadership students also clean up graffiti. They serve Christmas dinner at the senior center. And they collect, haul, and sort food for the local food bank. It was three years ago that students started volunteering at the food bank as "a way to get out of class," Simonis admits. But that attitude turned around fast.

"The ladies at the food bank would reward the kids with treats," Simonis recalls. "The kids would come back to school with cookies and cupcakes. A lot of these kids come from homes where there are no cupcakes. The kids started taking ownership of the project, and pretty soon, we saw changes in classroom behavior."

"It has been my experience," Anthony asserts, "that most of the time, schools only ask for help from the community, as opposed to the other direction. Our approach is to ask not only what the community can do for the school, but also what the school can contribute to the community."

That two-way pipeline between school and community is the centerpiece of the district's ambitious strategic plan, launched four years ago when Anthony arrived at White Pass. The Northwest Laboratory and the Washington State School Directors' Association have provided support and assistance in that planning process. As one piece of the plan, the district brainstormed a list of every enterprise and entre- preneur in the Big Bottom, including civic groups, businesses, churches, elders, and community leaders-a process researchers John Kretzmann and John McKnight call "asset mapping" (see Page 8). The list was long and eclectic. Besides the obvious businesses and agencies-the mills, the ranger stations, the restaurants and motels-there were cottage industries, craftspeople, and old people with a lifetime of memories. There were doctors, pastors, and farmers. There was a poet and a stone mason, an artist and a carpenter, a local historian and a wood carver. The district is creating a database to store this wealth of local resource information.

About the same time, a Forest Service worker, a minister, a community leader, and a teacher were huddling, hatching an idea. President Clinton's Northwest Forest Plan called on the Forest Service to reach out to local people and to provide education and training in forest management and practices. To help meet that mandate, the foursome-Margaret McHugh of the Forest Service, the Rev. Dennis Dagener of the United Methodist Church, Doug Hayden of White Pass Community Services, and district school-to-work coordinator Betty Klattenhoff-pulled together funds from a state agency (the Department of Social and Health Services) and a federal program (the Job Training Partnership Act) to create a summer job program and real-life learning lab for high school kids. To help them design and run the program, they recruited a social scientist from the Pacific Northwest Research Station-the Forest Service's research arm for the region-and a pair of graduate students from the University of Washington College of Forest Resources. The research station also kicked in some money.

The program they dubbed Discovery Team has evolved into a "learning-and-earning" experience with three parts: a week of employability skills training; a week of research into local history and economy; and a week of work in the woods. The two dozen participating students go home with $500 in their pocket, blisters on their hands, and (the creators hope) a better grasp of this place on the planet they call home. Equipped with notebooks, tape recorders, and cameras, the Discovery Team has delved into old school records and historical archives. They've interviewed elders and business owners. They've searched the Internet and scoured the library. Topics the kids have explored include:

WASHINGTON FOREST HISTORY-
Students traced a succession of forest dwellers and users, including native tribes that used the trees for practical and ornamental items such as tepees, canoes, masks, and spears; White homesteaders and fortune seekers; early foresters and environmentalists; and tree farmers with tracts of timberland in production for future cutting.

HISTORY OF THE YAKAMA AND COWLITZ INDIANS-
Students interviewed elders of the Cowlitz and Yakama tribes native to the White Pass area. Besides learning colorful details of tribal religion, customs, and traditions, the students heard stories of hardship and injustice, such as the forced enrollment of Indian children in boarding schools. Always returning to the theme of the forest, the students reported on the Indians' medicinal use of native plants, such as Douglas fir and huckleberry (for fighting infection), skunk cabbage (for head- ache relief), thimbleberry (to prevent scarring), and wild rose (to relieve sore throat).

SPECIAL FOREST PRODUCTS-
Trees are far from the only money-making product of the Gifford Pinchot. Local ranger stations issue thousands of permits for gathering and picking such natural bounty as wild huckleberries, matsutake mushrooms, and bear grass (used for basket weaving).

LOGGING TECHNOLOGY-
Relying on both written records of logging history and interviews with longtime residents, students traced the evolution of logging practices and equipment, from the days of "steam donkeys" and two-man bucksaws called "misery whips" to modern-day loaders and skidders. "Many thanks to Bud and Betty Panco for their expertise, stories, and pictures of a time existing in the memories of a few," the students wrote in their final report.

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF LOGGING-
Students explored such controversial and emotional issues as clear-cutting, reforestation, stream pollution, soil erosion, wildlife habitat, and forest regulation. They interviewed a hydrologist, a mill manager, a timber sales expert, and a silviculturist, among others.

The thick notebooks that document each summer's findings focus a high-powered lens on the community. Paging through these collections of students' words and photos is like stepping inside the community's collective memory and shared history, peopled with colorful cast of local characters: Richard and Donna Hagen, who were evacuated from their home by rowboat during the big flood of 1996. Joyce King, original owner of the Tower Rock Trading Post, who lives in a hot-pink trailer in the forest near the Cispus River. Mary Kiona, a Yakama Indian, who regularly rode into Randle on horseback, a white bandana on her head, to trade and barter her hand- made baskets, hides, and moccasins. Marty Fortin, Director of the Cispus Environmental Learning Center, who, with 100 kids and 30 adults, was stranded at the center for three nights during the big flood.

These stories, and those of elders like 80-year-old Hank Young-who still has his first-grade report card from Randle School-are recorded in the pages of the Discovery Team notebooks. Their actual voices were preserved, too. Students taped oral histories of Young and others whose family trees reach into the timbered hills of the Gifford Pinchot. The recorded memories are being edited for a documentary by the East Lewis County Historical Society.

"When we turned those kids loose, it was awesome," says Roger Clark, the Forest Service social scientist who helped develop the Discovery Team concept and design a survey of community strengths, needs, and resources. Too often, Clark says, social scientists look at people and analyze them, instead of working with them. Community suspicion about Forest Service motives gave way to cooperation when Clark and his colleagues realized that their job was not to observe the community from an outsiders' perspective, but to help the community discover and better understand itself.

"We tapped into a huge reservoir of talent and energy," Clark recalls. "That's the real notion of partnership."

Discovery Team is an experiment in "social learning," says White Pass teacher and lifelong resident Gail Mullins, who supervises the summer teams. Because social learning is open ended, students and teachers should anticipate and tolerate ambiguity, Mullins says. She quotes David Korten, founder of the People- Centered Development Forum, who describes social learning as "a messy, even chaotic process in which error and unpredicted outcomes are routine." Social learning depends, Mullins says, on local initiative and control (as opposed to letting outside "experts" take the lead).

In Discovery Team, learning also depends on student (versus teacher) initiative. With teachers guiding rather than dictating, students have broad latitude in topic choice, research procedures, and presentation format.

To launch the Discovery Team in 1995, the students held a public forum, sending invitations to key community members identified in the district's strategic planning process. Up and down the valley, residents answered "yes" to the question, Are you willing to talk with students and tell them what you know about the history, economy, and environment of the Big Bottom? In four years, only two residents have turned students away.

"If we reach out and ask, they're there for us," says school-community liaison Betty Klattenhoff ("Betty K" to the locals), a district leader in finding funding and linking kids with the larger community. Echoing the pivotal line in the baseball fantasy movie Field of Dreams, Klattenhoff believes that "if you build it, they will come."

The third component of the Discovery Team experience-working in the woods-links students with Forest Service workers. It's a linkage that has some baggage. A lot of White Pass kids, sons and daughters of loggers and millworkers, have grown up viewing the Forest Service as cops enforcing the rules and regs of the woodlands. In a timber-dependent place hit hard by new logging limits, an often-bitter "us and them" outlook has prevailed, says McHugh of the Forest Service.

As one of the originators of the Discovery Team, McHugh had great hopes for forging new attitudes between the Forest Service and locals. Tensions have indeed begun to dissolve in the mist of the national forest and the sweat of adolescent labor. Using such specialized tools as a grubber hoe and a "Polaski" (a small shovel used to dig fire trails), students are clearing the way for wider use of the woods. They've hacked out a "barrier-free" trail at Woods Creek, making it accessible to wheelchairs. They've built an outdoor amphi- theater at Iron Creek Campground. They've made a wheelchair-friendly fishing ramp at Takahlakh Lake. They've erected a picnic shelter at Covel Creek.

While the high school Discovery Team is hacking trails through the undergrowth, middle schoolers are catching Cascade frogs and collecting samples of plankton for environmental-impact studies. These 15 to 20 kids are the Summer Scientists-young naturalists exploring their world under the tutelage of science teacher John Mullenix and an array of forestry experts.

The Summer Scientists program, paid for and administered by Centralia Community College, is free to kids. Parents provide transportation to the ponds and trailheads. At summer's end, kids present their findings at the ranger station. At first, McHugh had to twist arms to get anybody to show up. Now, the agency employees willingly give up their lunch hour, crowding into a packed room to listen.

"It's so wonderful to hear students explain concepts many of us didn't learn until college," McHugh says.

White Pass kids have a million acres in their backyard-dense timberland ribbed with creeks and canyons, brimming with lakes and ponds, alive with bugs, birds, and beasts. This vast living laboratory is unmatched by even the jazziest equipment or most dazzling software in wealthier suburban schools.

"There is a lot of fascinating science that can be learned there," says Mullenix.

Taking full advantage of this living lab, White Pass teachers are collaborating with Forest Service employees and scientists on still more lessons that take the classroom into the woods. Seventh- and eighth-graders are helping the Forest Service study cross-sections of Camp Creek, which was restored after the disastrous floods of 1996. With training from Forest Service hydrologist John Gier, students go into the woods to collect random samples of pebbles in the stream bed and calculate the depth and slope of the stream. Back in the classroom, teams of students pain- stakingly measure each rock with calipers, and then record the data and calculate averages. From these measurements, scientists can tell whether the stream is cutting down or filling in.

During the 20-year study, scientists and students will also examine stream-dwelling macro- invertebrates (stone flies are an example), count large woody debris, and monitor percentages of sun to shade. Only students who become certified by the Forest Service contribute to the official study. "The students have to be very accurate so that we can really use that data," explains McHugh.

There are chemistry lessons and water-quality studies, too. Students are examining, for example, the impact of acid rain and camping on local lakes. In earth sciences, a Forest Service geologist teaches kids how to take a stratographic cross-section and identify fossils.

Mullenix and his wife, Carolyn, a third-grade teacher, are working with silviculturist Ed Thompkins to create an integrated curriculum for elementary and middle-level students. The lessons-which will blend art, literature, and science into a cohesive unitconnect field trips with classroom activities, such as reading the children's classic, The Giving Tree. The goal, says John Mullenix, is to reach all kinds of learners by mixing all sorts of learning strategies-cognitive, psychomotor, tactile, and affective (emotional).

The teachers and foresters are forming what Mullenix calls "a web of interactions." "These collaborations have to be long-term," he stresses. "We become friends. We're partners."

After several years of meetings and joint projects among the Forest Service, the school district, and the community, relations between the groups "have absolutely improved," Mullenix says. McHugh agrees. In the past, community meetings could be combative, with law-enforcement officers standing by. But recent meetings about such controversial issues as road closures and firewood restrictions-meetings that in the past might have been "very tense"-have been congenial, McHugh relates.

"It's just an amazing difference," she says. "Even personally, I've seen a difference in how people greet me at the grocery store.

"Perceptions have changed," McHugh explains. "People see us more as partners in the community. They have a sense that we're all working together now. That's a new role for us."

Working in the woods with their Polaskis and Abneys (hand levels used for measuring stream slope), students gain a lot more than knowledge of trail construction or science. They also gain a connection to their roots, a "sense of place" that anchors them.

"It doesn't make any difference what they choose to do with their life," says Mullins. "They have this foundation, and it's always going to be here. I want them to feel good about staying here or coming back -being here because they want to, not because they have to."

In the midst of this severe economic slump, when school levies in most surrounding communities are failing or barely squeaking by, White Pass School District has tapped into a deep well of support. Three-fourths of the residents voted "yes" on a recent levy-all the more surprising because only one in four White Pass families has children in school.

"If we only work with and show that we are interested in the 25 percent who have kids in school,

I think we are missing the boat," says Superintendent Anthony. "I think we could potentially come out big losers.

"You've really got to go out on a one-on-one basis-you have to solicit people. You need to take a proactive approach."

Most of the dollars flowing into the White Pass area come from timber and tourism. But trees and trails don't tell the whole economic story of the Big Bottom valley.

Despite a logging slowdown that has hit local pocketbooks hard, an entrepreneurial spirit thrives. Drive down Highway 12, which cuts through the northern edge of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and you'll find all sorts of small to medium-sized enterprises and cottage industries. You can stay at a B & B, board your horse, buy a handmade birdhouse, or tour Mount St. Helens by helicopter. You can order a hand-hewn log house. Visit a trout farm. Or taste a pinot noir at a local winery. At the foot of the forested hills, you'll see tidy farms that raise small herds of cattle or dairy cows, rows of deep-green Christmas trees, and bulbs that bloom wildly in the spring.

Mill jobs have been the mainstay of the valley. But there's a wellspring of other opportunities for the creative and the innovative. That's one of the lessons kids get from their teachers at the White Pass School District. Showing students new routes to a paycheck has taken on the status of a mission for district educators.

"We need to open their eyes to some of the alternatives and possibilities," says Superintendent Rick Anthony. Here's a glimpse of the many work-related projects, units, and curricula at White Pass:

• With support from a federal Carl Perkins sex-equity grant, students are exploring nontraditional jobs. For the kids in the valley, that's practically everything. "If you don't work in the woods, in a mill, for the Forest Service or the school, it's pretty much a nontraditional job," notes teacher Gail Mullins.
• Beginning in elementary school, students get to experience the business world first-hand through a business-simulation program called "Mini Real." Kids try on all sorts of hats-banker, judge, business owner. They learn about hiring and firing, balancing the books, and that most basic of job skills-getting to work every day, on time. "We want students to understand that they need to know how to communicate, how to write, and how to compute for a reason-that the curriculum has a practical purpose," says Anthony. "We're trying to provide a background for students to become successful citizens, to achieve a standard that is competitive."
• Fifth- and sixth-graders are tapping away at the keyboards of nine brand-new laptop computers purchased with a $12,000 grant from the Washington Software Foundation. After learning basic skills, including Internet research, the students will host a computer night, passing on their skills to interested community members. School-community liaison Betty Klattenhoff envisions a laptop outreach, as well. "Say that Packwood Hardware wants to learn Excel," she says. "Instead of that businessperson driving all the way to the community center in Morton for training, why couldn't one of our students go up to Packwood and teach him right in his building and share her knowledge with him?"
• A work-based learning seminar called Visions hooks kids up with part-time jobs and broadens their awareness of occupational options. Student projects have included creating a local employer database, con- ducting a labor-market survey of East Lewis County, and establishing a student-run job line. Job openings are posted on the local cable TV service, which also runs community meetings taped by television-production students.
• In collaboration with the local Morton Journal, elementary students shadowed reporters and editors, toured the newspaper offices, and produced a student-written newspaper called The Tiger Tribune, complete with display advertising. Ad sales paid for gift certificates for the young reporters.
• High school graphic arts students design newspaper ads for local businesses and paint holiday scenes on storefront windows.
• A greenhouse (bought at a bargain-basement price from a now defunct nursery) provides business experience to special-needs students, who grow and sell plants in a horticulture program.
• With guidance from high school graphic arts teacher Laurie Judd, students are launching a photography business. They'll sell their shots of school activities such as sports teams, school dances, and student clubs (developed in the school's own Kodak-funded darkroom) to other students, journalists, and parents.
• For her civics class, student Mika Maloney designed a questionnaire and surveyed fellow students on their awareness of job options in the White Pass area. More than 60 percent of ninth- and 10th-graders and 50 percent of 11th-graders said the area offers no jobs that interest them. Kids who did see possibilities most often cited such occupations as mechanic, construction worker, forester, geologist, massage and occupational therapist, and electrician.
• Students make excursions to Portland, Seattle, and other communities outside the valley, where they get to see people working in "a whole different world," Mullins says. One class visited a construction site at the University of Washington, where a new wildlife and fisheries building is going up. "The students saw people doing all kinds of different jobs and learned about the rules of different unions," such as the cement masons and the plumb- ers unions, says Mullins.

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