By Carrie Krueger, Director of Marketing
Food and nature go hand in hand. Without nature, our plates are empty. This Earth Day, we’ve been celebrating how nature feeds us and examining what we need to do to protect nature so that we can keep enjoying its bounty.
In my family Easter is a day of celebration, friends and great foods. This year we decided to connect our spring feast to our love of nature by taking our Easter brunch up a local mountain. We joined forces with friends to create the ultimate movable feast. The result: Brunch with a view, and a new appreciation for how nature feeds us.
Let’s just admit our packs were pretty heavy. We weren’t content with the usual hiking fare- sandwiches, apples, granola bars. For our celebration we wanted a full, hot meal which meant carrying a camp stove, frying pan, a hefty fruit salad, a bin of fresh cooked blueberry muffins and most important all the fixings for breakfast burritos. Pre-cracking the eggs probably saved us a lot of grief! And pre-cooking sausage and veggies was also wise. But all these goodies, including condiments for the burritos, and the fixings for Easter mimosas had us pretty weighed down on the trip up.
Luckily we picked a peak that can reasonably be reached in 90 minutes. The very popular Poo Poo Point trail in Issaquah is a suburban delight – relentlessly up, overused on weekends, but also spectacularly beautiful with a view at the top that rewards every sweaty step. The location of this trail, in the heart of Seattle’s rapidly developing eastside, represents a classic intersection of human needs like housing and agriculture, with nearly pristine nature. On the trek up a fellow hiker pointed out an owl nesting in a large pine, and near the top, a turkey vulture circled.
The trail is also favored by paragliders who step off of the steep cliffs near the top, and into the sky, attached to enormous kites which keep them aloft. We paused to watch these bold adventurers launch into the blue. But alas, our brunch beaconed and we continued on.
The summit of Poo Poo point feels remote. But there are some communications towers, and oddly, a picnic bench, where we set up our elegant dining table. Eggs were scrambled, tortillas were warmed, a champagne bottle was popped and hot chocolate was topped with marshmallows. This was first class, all the way.
Other weary hikers wandered by, noticing our feast. We invited all to join, ready to share our bounty. The view from our perch was nothing short of spectacular: Forests, lakes, and mountains in the distance, but also farms, houses, roads and many reminders that we coexist with nature.
As burritos were inhaled and the dog begged for leftovers, we raised our mugs and glasses in a toast to the beautiful day, our remarkable feast and the fact that nature feeds us – on Easter, on Earth Day and all year.
