Have you associated with many people with a mountaineering focus in conservation groups?
Not really. I met a few people through ONRC who had that interest. More recently I’ve become acquainted with some of
the Mazamas in Portland who have been interested in some of the Klamath Basin issues. I sort of humorously said “Have fun, don’t even think of inviting mew (laughs). I’d rather hike around the creeks and wet edges of the forest than to go up to the top of the highest peak. I have climbed most of [Mount] Bailey, up to where you have to scramble to the top. I like to see the juniper on Hager Mountain, near Silver Lake, but that’s not mountaineering since there is an easy trail to the top.
What was your familiarity with Oregon and Washington before being hired at Myrtle Creek?
Not a lot. I think my exposure was when I went to school for four years in Arcata and explored that area extensively. My parents were raised in Washington State. I remember being in the Sierra and my parents saying “Gosh, Wendell would really enjoy the Northwest.” And I thought, “Why don’t you take me there, then?” I remember being in the Northwest couple of times when I was really young to visit cousins around Puget Sound, but can’t say that was much exposure. It came when I transferred from Cal Poly Pomona to Humboldt State. I don’t think I had been in the redwoods before, other than the Muir Woods north of San Francisco.
Did you transfer to Humboldt after only a year at Pomona?
I had gone to Cal Poly Pomona when I graduated from high school and I actually began as a business major. I think that was because my father was in business and I felt it was good background. It wasn’t long before I started taking livestock-related classes, and I took a lot of classes in biology and natural history. I had gone to Pomona for a year when I was with some cousins around Donner Lake at the state park there. The person giving the campfire program made the comment that he had majored in wildlife management at Humboldt State, so that next year I got a catalog. I saw that it had more of the courses that I was interested in, so after I’d been in college two years I transferred up there.
Was paying in-state tuition a factor in your decision?
At the time I was going to school, college was not that expensive. Tuition was not a big issue and I was not looking at the prestige of a particular school. UC Berkeley and UC Davis, for example, have wildlife management classes but I never wanted to live in Davis or Berkeley.
The setting was a factor?
I think I was intrigued that the school had a variety of courses with an outdoor orientation and its environment has both forest and coast.
Did you touch base with the foresters at Humboldt?
I remember when I was involved with early day formation of the North coast Environmental Center. There was the School of Natural Resources at Humboldt which has degrees in soil science, hydrology, and wildlife management. Then you had the School of Forestry which had its own building. I really didn’t think about it a lot at the time, but I remember doing a presentation for the North coast Environmental Center, just trying to let people know what we were doing. We got a polite, but cool reception from the forestry school. They had a mission to manage the forest and didn’t really rub shoulders with the rest of the natural resource folks who were all excited about Aldo Leopold. That wasn’t their orientation. They were still out to tame the land.
