Isolated Experience
by Katie Kulla
To get to Holden Village, visitors must choose between two routes: a three-hour boat ride up Lake Chelan, followed by a ten-mile bus ride into the mountains, or a multiple-day trek through the North Cascades. At the end of either, the traveler finds a small gathering of 1930s-era buildings - a former mining town turned Lutheran retreat center.
Holden Village is located in the Railroad Creek Valley on the east side of the North Cascades, near Lake Chelan and surrounded on three sides by the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area. Nine thousand-foot mountain peaks enclose the valley, cutting Holden off from the rest of the world. The village has no televisions or phones. The remoteness of the area forces villagers to experience wilderness instead of communicating with civilization.
Although Holden is a Lutheran retreat center, the village looks like a mountain resort - without the luxuries. Individuals, families and groups visit the village to enjoy Holden's teaching programs, hiking, crafts and religious community experience. Guests normally stay for a week, but staff members live in the village for a month or longer. Some villagers live there year-round.
Holden food service coordinator Miriam Schmidt said the village's remoteness frightens some visitors.
"Wilderness scared me hugely," Schmidt said. "Give me a New York City subway any day - that's fine!"
After living in Holden for a year and half, however, she spends most of her free time hiking through forests that once frightened her.
Ben Stewart, Holden's pastor, said some of the fear people feel towards nature is warranted.
"Living here long enough, with the dangers of the wilderness, leads to a really deep sense of humility and a healthy respect for life and death - how fragile life can be," Stewart said.
He said the wilderness setting helps the community relate to traditional church practices like Advent. Advent is a season of darkness and waiting observed during the four weeks preceding Christmas Day. During this season at Holden, mountains block direct sunlight, creating darkness in the valley. In addition, more than 300 inches of snow fall every winter, often making travel impossible.
"For ancient peoples, Advent was an anxious time," Stewart said. "Will the sun ever come back? Will we have enough food to last the winter? In our bones, we get that feeling here."
As daylight diminishes in December, so do Holden's water and power supplies. The village creates its own electricity using a small hydroelectric generator. In the winter, freezing weather decreases the creek's water supply and the hydro-system produces an average of 45 kilowatts of electricity. In order to compensate for the decrease, fewer than 80 people live in the village during the cold season.
During the warmer months, the generator provides 300 kilowatts of electricity, enough for the summer population of 500 people.
Operations manager Kristofer Gilje said using clean energy and avoiding pollution are priorities for the village. Since the village heats buildings in the winter with firewood and diesel fuel - both of which create air pollution - residents are remodeling many of their buildings to be energy efficient.
Villagers also built a new drain field to prevent wastewater from entering the watershed. Gilje said both projects are expensive, but essential for the village to exist in the remote valley.
"You can't justify living here if you are going to impact the environment negatively," he said.
Across Railroad Creek from Holden, mine tailings illustrate previous environmental impacts in the area. Before the village, a copper mining operation occupied the property and left 8 million tons of bright-orange tailings, a by-product of the mining process. The piles of toxic tailings cover approximately 90 acres, an area equal to 68 football fields.
The mine left 60 miles worth of tunnels inside the mountain. After Howe Sound Mining Co. closed the mine in 1957, the tunnels flooded, causing a constant stream of water to exit the portal and enter Railroad Creek.
According to a recent study funded by the mine's successor company, Intalco, the tailings and mine seepage pose no immediate risk to human health, but toxins contaminate the groundwater and the river. Researchers detected abnormally high levels of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, nickel, manganese and zinc in the groundwater and believe the toxins came from the tailings and the mine. Reports also show dramatic decreases in fish populations in the creek near the site.
Intalco, in cooperation with Holden and the U.S. Forest Service, is choosing a Mine Site Remediation Plan this year. Plans range from taking no action to consolidating the tailings and treating the water before it enters the creek. Depending on the method of containment or water management chosen, Intalco could pay up to $120 million to clean the site.
Fifteen-year-old villager Adrienne Cryer said, however, the tailings are an important part of life and ritual at Holden.
The surface of the tallest pile provides a place for many village activities including basketball games, stargazing and high school graduation.
"I feel like the mine is a huge part of Holden," Cryer said. "It is Holden. That's how Holden started.
"As much as it is an environmental hazard, I just don't want to get rid of it. It makes me feel comfortable."
Stewart said the tailings serve a more important role than a playground for villagers.
"The tailings piles keep us honest," he said. "They're very obvious scars and wounds that we live with and continue to live with, along with the reclamation work."
Senior Katie Kulla studies photography at Western. This is her first published piece.
