Where are we? Let’s define the spatial boundaries of the Inland Northwest.
What do we mean when we refer to the “Inland Northwest”?
This blog, K’usche’ Outpost, is meant to explore the folklore, mythology, urban legends, fairylore, and indigenous stories of the Inland Northwest primarily. We’ll occasionally discuss similar legendry from areas on our periphery, like the coastal Northwest, the Northern Rocky Mountains, the northern Great Basin, and the Yukon. However, one major intent of this blog is to explore the human identities which are rooted specifically in the Inland Northwest; therefore, it might be important to define the space that we’re working with!
At K’usche Outpost, we’re all about ecoregions! So, when we talk about the Inland Northwest, were talking about a specific ecoregion defined not by political boundaries, but by shared ecology. Much is said in both academic papers and popular periodicals about Northwest residents and their pride regarding their local environments; perhaps it’s because the Northwest has such emotionally evocative and spectacular environmental features (ice-capped volcanoes, lush rainforest, power ocean storms, rugged mountain landscapes, rivers filled with salmon, etc.). Many regional folklore narratives are deeply rooted in these environmental settings. So, we feel to begin to understand folklore of the region, one should have a good sense of this landscape.
TLDR - I’ll put a quick and simple definition right here at the top of the post. If you prefer to read more deeply into our delineation of the Inland Northwest, well, here’s a post. I hope this post doesn’t come-off as too boring or lecture-like; typically, our stories will be much more exciting!
Put most simply, the region that we’re dealing with is that land which was traditionally (and still is) inhabited by what anthropologists refer to as the Plateau indigenous cultures. The Plateau cultures are loosely unified in the sense that they inhabit a specific ecological region (the Inland Northwest) characterized by rainy, forested western mountain slopes; dry, forested eastern mountain slopes; semi-arid, prairie-covered lowlands and river valleys; and great rivers filled with salmon, bull trout, and cutthroats.
Here’s a map showing where the Plateau tribes traditionally made their home. This is the core of the region that we explore in this blog:
(Map courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica.)
The map above illustrates generally the region that we’re working with.
If you’ve lived in the Northwest, you’re probably familiar with the concept of Cascadia. This place, Cascadia, is a bioregion encompassing the entirety of the Columbia River watershed, as well as British Columbia west of the Continental Divide. Regarding the scope of our blog, however, we’re working with a similar sense of place defined by our shared ecology. While the concept of Cascadia IS based on natural physical elements, I prefer to observe boundaries based on ecological communities. There’s a difference! After all, there are some parts of Cascadia, as in southern Idaho, which are ecologically identical to the desert ecologies of the Great Basin and which have very little shared environmental elements with the rest of the Northwest.
Here’s a masterfully-crafted artistic depiction of the core region which we cover:
TLDR Portion continues from here on!
A more specific description of the boundaries of the Inland Northwest:
So, we’re working with ecoregions. The Inland Northwest as an ecoregion still does host several drastically different environments, from the sagebrush-dominated semidesert of Washington’s Scablands, to the lush cedar-hemlock forests of the Cariboo, Selkirk, and Cabinet Mountains in eastern British Columbia, Idaho’s panhandle, and northwestern Montana. Despite these differences, the ecological communities of the Inland Northwest, whether dry or wet, are all distinctly “Northwestern” in that their ecological communities, though diverse, don’t really exist anywhere outside of the Pacific Northwest.
Perhaps the best way to visualize the area that we’re talking about is to cite the amazingly precise Ecoregion delineations used by the World Wildlife Fund and United States governmental agencies like the EPA. The image provided below illustrates the boundaries between what are considered to be “Level III” ecoregions in the US.
And here we are: in the US, as delineated on the map below, our blog primarily explores the regions labelled as 10, 11, and 15.
(Map courtesy of U.S. EPA)
The ecoregion boundaries depicted in the map (”Level III” boundaries to governmental administrators) are about as generalized as they can be without be too diluted. The boundaries between these Level III ecoregions separate strikingly different ecosystems. Of course, these boundaries do get much more precise when further segmented into Level IV boundaries - we may discuss this later, but I highly recommend checking-out a map of Level IV ecoregions in the Northwest (it’s fun!).
Why are these ecoregions separated as such?
Ecoregion 10 is technically referred to as “Columbia Plateau.”
This region is defined by its prairie and grassland ecologies which host plenty of wild grasses, reptiles, and rodents, as well as remnant populations of greater sage grouse and pronghorn. These prairie ecosystems are cultivated by this region’s relative aridity, a dryness provoked by the rain shadow effect. As for human communities - Spokane, Walla Walla, Yakima, and the Tri-Cities do host high urban population densities, while much of the rest of the landscape his highly commodified with extensively irrigated agricultural crops.
Ecoregion 11 is technically referred to as the “Blue Mountains.”
The Blue Mountains are a sort of hybridization zone, where the west slopes of these peaks accrue moisture from Pacific storms and host cedar-hemlock forests more typical of the coast, while the east slopes of these peaks are heavily affected by rain shadows and instead host ponderosa and lodgepole forests more typical of the Rockies. Human activity is limited and rural; outdoor recreation is popular.
Ecoregion 15 is technically referred to as the “Northern Rockies,” but that is a bit of a bureaucratic misnomer - we’re going to refer to this region as the “Inland Rainforest”
The Rocky Mountains are more widely understood to form the spine of the Continental Divide, and this area certainly isn’t “northerly” compared to the vast northward expanse of the Rockies that continues through British Columbia. Instead, I refer to this region as the Inland Wet-belt or Inland Rainforest Zone because this region is characterized by mid-elevation chains of mountains which host cedar-hemlock rainforests on their western slopes, and drier forests on their eastern slopes. Many endemic animal and plant species which exist only on the coast of the Pacific Northwest (like ferns, mosses, hemlock species, tailed frogs, giant salamanders, and many invertebrates) have “sister species” in the same genus which live here in the Inland Rainforest; these inland species are in the same genus as their coastal counterparts, and share much of the same behavior and physical attributes, yet their range is much more limited. The enormous physical gap between the rainforest-dwelling creatures on the coast from their rainforest-dwelling counterparts here, the Cascades and the Columbia Plateau, is a space far too dry for these moisture-loving creatures to share genes.
Aside from these isolated rainforest species, the Inland Rainforest ecoregion is also ecologically distinct in that the great predators and megafauna of Canada also dwell in these forests - wolves, grizzly bears, wolverine, fisher, marten, caribou, Rocky Mountain elk, and moose all mingle here among the ferns, cedars, and salamanders. Anyone familiar with the Great Bear Rainforest of the British Columbia coast would be familiar with this kind of eclectic mixture of both rainforest and boreal mountain-dwelling creatures.
The Canadian land which we cover in this blog is identified here in deep green, and is referred to in Canadian administration by the technical label “Montana Cordillera Ecozone”:
(Map courtesy of ExploringNature dot org.)
The more temperate region of interior British Columbia, described here and in Canadian technical literature as the “Montane Cordillera Ecozone,” is a land of wet slopes and dry river bottoms which often exist directly as a consequence of mountain topography, given that this place is just covered in mountain ranges.
At the southern edge of this ecozone, the Okanogan River and Columbia River valleys feature semi-arid prairies, much like the Columbia Plateau in Washington - here, the dry, sunny grasslands of the river valley provide corridors for some more temperate species associated with American deserts to enter into Canada, like rattlesnakes, skinks, and sage grouse. People here will proudly tell you about how the area around Osoyoos is the only true desert in Canada. Outside of Vancouver and Victoria, these prairies host most of the human population of British Columbia.
The southwestern corner of this ecozone (on the map above, the area including and parallel to the Kootenay River) is lush and fertile inland rainforest - the wettest and densest of all the inland rainforest occurs here on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains in BC. A forest-dwelling ecotype of caribou, colloquially referred to as the “woodland caribou,” inhabits this wet corridor. Many of the mountain peaks here are scarred with cirques from repeated expansion and contraction of glacial, ice-capped peaks. Human activity here is centered on seasonal outdoor recreation, especially winter sports - ski resorts here are world-famous.
North of the Thompson River, inland British Columbia becomes much cooler and drier. The plateau here is essentially surrounded in all directions by rugged mountain ranges. Personally, I love travelling through this region - everything here is just big. The mountains are big. The animals are big. The storms are big. Human population here is low - which makes some of our stories which are set here that much more foreboding!
