In the early 1980s, five young men who loved teaching, the natural world, and the North Cascades dreamed of creating a field school to teach about the place and its many histories-natural and cultural. The North Cascades Institute emerged from that dream in 1986 with the help of North Cascades National Park. This is the story of how the Institute grew from humble beginnings to become a model nonprofit environmental education organization admired throughout the United States. Over the 35 years chronicled in this book the Institute served over 150,000 students in its Mountain School and youth programs, and many adults in a range of offerings. The author was part of this remarkable story and provides unique insights into how the dream was realized through imagination, hard work, collaborative partners, a measure of luck, and persistence in the face of various crises. The Institute continues to thrive today.