Holden Village is a Lutheran community center deep in the Cascade Mountains, accessible only by a boat ride on Lake Chelan followed by a bus ride on a mountain road. At 3,000 feet, it is very cold and snowy in the winter, and cut off from Wi-Fi and cell phone reception.
For some this may sound like paradise. It was for Peggy Haug and her partner (now spouse) Juanita, who spent two years there from 2005-2007. “Holden Journals: A Close Look at Nature in the North Cascades” is her record of the flowers and the birds she found in the village and on nearby hikes. Her drawings are augmented with copious notes of interpretation, bits of poetry, and her impressions of living in an isolated village.
This book is also an excellent field guide to the wildflowers, trees, and shrubs of this region and an impressive birding list – 68 species in the first year. Some of the most beautiful drawings are of the colorful leaves and berries of fall, intricately overlapping. It can take several delightful minutes just to read all the notes that she weaves in amongst the plant images.
While the native plants are the main features, Holden Village has surviving plant relics from the nearby former mining village, including daffodils and bearded iris. The latter were captured in an earlier book, “Holden Village Historic Iris“, reviewed in the Fall 2008 issue of “The Bulletin”.
Excerpted from the Fall 2018 Arboretum Bulletin.