Dedication: The statue of Harvey Manning is at the Issaquah Alps Trails Clubhouse

Reportedly, a girl once mistook Manning for a grizzly bear as he was backpacking.

Harvey Manning statue
Dedication: The statue of Harvey Manning is at the Issaquah Alps Trails Clubhouse, 110 S.E. Bush St., Issaquah, and will be dedicated in a public ceremony at 2 p.m. next Sunday, Sept. 20.
Statue honors conservationist Harvey Manning

By Katherine Long

Seattle Times Eastside reporter

Dave Kappler admits that if Harvey Manning were still alive, he might have argued against spending $15,000 in Issaquah Alps Trails Club money to commission a life-size statue in his own honor.

Manning probably would have wanted the money to go to land acquisition instead, said Kappler, an Issaquah City Council member and former Trails Club president.

But the statue, which was installed last week in downtown Issaquah, has a different kind of purpose: It will serve to remind people of how much was preserved because of Manning's work, as well as to honor his family for their behind-the-scenes support of all the thousands of hours he spent working for open space.

Manning, who died in 2006 at age 81, was the author of a series of popular hiking-trail guides, as well as an in-your-face conservationist who used publicity stunts, a caustic wit and a devastatingly clever turn of phrase to shame politicians and bring attention to the need to preserve forest lands across the state, especially near Puget Sound.

"He motivated an awful lot of politicians," said Kappler, who paused, then added, "or scared 'em, or whatever."

He played an important role in the preservation of the North Cascades National Park, the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area and Cougar Mountain Regional Park, and he was also one of the original advocates of the Mountains to Sound Greenway, now a publicly owned 100-mile corridor of woods along Interstate 90.

"He was, ah — what's the right word — caustic but effective," said Issaquah Alps club President Ken Konigsmark, at a time when "the only way to get listened to is to shove it in their [public officials'] faces."

Manning founded the trails club about 30 years ago and promoted it with the hook that you could take a bus right to the foothills of the mountains — Metro bus 210, to be exact — to go hiking, said his widow, Betty.

Betty Manning said the statue is "quite impressive — it has the feeling the eyes are following you."

Manning was a burly man who often wore heavy, black-framed glasses and sported a large beard. Once, coming out of the woods after a long backpacking trip, he was mistaken for a grizzly bear by a little girl on a hike with her family.

And he was perhaps proof that the pen was mightier than the sword — his method of cowing public officials was "sending a zinger of a letter," venting his fury at anyone who failed to see the necessity of preserving forest land, Konigsmark said. Manning held a particularly dim view of mountain bicyclists, whom he called "testosterone-crazed boys running around in their sister's underwear."

Sara Johani and her husband, Tom Jay, of Chimacum, Jefferson County, were selected to design the statue, which cost $60,000 and was paid for with Trails Club money, a grant from the Issaquah City Council and other private donations.

The statue of Manning sits atop several huge glacial erratics — boulders that were left behind as the glaciers retreated — that were excavated from Manning's home on Cougar Mountain, Betty Manning said.

"You stand in downtown Issaquah, and you look up, and you see so much green," said Kappler, naming the mountains that surround the city: Cougar, Squak, Tiger — each one either a regional park, a state park or a natural-resource-conservation area. "And that's because of Harvey."

Katherine Long: 206-464-2219 or klong@seattletimes.com

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