Humanities Washington honors Ruth Kirk with the 2005 Humanities Washington Award

We were delighted to present our annual Humanities Washington Award to Ruth Kirk during a ceremony at the Washington State Historical Museum in Tacoma on October 14, 2005. Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist William Dietrich gave the keynote address.
Ruth Kirk's work over several decades as an author, photographer, naturalist and teacher stood out among this year's nominations. Snow, one of her nearly three dozen books, demonstrates Kirk's interdisciplinary and creative approach to her work. Kirk surveyed dozens of experts on the significance of snow in the natural world, looking at its impact on life and human efforts to work with and against it. Her other titles include The Olympic Rain Forest: An Ecological Web (with Jerry Franklin), Desert: The American Southwest, and Japan: Crossroads of East and West. She has also written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Smithsonian, Natural History, Better Homes & Gardens, Sunset, and Good Housekeeping.
Much of her writing and photographing the natural world involved her husband, a National Park Service Ranger from 1967-1982 and later documentary television producer. For several years they lived in Mount Rainier National Park before moving to Lacey and then to Olympia where she lives now. In the fifties and early sixites, Kirk and her husband served at the request of British government, advising on development of natural areas for public use and the preparation of interpretive publications.
Kirk's diverse subjects for her many publications include the Japanese land ethic, preservation of countryside amenities in Scotland, the impact of snowmobiles on an Eskimo village, Indian fishing rights as guaranteed by treaty, the dilemma of whether totem poles still standing at abandoned villages should be preserved or left to rot, archaeology in Washington and British Columbia. desert ecology and alpine meadow life.
Kirk has taught classes, narrated films, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and banquets. Her photographs have been widely published in magazines and books, and she has produced several motion picture/video productions. She has served on the Board of Directors of several cultural institutions, including the Washington State Historical Society and Humanities Washington.
Kirk has also received the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in natural history writing, the New York Academy of Science's book of the year award (for Hunters of the Whale) and a nomination for the National Book Award (for Desert)
Past recipients include: Ron Chew (1995); Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center (1996); John Terrey (1997); Sherry Prowda (1998); Barbara Krohn (1999); Linda Jaech (2000); Delma Tayer (2001); Ralph and Karen Munro (2002); Nancy Pearl (2003); and Tom Ikeda (2004).

For information about the Humanities Washington Award, please contact
at (206) 682-1770.