Downtown Bellingham residents celebrated all forms of life on Saturday, as they marched as animals in the seventh annual Procession of the Species parade.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Wild animals made from recycled materials marched through Downtown Bellingham Saturday, as residents celebrated the seventh annual Procession of the Species parade.
From a family of unicorns, to jelly fish and a caterpillar, Bellingham residents young and old lined up at 3:30 p.m. outside City Hall ready to join together and show off their handmade costumes.
Missy Taylor, a regular spectator of the parade remarked on the community bonding that occurs each year.
“It is a cool community event that gives people the creative fuel to get people together,” she said.
The Procession of the Species began in Olympia in January 1995 to mark the 25th anniversary of Earth Day and to celebrate the renewal of the Endangered Species Act, according to the organization website. The celebration spread to Bellingham in 2003 and has since become an annual spring event.
“They come out to celebrate diversity of life and species,” said Keri Heagle of the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department. “It is such a happy parade, I just love it!”
The parade started at Bellingham City Hall and headed down Commercial Street, West Holly Street and finally ended up at the Maritime Heritage Park for commencement activities, said the website. This year, joining the festivities was the Duke of Hominy Brass band, dressed in full white suits and tall furry hats.
The Bellingham Police Department estimated the crowd size to be between 800 and 1200 people last year, and there were even more people this year, Heagle said.
Saving the earth, one costume at a time
To help those who needed ideas to get started, the Procession of the Species artists held free workshops throughout April, teaching parents how to turn strollers into monsters and helmets into elephant masks. The workshops were free, although they accepted donations, and all materials provided were recycled, according to the Procession website.
Carol Oberton, director of the Procession in Bellingham, was dressed as a beetle made out of an old iMac monitor shell, onion bags and kite fabric for this year’s parade.
“I hate using plastic. I try to make a point of using materials that are going to be thrown away anyway,” she said.
The three rules rule
A favorite at the Procession was Doug Dodd’s raven with 10-foot wingspan mounted on a bike. This mode of transportation was used to respect the first of the Procession’s only three rules. “No motorized vehicles. No words, written or spoken. No live animals,” the website said.
“They keep the scale and ingenuity different. If you mount it on a car and drive it you experience it differently,” Oberton said. “It’s an interesting experience to be wearing a big puppet like that.”
As far as limiting spoken and written word, the goal is to avoid commercial sponsorship and politics so that people of all kinds can feel comfortable, according to Oberton.
“Every year some people you would never ever connect with can come together, you can experience who they are as a person with politics out of it,” she said.
Hoping for more help
One puppet was missed this year, however. The giant 12-foot spider made out of plastic bottles for the legs and an old two-person tent for the body was created collaboratively by sculptor Thor Myhre, Carol Oberton and others. It requires a person to man each of the legs, and in the off season lives in Fairhaven College’s Outback Farm, Oberton said.
This year, the spider got a break from the festivities, and was replaced by Myhre’s dragonfly, which could be powered by one person instead of eight.
According to Oberton, the Procession’s biggest competition is soccer, as families have games on the weekends and do not feel that they can commit to the parade. Their goal is to get more Western Washington University students involved, she said.
The Procession of the Species was sponsored by Start Here Community Arts and the Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department. Everyone is invited to attend or participate in next year’s events and no registration is necessary, according to the website.
See www.bpots.org for more information and picture archives.
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