What North Creek Forest Means To Me

By Marin Kaetzel

My older sister, Amy, and I playing in our backyard in 1979, surrounded by North Creek Forest.

My name is Marin Kaetzel. I’m blessed to live on the edge of North Creek Forest. In fact, this is the second time I’ve lived with this beautiful forest as my “backyard”. I grew up in Bothell and have so many fond memories of exploring what we neighborhood kids simply referred to as “the woods”. Tall evergreens, lush ferns and red huckleberries guided us as we all made our way to and from school on the dirt path connecting our dead end street to Maywood Hills Elementary.

Back then North Creek Forest was much larger than its current 64 acres and was the only thing between our neighborhood and I-405.

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The forest always felt like an extension of my home. My family was once “adopted” by a family of raccoons who visited us every night and dined on our cats’ food. My dad found endless joy watching Steller’s jays gather and hide peanuts he’d faithfully throw on the back deck each day. Even when tragedy struck in the loss of the family cat to a coyote, we knew that too was just part of living in harmony with the forest. I’ll never forget when they first started bulldozing our beloved woods...

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