Summer Volunteers

Note the freeway. A sound wall is coming.

Recently 30 neighbors, students and friends gathered to spread mulch, dig out blackberry roots and water new plants.

14 people signed up to continue watering up to twice a week through the summer. It's a big job with about 1200 plants and trees to cover. This is how a forest is born from blackberries. It needs our help.

Each volunteer had a personal reason for working in the forest. Alice Tsoodle, a long time volunteer with FNCF shares her story below.

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                                                              WHY  I  VOLUNTEER

Alice Tsoodle - Why I Volunteer

           For a girl who grew up on the grassy plains of the south and the scrub shrubs of the southwestern desert, the idea of a nurse log is one of the most amazing and comforting phenomena that I have ever encountered. Here is the perfect example that all life on earth is bound together into one efficiently functioning cycle. In short, when a tree falls in the forest, it brings with it millions of seeds from a wide variety of forest plants and trees.  As the tree decays and breaks down, the seeds spring forth with new life. These new plant lives gather all of their nutrients directly from the former life of the old trees. This ensures that life continues on and the forests stay healthy.  There is no death, because even after the chlorophyll leaves these trees they continue to function as an important part of Earth’s life cycle.

            This was one of the first ecological lessons I learned about the great hemlock forests that used to blanket the soft hills of the Pacific Northwest.  I learned this lesson while standing in front of a nurse log in a small patch of old-growth upland forest known as the North Creek Forest of Bothell.  I was standing there, breathing the fresh air that one can only breathe in the heart of a healthy forest.  Seeing the light flicker out of the corner of my eye as it filters through the dancing leaves of the vine maple.  Feeling the cool, moist air evaporate the sweat on the back of my neck. Tasting the sweet misty rain dripping down from the big leaf maple.  All of my senses were heightened as I absorbed so much information in one brief class period.

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Vine Maple - photo by Alice Tsoodle

          As a student at UW Bothell, I was incredibly lucky to have experienced such a unique lesson within walking distance of my school. Friends of North Creek Forest made this opportunity available to me through the grass roots efforts born in the homes of local naturalists.  In their collaboration with the brilliant teachers and passionate students at UW Bothell, this small group of people has helped to open my eyes to such ancient beauty and a desperate hope for continuity. 

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English holly control - photo by Teppei Sato

          




       I volunteer at North Creek Forest because when I step into the heart of the forest, the smoggy sound, smell, and stress of the city melts away and I feel at peace.  There is a serene sense of calm that makes me feel like I belong, that I am here for a reason.  I believe that restoring and maintaining our old growth forests is vital to the health of the human race.  We are here for a reason, and I believe we have gone astray somewhere.  We need the forests to remind us of what our ecological function is.  We need to take a deep breath under the shade of the western red cedar and remember that we are stewards of all life on earth, and it’s time for us to rejoin the circle.
                                                         Alice Tsoodle

Our level of stewardship is made possible by a grant from the Rose Foundation.
Thank you,
FNCF

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