Saving Tarboo Creek

Saving Tarboo Creek is a local book – by local authors about a local place. Tarboo Creek empties indirectly into the Hood Canal. Scott Freeman teaches biology at the University of Washington. His wife Susan, an artist, is also the granddaughter of Aldo Leopold, whose Sand County Almanac is a bible for ecologists. The book is partly a narrative – a description of how the Freemans have labored over a number of years to restore a patch of land along the creek to its natural state – the one before the pioneers straightened the creek and harvested most of the trees to create farm land. The book is also a call to arms to those who can act to save and restore natural landscapes.

One of my favorite chapters, one that exemplifies the Freemans’ approach, deals with beavers. Of course beavers can be disastrous to any tree planting effort, and the Freemans have planted thousands of young trees. The chapter describes clearly, and with some sympathy for the beavers, how the animals live and build and move into new territory like that around Tarboo Creek. Killing them wouldn’t help, even if one thought it a good idea, because more beavers would soon show up. Furthermore, beaver dams help make the creek an ideal place for young salmon, a positive effect for the Freemans. So the Freemans (and friends) have painstakingly wrapped trees near the creek with protective wire, and each year they wrap more and more. They expect “an intense beaver chew-down” each March or April, and do the hard labor of saving their young trees.

Each chapter places an aspect of restoration work, such as tree planting, in its historical and ecological context. In the final chapter, directed especially at young people, the Freemans call for a return to a “natural life,” giving four criteria: be engaged, be simple, be real, be present. The book conveys an urgent sense of hope.

Published in the April 2018 Leaflet Volume 5, Issue 4.