Woollypod Design

Growing a Forest in the Ruins of a Sawmill: Reflections on the Spring 2025 SER Field Trip

A group of smiling young students surround a bearded middle-aged man in front of a clear lake with an evergreen forest in the background on a mostly sunny day.
The SER crew with our fearless tour guide, Washington State DNR’s Natural Areas Program Ecologist David Wilderman. The author is on the left, standing next to SER President Brian Darst. Officer Kavya Rao is to Wilderman’s right, and SER President emeritus Erik Ertsgaard is on the far right. Credit: Erik Ertsgaard

The Spring 2025 Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) Field Trip started, as many other field trips do, at the Burke Museum parking lot in the early morning. Soon, we assembled our crew (shaved down by illnesses and schedule changes) and took off toward the South Salish Sea region, where we would visit two sites – Woodard Bay Natural Resources Conservation Area (NRCA) and Oak Patch Natural Area Preserve (NAP).

A satellite photo map of the Salish Sea and surrounding lands with three light blue dots labeled "UW CAMPUS", "OAK PATCH NAP"; and "WOODARD BAY NRCA". UW Campus is to the east of the Sound, while Oak Patch NAP is west of the Sound and Woodard Bay NRCA is to the southwest.
Caption: Map of Salish Sea Area with UW Campus and the restoration sites we visited. Satellite credit: Google Earth

We had winding conversations about our restoration experience and environmental policy as we traveled down increasingly rural roads. Soon, we arrived at Woodard Bay NRCA, our first stop, and met our tour guide, Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Washington Natural Areas Program (NAP) Program Ecologist David Wilderman (nice case of nominative determinism, huh?).

To read the rest of this blog post, go to the SER UW Restoration Reflections blog!

Woollypod Design

miguelso [at] woollypoddesign [dot] com

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I practice design on the ancestral lands of the Plateau peoples or the Coast Salish peoples, who have stewarded these ecosystems since time immemorial.