Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family’s Quest to Heal the Land - Hardcover

Scott Freeman teaches biology courses at the University of Washington, where he received a Distinguished Teaching Award. He worked in environmental education and international conservation before completing a PhD in evolutionary biology at the University of Washington and conducting post-doctoral work at Princeton University as Sloan Fellow.

Susan Leopold Freeman grew up outside West Lafayette, Indiana, and attended DePauw University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a BFA.

In 2004, the Freemans bought 18 acres along Tarboo Creek, on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, and began reforestation and salmon stream restoration work in conjunction with the Northwest Watershed Institute and Jefferson Land Trust. His family now owns and manages over 240 acres of forestland in Jefferson County, all protected by conservation easements held by Jefferson Land Trust.

How can each of us, as stewards of the land, make a difference that can be seen, felt, and measured? Can working on the land bring us together as a community and make us better people?

In 2004, Scott Freeman and his wife, Susan Leopold Freeman, granddaughter of revered conservationist Aldo Leopold, bought 17 acres on Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The parcel straddles Tarboo Creek, a 7.5-mile stream where more than a century of ditching, channeling, and clearcutting had degraded an ancient salmon run.

Saving Tarboo Creek masterfully blends two stories of their family's effort to reclaim a small patch of the planet: one, a tale of the realities of rehabilitating a degraded fish run in what was once an old-growth watershed; the other, an account of human resource use over time and what that history means for the future. From witnessing the pageantry of breeding salmon, to choosing creekbank flora for planting, to tracking the return of bears, cougars, and river otters, the Freemans have come to understand the big picture from the sketches they've made at Tarboo Creek.

In his conservation classic, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold observed, "We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." This moving chronicle stands as a beacon, drawing us down the better path.