Author Event -- Saving Tarboo Creek
Join local authors: Scott Freeman and Susan Leopold Freeman, along with the Jefferson Land Trust
Sunday, February 25 at 6:00 pm at the Finnriver Farm and Cidery (124 Center Road, Chimacum WA 98325)
For a reading of Saving Tarboo Creek: One Family's Quest to Heal the Land
What can one family do to change the world?
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 clear-cutting had degraded what was once an ancient salmon run in an old-growth watershed.
When the Freeman family decided to restore the creek, they knew the task would be formidable and the rewards plentiful. In Saving Tarboo Creek, Freeman artfully blends the story of a family's efforts over generations with profound lessons about how we can live more constructive, fulfilling, natural lives by engaging with the land rather than exploiting it. Based on the land ethic passionately promoted by Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac, and filled with illustrations by his granddaughter Susan (the matriarch of the Freeman family), this timely tribute to our natural environment and the urgent need to protect it is destined to be another inspiring classic.
The Freeman's tale of healing the land is one part of a broader local history. Collaboration between community members and local groups such as Northwest Watershed Institute and Jefferson Land Trust has protected and restored thousands of acres with the goal of saving the entire Tarboo-Darbob watershed. At the reading donations will be accepted to offset costs and support Jefferson Land Trust's work with families like the Freemans to preserve places like Tarboo Creek.
“We all live in particular places and at particular times, but when we act with family and friends to preserve a local slice of nature, we are, together, saving the planet.” —Natural History Magazine
Can each of us, as stewards of our land, make an environmental difference that can be seen, felt, and measured?