Today was another Cedar River Watershed restoration project. Geoff S. picked me up at 8 and we drove out to Rattlesnake Lake. The YMCA was sponsoring some kind of youth service project, so a group of fifteen or so teenagers provided the bulk of the work force. Clay spent half an hour going over the map of the watershed and talking about its history, then we piled into the vans and went out to Taylor Creek.

Today we worked on another road decommissioning. These are always my favorite kind of restoration project. The City of Seattle tears up some 20 miles of road inside the watershed each year; today we planted about 300 trees along a half mile of an old logging road. They’d already removed the roadbed with bulldozers and backhoes, and torn out the culverts where the road crossed little creeks. Our project today was to plant along the edges of the streams, to protect against erosion and help encourage habitat development.

I’m awfully tired now, the more so as I was out late last night and thus didn’t get much sleep. Still, the ache in my muscles feels good, the wilderness is a beautiful place to spend a day, and it always feels satisfying to help roll back the damage from years of logging and other development.