Walking through woods he knows as well as his own back yard, Bob Jackson notices everything.
He is pleased to see bees buzzing around late-summer blooms on a snowberry plant. Forgetting traffic on the street nearby, he hears birdsong. He stops along a path, showing a creekside spot where raccoons leave tracks. Pointing at a tree across the ravine, he identifies an enemy climbing its trunk — English ivy.
“It’s green and people think it looks nice, but it’s not native,” Jackson said Thursday. “The English ivy is from people’s yard clippings, and birds. It took hold down here. Under the ivy, that tree is rotting.”
A retired mail carrier, Jackson, 65, has spent more than six years leading an effort to clean up and restore Everett’s Forgotten Creek area. The woods and small stream are west of Kromer Avenue, near Providence Regional Medical Center Everett’s Pacific campus.
Managed by the city of Everett’s public works department, the property has been adopted by Friends of Forgotten Creek, a community group tied to the Port Gardner Neighborhood Association.
Hundreds of volunteers have worked thousands of hours over the years. Old appliances and other garbage have been hauled from the ravine. Unwanted foliage has been ripped out and replaced with small cedar trees and native greenery.
With money from grants and the expertise of EarthCorps, an environmental restoration group, stairways, boardwalks, bridges and a trail have been built. After years of effort, the Forgotten Creek Natural Area Trail is now open to the public.
On Saturday, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Friends of Forgotten Creek will gather for a ribbon-cutting and thank-you celebration at the trail’s east entrance on Kromer Avenue. The street will be closed, and walkers are welcome to try out the trail. At the bottom, near the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks, the path leads to the Port of Everett trail along Everett’s waterfront.
While the Forgotten Creek project has had hundreds of helpers, Jackson and his wife, Jean Murphy, are its very best friends.
“Bob just loves to work outside,” said Murphy, 51, a nurse who works at the hospital across the street from the trail. Her husband not only works nearly every day at the creek site, he has learned to write grants and was trained as a native plant steward by the Washington Native Plant Society in order to take on the task.
He traveled to Olympia and dealt with the Washington State Board on Geographic Names to secure the official name for Forgotten Creek, a spring-fed stream with a source higher on Rucker Hill.
Workers from EarthCorps, a nonprofit organization, built boardwalks, bridges and steps in several phases. The structures were paid for by a $5,000 grant from the city of Everett and a $15,000 grant from the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, said Bob Jackson, who is no relation to the late U.S. senator.
Jeff and Angie O’Connell and their children are among neighbors who’ve pitched in. “We helped clearing brush, taking ivy off trees, getting rid of nonnative plants, hauling in gravel and packing the trail,” Jeff O’Connell said. “It’s nice to have someplace to walk through and enjoy. It’s something the neighborhood can take pride in, it’s not just the city doing it.”
O’Connell, 47, has learned the history of the place. A flat area at the bottom of the trail once housed a power plant. And many years ago, it was the site of a brewery. Everett’s public works department plans to put a tank on the land near the tracks to collect storm water, Jackson said.
Some folks remember the ravine from way back when.
“About 60 years ago, we had it all cleaned up,” said Joe MacIsaac, 77. He recalls playing in the woods where the trail is now. “We had a neighborhood club, a kids’ club. We had a swing from a tree, and an outdoor fireplace,” said the Everett man, who grew up not far from Forgotten Creek.
“We had stairs down, and even put in a railing,” MacIsaac said. “We used to have some of the parents come down, and have barbecues — hamburgers.”
Bob Jackson hopes this place, no longer forgotten, will create new memories generations from now. “Hopefully, our grandkids’ children will come down here,” he said.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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