(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)
INDIANOLA – Paul Dorn gradually fights his way up a steep embankment along Miller Bay Road, loose dirt slipping under his feet and knees as he scrambles to the top.
“The worst I could do is tumble back down,” he says.
Eventually he makes it to the roadside and looks back down on a chunk of a 13-acre piece of property he and the community group Friends of Miller Bay are hoping to see maintained forever as a nature preserve. The fact that accessing part of the property requires a slide down a slope is a bit inconvenient but part of its beauty, in their eyes: It’s completely undeveloped, there are no driveways or established trails other than bear paths, and the site is dominated by trees and underbrush.