I’m sitting in the picnic table shelter just before 8 a.m. on a Friday, staring at this old fighter jet gathering moss and an empty parking lot. Misty meditative morning at Bremerton’s N.A.D. Soroptimists Park. I’m listening to cars pass by on their way to work on nearby Kitsap Way, wondering if I should’ve brought some tools. I’m here for a work party with Kris Pendleton who’s been volunteering his time over the past few years to lead a restoration project for this area of urban forest that is home to one of the original Kitsap disc golf courses.
I see Fozzie first.
Foz (Fozzie, or Fozzie Bear) is an ultra-friendly, forest-loving, high-energy goldendoodle who sports a blonde, curly, tufted mohawk. He’s running at breakneck speed through the grass towards me, chasing a flying orange disc. I’ll learn later that Fozzie is more famous than Kris. And word is still out on who loves the game of disc golf more. They’ve probably both logged the same amount of hours on the course. Kris also dedicates hours of his free time to this restoration project.
But Fozzie dreams about disc golf.
Kris said he started disc golfing after covid. He’d been in nursing school at the time. He’d been sheltering in place, attending everything online from home for months, when a buddy asked him if he wanted to go out and play a round… “And I said sure, I need to get the hell out of here,” Kris remembers his intro to the game. “We might’ve come here first, but we definitely went to the old Bud Pell quite a bit. And then, I started making this kind of my home course. Because it was short, it was accessible, I love the forest, it’s so beautiful out here… So I started coming out here and playing a lot, like three or four times a week. And then, got this kid on it, and he just loves playing disc golf with me…”
Kris motions to Foz.
Foz’s ears perk up.
Kris hucks the orange disc.
Foz bolts after it.
“…And it was probably about three years in, I started noticing that the forest understory was really getting trampled and it was disappearing… Like straight up disappearing,” Kris says. Natural erosion is typically a process that happens over such a vast amount of time that it’s hard for a human mind to see in real time, he adds. “And I’m going. ‘Oh shit, I can see this happening in front of me. That’s not good.’ But wait, let me back up…”
Years ago, around the time he started noticing the rapid erosion of the forest but before he’d run to be a board-member-at-large for the organization, Kris went to a meeting of the local West Sound Disc Golf Association. At the time, allegedly (‘make sure you get that in there,’ he says) the city wasn’t allowing the WSDGA to do any maintenance on the park. Because it is a city park and was designated for minimal-to-no-maintenance due to its status as forest land. “And I’m going… there are 40,000 rounds played out here a year now, that’s not a forest, that’s a park. And it’s a heavily used park. The forest won’t be able to keep up.”
Kris works by day as a nurse with three days on and four days off. He also has a BA/SD degree in Agroecology, the study of ecology in agricultural practice with a focus on sustainable development and a passion for ecological restoration. He also has a background in public speaking and project management and sales, he said, and feels like he is here on earth as something of a servant to greater causes. He’s very zen. “So I was like, look, let me put together a proposal so thoroughly that they’re not gonna be able to say no. Right? So I put together a presentation…” But he ran into about a year’s worth of stopping blocks. At first, he got stalled even trying to get in contact with anyone at the city. Then he found out the parks director had left, somewhat abruptly. So he pitched the interim director, who was all for the project but couldn’t make the decision to go ahead because his word could be overturned by the incoming director. In October 2024, a new parks director was hired, who happened to be a former parks director responsible for helping build the first disc golf course in Sand Point, Idaho. Kris was stoked. The project was approved unanimously.
The next month, work began.
After refurbishing the concrete tee slab on Hole 1, Kris focused on Hole 2—‘an iconic hole’ he called it—one with sensitive soil patches that would benefit from not being trampled. He set up primitive boundaries and sent word out to the community through facebook pages, aiming to re-direct traffic around those sensitive areas.
Definitely just a see-what-happens moment, he said, but people started using it. Then they added primitive foot bridges and started marking trails with downed tree branches on the hillside between Holes 14 & 15. They’ve had other service organizations out to help mulching paths and fairways. We’re here today planting Nine Bark, a shrub well suited for Pacific Northwest forests which will grow to be an 8 foot tall backdrop to catch errant discs near one of the pins. “What we’re doing out here doesn’t cost a lot of money, it’s just the work,” Kris says. “We’ll take a walk and I’ll show you some of the work that we’ve done and ideas that we’ve had that will actually transform this park… my goal is to make this one of the most beautiful examples of a restoration project for disc golf courses across the country.”
The course had been quiet for the first hour we’d been here, but it’s starting to fill up with players now. The parking lot is full. As Kris shows me the course and all he has in mind, groups are thanking him for the work he’s doing. We walk down a fairway where Kris shows me some of the striking erosion you can see happening in real time, we round the corner to the next tee box where a group is getting ready to tee off. We stop. Foz walks up to say hello.
“Hey Fozzie!” One of the players shouts.
Foz takes off through the woods at breakneck speed.
“He’s more famous than me,” Kris laughs. // BILL MAN
PHOTOS FROM THE NAD DGC STEWARDS RESTORATION
Tee Pad After
Tee Pad Before
Planting Crab Tree
Native Plant Work Party Crew
