2025 Olympic Student of the Year: Jackson Blocker
At NatureBridge, we celebrate the stewards of today and foster the development of the stewards of tomorrow, working to inspire environmental stewardship in all our participants. Our goal is to motivate our students to be changemakers in their communities and for our planet.
Each year, NatureBridge honors a student who has demonstrated leadership, growth and a commitment to protecting our natural world as a result of their participation in an environmental science program at our Olympic National Park campus. This year’s honoree will be recognized and will speak at the Evening on the Lake, which will be held on Friday, November 7 in Seattle.
We are thrilled to announce our 2025 Olympic Student of the Year: ninth grader Jackson Blocker.
Jackson participated in a NatureBridge program with his eighth grade class from Littleton, CO at our Olympic campus in spring 2025. Early in his life, his time spent hiking and adventuring in the Colorado Rockies led Jackson to become a nature lover and an aspiring conservationist. Sharks and protecting the ocean were Jackson’s entry points into conservation; however, after his experience at NatureBridge Olympic, he discovered the holistic view of protecting terrestrial creatures alongside those in the ocean.
At NatureBridge, Jackson connected not only with the forest but with himself, embodying this quote from Ralph Smart: “There is no Wi-Fi in the forest, but I promise you will find a better connection.” NatureBridge gave Jackson priceless memories and a renewed sense of belonging.
What was your first impression of Olympic National Park? #
To kick off my experience at NatureBridge, the guides provided me with some very intriguing history about the Rosemary Arch and the Inn that gave it its name. The Inn itself was built by John Daum in 1914 and was opened by Rose E. Littleton. Twelve cabins and other outbuildings (including the one that I stayed in at NatureBridge) make up the area north of the Inn. Three years after it was sold to the National Park Service in 1943, Olympic National Park was dedicated at the Rosemary Inn. From 1951 until 1986, the National Park Concessions used the Inn as employee housing and then gave it to the Olympic Park Institute in 1988, which was later renamed NatureBridge. The arch, which has the name of the Inn, is the place where people get checked in to NatureBridge and is a tribute to the Inn that started it all. Every time I walked through that arch, I looked at it and remembered the stories and how cool it was to hear about how NatureBridge came to be situated in such a fascinating environment.
What were some of the things you learned while at NatureBridge? #
We discovered early on that Olympic National Park was inhabited by a variety of life I’d never seen before, including an abundance of moss and some very special mushrooms. We stumbled upon the Artist’s Conk while exploring the forest, and our guides showed us that if we took a stick and “wrote” on the mushrooms, the writing would stay there, and it wouldn’t hurt the mushroom at all! The artists in the group went to work on the mushrooms, and that's when our NatureBridge guides let us loose to explore on our own. Funny thing about mushrooms: in forest ecology, mushrooms act as connections between trees and other life in the forest. In that moment, our guides used the mushrooms similarly to connect us with the forest.
What was your biggest takeaway from your NatureBridge experience? #
NatureBridge certainly gave me the chance to connect with nature and my classmates, but perhaps the most impactful experience was getting to connect with myself. We did a “solo hike” through the woods, intentionally keeping our distance from each other to give the illusion that we were alone. But I wasn’t alone. The primitive part of me that will always be connected to nature came out in that moment, and I know that there are only certain times in your life that you will feel like that. The fact that NatureBridge was able to provide that connection for me was a gift, and my dream is that other kids like me, wanting connection to something bigger than themselves, can also find that through NatureBridge.
Photos courtesy of Jackson Blocker
Stories
2025 Olympic Student of the Year: Jackson Blocker
Each year, NatureBridge honors a student who has demonstrated leadership, growth and a commitment to protecting our natural world as a result of their participation in an environmental science program at our Olympic National Park campus. This year’s honoree will be recognized and will speak at the Evening on the Lake, which will be held on Friday, November 7 in Seattle. We are thrilled to announce our 2025 Olympic Student of the Year: ninth grader Jackson Blocker.
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