Lakeside School

Ben Hayes ’07 still remembers the crisp mountain air and the rhythmic crunch of boots on dirt as his Lakeside Middle School class hiked through the eastern Cascades. The trip was part of Lakeside’s long-standing outdoor program, but for Hayes, it was more than just a field trip. There, among the trees of an orchard run by a Lakeside alum and her husband, inspired by their care for the environment around them, Hayes decided “what I ended up doing with my life.”

This fascination with caring for the land is not unique in Hayes’s family. His great grandfather was one of the first foresters to begin the replantation of trees after Pacific Northwest forests were razed to the ground. Today, Hayes continues his family’s work as part of a multigenerational sustainable forestry business in Oregon.

Called Hyla Woods, it’s led by Ben’s father, Peter Hayes, a former ecology teacher and administrator at Lakeside. Built on the principle of “positive impact forestry,” Hyla Woods operates with a philosophy of focusing beyond just profits, instead prioritizing “a group of stakeholders that’s greater than the owners of the forest” — taking responsibility for wildlife, surrounding communities, and future generations. And in a “pay-it-forward” from Hayes’s service-learning days, local middle schoolers conduct science fieldwork in Hyla Woods forests alongside university researchers studying climate-smart forestry techniques.

This ethos was central to Hyla Woods’ involvement in the 2024 Portland International Airport (PDX) remodeling, a landmark urban development project that prioritized the usage of sustainable materials. Hayes played a part in supplying timber for the airport’s reconstruction, which was designed to reflect the Pacific Northwest’s natural environment.

Our engagement went back all the way to meeting one of the architects in 2015, when they were first thinking about how they were going to source the wood for that project…. Becoming part of that conversation really early on was important in terms of helping them think through what responsible forestry and responsible sourcing look like. - Peter Hayes

The Douglas Fir that Hyla Woods provided for the project came from a “selective thinning” operation, a logging practice that improves the health of the forest by reducing competition among trees. “That thinning project had positive outcomes for the area of the forest that we worked in, and it generated logs that went to a very small sawmill that then got milled and are now in the lattice in the airport’s roof system,” Hayes explains. However, while the $2 billion airport renovation has already represented a huge commitment to local, sustainable forestry business, Hayes envisions an even more transparent and efficient wood supply chain — one where we all have a voice in how our forests are managed.

For Hayes, his work is more than a business. It’s part of a larger movement toward responsible stewardship. What started as a lesson in an orchard in the Cascades has grown into a mission to reshape the future of forestry in the Pacific Northwest — one tree, one forest, and one thoughtful decision at a time.