Jon Matson grew up in the fruit orchards outside of Yakima in Central Washington. An important and influential aspect of his childhood was spending time at his grandparents cabin at Goose Prairie, just east of Chinook Pass. Growing up wandering the forests and streams of Central Washington ignited a deep interest in forestry which he nurtured in a local 4H Club. After completing high school in Selah, Jon spent ten years in the US Army and three years in Boston pursuing a degree in Information Technology (IT) which landed him a job back in the Pacific Northwest working in corporate IT for Nordstrom in Seattle. Despite working in the big city and having settled in the Bellevue/Issaquah area his heart was still in the forests of the PNW so he purchased twenty acres in the Cascade foothills outside of Ellensburg. A few years later he and his family moved to a ten acre farm in Maple Valley that is fifty percent forestland. Now Jon has the opportunity to manage forests on both the dry and the wet side of the state. Jon has been a Kittitas chapter member of the WFFA since 2001. He is active in the Washington Tree Farm Program and serves on the King County Rural Forest Commission as well. Since he is now retired from corporate IT Jon also supports the technology needs of the Washington Tree Farm Program, the Family Forest Foundation, and CORRIM (Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials).