While the woodland appears identical in most respects to the parkland around it, it differs in a crucial way. Although the De Leo Wall Viewpoint Trail appears on the maps that hikers can pick up at a Cougar Mountain trailhead, it’s an informal and unauthorized path across property owned by James Dalpay, and his father before him, since before Newcastle became a city.

And the view could soon change: These 28 acres have been approved for clear-cut logging by the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) — despite Newcastle city codes that prohibit even a single-family home from being built on the property without strict environmental analysis.

Robert Henry and his wife, Lee Foote, own 5 acres of land and a home just south of the De Leo Wall Viewpoint Trail, and their property is bordered on three sides by the acreage that’s slated to be logged. For now, the forest around their property remains quiet, but the trees could come down with 48 hours’ notice.

“We were, quite frankly, astonished. I knew that the parcel that surrounds us is categorized as ‘forest practices,’ ” Henry says, referring to a land designation that applies to wooded, unoccupied land, whether private or public. But when he and Foote moved to the area four years ago, they didn’t know that anyone could approve a clear-cut on three sides of their home.

“That was something that, in my head, didn’t happen in urban areas,” he says.