Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.  ~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Dad sharpening his chainsaw blade, while Kyle watches. I guess he doesn’t realize he can push back his hat to see instead of stretching his neck?

Sometimes I have stories to tell, and sometimes I just want to write a dissertation on observations from the Piper family.  This one is just plain funny.  Who knows, maybe there are others like dad or have a different infinity for something.  I guess some people notice old cars, or landscaping or birds, dad notices trees and piles of wood.

I guess that’s where I’m going to start, with wood.  Yes!  The only renewable resource placed on our planet that covers approximately 9.4% of the Earth’s surface, 30% of the total land area, or so I’m told by Wikipedia.  The sometimes tall, always intriguing and beautiful structures projecting upward towards the heavens from the ground.  Yes, woods, trees, forest, all of the above.  Dad has this affinity for the resource, rather an obsession.

Now let me step back and mention he started working at nine years of age making posts.  Can you image any child now-a-days working that young?  I mean working hard.  Well, he did.  Maybe that’s what started his appreciation for wood and his gravitation toward it.  It probably helped.  My guess, it was his career of being a woodsman, a logger that did the trick.  My pap, my Uncle Sonny and my dad owned a sawmill for years.  Dad was in charge of scouting out new timber, cutting down the logs and hauling them to the sawmill to be cut into boards.  So naturally his eyes were always on timber and of course he can name the local species of tress.  Or at least he used to, he’s slipping in his old age.

Dad’s truck he used to haul logs with from the sawmill.

When I think of my dad, the smell of cut wood comes to mind.  No joke!  When I was little and dad would come home from a long day of manual labor, he would bring some of his work home with him.  It came in the form of sawdust in his pant legs.  Dad’s not very tall, so he always had to cuff the legs on his jeans.  Then, when he was cutting down trees, the sawdust would make their way into the protection of his pant cuffs.  Before dad would walk into the house, he would sit on the top step of the porch and unroll his jeans to release all the tiny bits of wood he was dragging around with him.  I love that smell!  To this day, when I catch the whiff of fresh cut wood, dad comes to my mind and a sense of my childhood.  A truly comforting feeling!  I can’t help but try and consume the fragrance of fresh cut wood, it’s such a sweet scent and I want it all for myself.

Uncle Sonny at our saw mill  c. late 1980′s

But then again, wood, might just come from our genes, not jeans, unless we’re talking about dad’s pant cuffs.  Then yes, wood chips and sawdust did come from there.  But let’s talk about the Piper DNA.  I do believe while being conceived there is a wood gene that enters each one of us, some more than others.  Maybe I should step back even further.  The Piper’s have a long legacy of logging and working in the lumber industry.  There wasn’t just one Piper sawmill, but many.  Are they all related?  Pretty much, somewhere down the family tree, so to speak.

Do I have a strong affection for wood?  The more I think about it, I kind of do.  Not to the extreme of dad, but it’s definitely there.  I love the texture, the look, the smell of wood and everyone knows I love being in the woods, much like dad.  He always did love spending time among the trees.

Uncle Sonny walking around Shober’s camp, near Parker Dam

So what brought up this realization?  Dad of course.  For years now, dad has been known to be caught checking out other peoples woods and trees.  Heck, he just doesn’t check out their trees on their property, he notices their wood pile.  Yes!  If someone has wood stacked or just piled up in their yard, especially if they’re logs, his eyes automatically gravitates toward it.  Usually followed by a comment of something like, “Ooo check out their wood pile!” or “Wow they have some nice wood.” or “That’s a nice stockpile they have, looks like they’re ready for winter.” even if it’s the middle of summer.  Yes this has been going on for as long as I can remember, no matter where we’re at.

Once when we were visiting Nicole, outside of Washington, D.C. we went out for breakfast one morning.  While everyone was working their way out of the restaurant, dad walked to the other side of the parking lot, which faced a little patch of woods and stood and stared.  Can you believe he stood there examining the trees?   Out of curiosity, thinking dad might have saw something, I stood beside him and looked on.  Finally I said, “What are we looking at?” Without taking his eyes off of the trees, he said “I was just seeing what kind of timber they have.”  Then he began naming the species of wood and the nice trees.  I just walked away.

The side of our sawmill

All these years I thought it was just dad who seriously lives in the mind of trees.  Nope, a couple of weeks ago as a matter of fact, I was meeting with my cousins Jimmy Scanlon and Marie-Paule.  We were going over the details of the Chad Delier Scanlon Golf Outing they organize every year in memory of their son, who passed away from a brain tumor.  (It’s all in The Chad Delier Scanlon Story)  I don’t know how we got on the subject, but I brought up dad’s obsession with wood, trees and wood piles.  Sasha, their daughter, started laughing and said, “He does the same thing!” as she pointed toward her dad Jimmy.  I was in utter amazement!  It’s true, there are others!  Jimmy just laughed and confirmed what Sasha said was true.   That blew me away!  So it must be in the genes!

After saying all this, I will admit when Nicole and I were in Forks, Washington Rain Forest, Forks, Beach… All in One Day! Twilight Pilgrimage Part 2, which happens to be the logging capital of the world, or at least they used to be, I noticed everyone, and I mean everyone had stockpiles of wood in their yards.  As we drove around to see the sights, I would notice all the wood piles.  I’m guessing since that town is so remote and they have access to cut timber, burning wood is their source of heat for the winter.  Yes!  I was doing what dad does, however I kept telling Nicole, “Boy if dad was here he’d be checking out all the wood piles!”  We both laughed at that very true statement.  Ironically enough, I was indirectly checking out the wood piles as well, on behalf of dad.  I even told him when I got back, “Dad you would be drooling over all the piles of wood in everyone’s yards!”  Mom just rolled her eyes, but that caught dad’s attention.

I’m guessing everyone has their thing, dad’s just happens to be wood, which I have no doubt inherited proudly.  One day I hope to take him out west to Washington to see those trees!  I believe that’s on his bucket list.  I truly hope dad never looses his interest in wood, for I fear it would be the end of dad.

Below is a video of dad running my cousin Merle and Bruce’s forward logging truck.  Personally I shot to the video because it has been awhile since dad loaded wood like that, and I thought I would catch him doing something funny.  Nope!  He showed me, he jumped into the rhythm in a matter of minutes just like he’s been loading every day of his life.  Actually, it was pretty cool to capture a rare video of dad working with in his comfort zone.

Dad saw the junk pile of wood and didn’t want it thrown away and wasted, he wanted to at least burn it.  So that’s what brought us there, dad and his observation for wood!