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!

There are two big forces at work, external and internal.  We have very little control over external forces such as tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, disasters, illness and pain.  What really matters is the internal force.  How do I respond to those disasters?  Over that I have complete control.  ~Leo F. Buscaglia

During a recent visit to Parker Dam State Park, Fishing Toward Independence, Just Had to Take It to Parker Dam, we naturally went down memory lane.  As we fished and shot the breeze by the campfire, dad brought up the time the tornado went through Parker Dam.  I totally forgot all about that!  With the most recent tornado disaster hitting Oklahoma, I guess tornadoes were on our minds.  This tornado, that hit home and presented a miracle and a happy ending for a group of boy scouts, was the subject discussed.  Kyle listened as we shined a light on local past news.

Just to recap, on Monday, May 20, 2013 a devastating EF5 tornado struck down Moore, Oklahoma, with winds of more than 210 miles per hour.   It was such a tragedy of 23 deaths, more than 100 rescued, 237 injured and as many as 20,000 families displaced.  What really hit home was the elementary school that was leveled out by the massive twister.  Sure natural disasters are upsetting and horrible, but when you’re pulling children out of rubble, it strikes another cord with onlookers and tends to pull on the heart strings a little bit more.

(FEMA Photo)  Devastation from the EF5 tornado that hit Moore, Oklahoma on  May 20, 2013.

My thoughts and prayers are still with those who have lost loved ones and had their lives leveled in a single blow.

Moving from that natural disaster and reminiscing on another, the tornado at Parker Dam.

Fortunately, due to no loss in life and because of the remote location, most people don’t know a tornado even hit Parker Dam State Park in Clearfield County.  But it did!  On May 31, 1985 an EF4 tornado leveled about 100 miles of state forest with winds of up to 260 miles per hour.  It even pulled the water right out of the creeks.  Dad said, as far as he could see up and down the hills, trees were flattened.  “It was as if someone clear cut the woods” and left behind splinters in the wake.  “You could see all the way up and down the ridge.  It was something else.”

There were other outbreaks of tornadoes on the same day in Pennsylvania, and the one that hit Parker Dame was the longest lived, staying on the ground for a distance of 69 miles in an hour and a half, reaching Clearfield, Clinton, and Centre counties.  It was one of four EF4 tornadoes to touch down in Pennsylvania on that very same day.  A state who is no stranger to tornadoes, but not really accustomed to the natural disaster either, experienced a major change in the ordinary.

Parker Lake at Parker Dam State Park

Granted, the tornadoes that touched down in Pennsylvania don’t even compare to the Oklahoma tornado, yet the awesomeness of God’s had is still amazing.  Luckily, there weren’t a lot of people in the park when the tornado struck, with the exception of a few campers and a boy scout troop to tell the tale.

The really amazing thing was the zero death toll!  The tornado went right over the camp of boy scouts without touching them!  Granted it ripped off parts of the roof from the octagon shaped building, yet they all returned unscathed.  The boy scouts held onto the doorways and their troop leaders for support, while the massive twister hovered over them and ripped down trees and power lines.  I read an article about the 25th anniversary, commemorating their survival.   To that day, they commented on the locomotive sound that hit them fast and seemingly out of nowhere.  Without shortage of memory, they detailed the events from that day.  That is one of those moments that have stayed with them and always will.  I can only imagine!

Everyone credits the octagon shaped building the boy scouts were hunkered down in, for the reason of their survival.  They feel the way the winds were whipping over them and the unique shape of the building gave them safety.  Perhaps, but if God didn’t want them to live, they wouldn’t have had a chance, even from a sturdy structure.

The Octagon lodge the boy scouts hunkered down in while the EF4 tornado swept over them on May 31, 1985. They all survived!

It took rescuers days before they were able to rescue the survivors, because of their location and all the ground debris.  Frightful as the event was during the tornado and equally as chilling as their tales, I still love hearing those survivor stories!  They are full of hope and faith!  Not to mention, it puts everything in life into perspective.

Today, you can still walk through the recovering tornado ravaged woods.  Naturally, the trees came back, all at different rates, but nature took care of its own.  Parker Dam is another piece of heaven on earth with the green luscious woods, wild animals running free and creeks full of fish.  Yep, pure heaven, maybe with the exception of the mosquitoes.

I guess we’re all going back to camp and fish and just plain chill out.  Seriously, can’t wait!

Parker Dam History

Finding the origins of Parker Dam interesting, I thought I’d share some fun facts I’ve read on the state park.  Some information came from Wikipedia, and some I read on the signs at Parker Dam, and some from online articles.

Construction of the 968-acre state park really started in 1794 with the removal of trees, to eventually leading to the need to reforest the lands by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  During the Great Depression, in the 1930′s the real construction of the buildings and such began, giving us Parker Dam State Park, of Huston Township in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.

Surrounding the state park is the Moshannon State Forest.  Many critters call the park home including the ovenbird, American redstart, turkey, beaver (which I saw on my last adventure to the park), white-tailed deer, bears (which dad has hunted), coyotes, foxes, bobcats, porcupines (better not tell Scooby Scooby Meets a Porcupine) and elk.  Pretty much a stranger to Pennsylvania, I guess elk have settled in the remote areas of the local counties and are now among the inhabitants sometimes spotted there.

So now to the reason for the name, Parker Dam.  Laurel Run was dammed up to make the man made Parker Lake.   This 20-acre lake is usually the centerpiece of picnicking, fishing and even swimming on the sandy beach.  Yes, they have a small beach on the one side of the lake for families to cool down and splash around.  Sorry Seven and Scooby, no dogs allowed!

During fishing season, the lake can be outlined by many trying to catch their prize largemouth bass, various species of trout and catfish.   Evidently, the lake is open in the winter, once frozen over, for ice fishing and ice skating.

As I’ve mentioned hunting is permitted in designated areas of the Park as per the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

Also something else I found interesting and didn’t know.  As per Wikipedia

Parker Dam State Park is the western trailhead of the Quehanna Trail System.  This trail is about 75 miles (121 km) long and meanders its way through the surrounding state forests. The Quehanna Trail connects with the Susquehannock Trail near Sinnemahoning State Park.  Backpackers are not permitted to camp overnight at the park. The trails are open to cross-country skiing during the winter months.

Everyone should visit a State Park!  You’ll be surprised at the peace nature can bring to the soul.