Growing up on a sawmill there was rarely a shortage of logs strewn about the place. These little fellas — firewood actually — await a smoky encounter with a fire-pit some cool summer evening. They do, however, evoke fond memories of their larger counterparts (stacked in a bric-a-brac fashion sometimes ten or fifteen feet high) that my five sisters and I used to hop, skip and jump across when we were younger.

To this day passing a semi load of logs on the interstate corrals my attention and that of my mom and siblings as well. Dad died in 2007, a year that marked 50 years in the sawmill business. Clark’s Sawmill was his pride and joy. He loved what he did as did my mom’s dad who was also a sawmill man. Dad told me once that when he went to bed at night he could hardly wait to get up in the morning to go back to work. How does that saying go? Something about doing what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. That described my dad’s philosophy and love of the sawmill business and, happily, his strong work ethic became his daughters’ approach to work and career as well.