by Jean Aron, November, 1985 (reprinted with permission)
We could hear the far-off buzzing. The other crew’s chainsaw grew slowly louder as they worked their way up the stricken valley towards us. It wouldn’t be long now. The sound re-energized us and our own machine answered – steel teeth growling and spitting ferociously. The advance teams, north and south, lopped and clawed their way through the tangled wood like an army of termites.
Saunders Run, on the Quehanna Trail northeast of Parker Dam State Park, is in a pleasant wooded vale, full of small, tumbling waterfalls. A typical, shaded streamlet of the Allegheny Plateau, lined with ferns and mosses, foamflowers and painted trillium, its steep-sided slopes had preserved its peace and serenity.
Now it was cut in two. Right through the midsection, a mile-wide swath of tangled trees lay like windblown hair across the hills, the valley full of snarls.
One of the tornadoes which struck Pennsylvania on May 31, 1985, had severed the Quehanna Trail in several places. Crawling through the mess on an investigative trip on June 13, I remember feeling hopeless and helpless in the face of the devastation. The trail where my friends and I had skied so pleasantly in February was now unrecognizable. The sections that a KTA Trail Crew had cleared and reblazed in May, 1982, were completely wiped out, including the northern third of the park and the group campground where we had stayed.
Destruction across the forest in northern Pennsylvania, just from this one twister, was over a mile wide and 50 miles long. The Bureau of Forestry had declared the Quehanna and Chuck Keiper Trails officially closed. Was this to be the end of these trails?
Clearing Saunders Run of the tornado damage was the brainchild of Tom Thwaites, Vice President of KTA and author of two hiking guidebooks. If only the one mile along the run could be cleared, he reasoned, the rest of the damaged parts of Quehanna Trail could be temporarily rerouted on forest roads, pipelines, and power-lines, and the entire 75-mile loop (a major Pennsylvania hiking trail) would not be lost. Furthermore, a prompt effort by citizen volunteers would demonstrate to the state that people really did care about hiking trails, and were willing to put their muscle where their mouth was.
So, without delay, and with permission from the Bureau of Forestry, crews from KTA began working on June 15. They returned again on July 14 and September 7. A crew from Penn State Outing Club worked on September 8. Now, October 26 and 27 would be the do-or-die finale`.
KTA Trail Chair Dick Potteiger had done a thorough job of raising volunteers by publicizing, contacting, and cajoling. And they came, from all around the state. At least twelve people stayed at least one night. Two others came just for the day on Saturday. One stayed over on Monday to finish blazing. It was a gratifying team effort.
Portents of great happenings were read in the night sky, as we settled into camp on Friday night at Parker Dam. A golden sunset across the lake was reflected by the full moon rising promisingly in the east. Our hilltop camp was like a stage under floodlights. The moon and sun seemed so well-rehearsed, with their tandem entrance and exit, that one could imagine they were connected by some giant cable, like funicular railway cars.
Now, it was mid-afternoon on Saturday, October 26. It had been a long, exhausting day as KTA made its fourth and final assault on Saunders Run. We had split into two groups, working from both ends, and hoping to meet in the middle. At last, we were there: the two crews met face-to-face – Dr. Suess’ north-going Zax and south-going Zax – with just one heaped blow-down between us. Aware of the historic nature of the occasion, we photographed the two chainsaw bosses, Dick and Tom, shaking hands across the last barrier in a sort of ‘golden spike’ ceremony.
But none of us were prepared for the final drama. The two chainsaws roared simultaneously on the two big trunks of the double tree. They finished together and stepped back, to watch in amazement as the tree rose up. With pride and pomp (as though aware of its specialness as the final log, the last act) it re-erected itself and settled neatly onto its roots, leaving us gaping in surprise at the tree with clean saw cuts 30 feet off the ground. Others will surely wonder, too. (Note, this is a true account; you know it must be true, because it is too outrageous to be fiction!)
Dick tells us he is planning to have regular trail maintenance trips next year, every second weekend from May through October. They may never match the drama of this one, but I hope to have many more such delightful experiences, and I hope many of you will join us, too!