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Ellwood City, Pennsylvania
Eric Poole is a reporter and columnist for the Ellwood City (Pa.) Ledger, a small newspaper nestled near the Ohio state line in the heart of Steelers Country. He has a wife, a son and a daughter (so there will be some daddy stuff on this blog). A former steelworker and retired rugby player, Poole has a wide range of interests, which was reflected in the 2008 Pennsylvania Newspaper Association awards, when Poole won first-prize honors for best columns and best special project. His upcoming book, "Company of Heroes," due out March 17, 2015, from Osprey Publishing, tells the story of Vietnam War hero Leslie Sabo and his comrades. Sabo was awarded the Medal of Honor May 16, 2012, in a White House ceremony.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Sunny Sundays a memory to cherish

(From the Sept. 9, 2010, Ellwood City Ledger)

From the gorge bottom, about 40 or so feet below Breakneck Bridge, the sun doesn’t shine so much as stab golden shafts through the trees, polka-dotting the rocks and stream at our feet.

My son sees those sun-spotted rocks piled atop one another and clambers up while pretending to be a dinosaur, which sends me into a spasm of worry.

He doesn’t read the newspaper yet, so he’s not aware of McConnells Mill State Park’s history as a hazard to the imprudent. A warning on the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources website urges hikers in the park to keep to the marked trails.

The words “Your life may depend on it” aren’t part of the warning but including that phrase wouldn’t be alarmist in any way. Every year, a handful of people, either by accident or carelessness, wind up falling over one of the sheer rock faces that lie within feet of the park’s trails.

Last May, a Butler County man fell to his death in the park while trying to rescue another hiker who had stumbled and sustained a severe injury.

My son, enraptured with a sense of wonderment and oblivious to the possible danger, storms across the rocks bellowing a T-rex roar until I reel him in, even while admiring his sense of adventure.

“Come be a dinosaur over here on the path,” I say.

We’re coming up on the first anniversary of what was one of the best days in my life, on the second Sunday of last September. That afternoon, totally on a whim, I decided to blow off the Steelers game and take my son for a walk in the woods.

Well, maybe not totally on a whim. By this time of year, we’re all keenly aware that the number of beautiful weekend days remaining before winter is limited.

And while it’s impossible to say when the brilliantly sunny Sunday afternoons will run out, by this time of year, each one could be the last. So, as much as I like a good football game, I knew there would be another one next week and the week after that.

Even today, walks like this remind me of my own childhood, when I followed my grandfather and cousins through the woods where I picked up small smooth rocks and acorns, and put them in my pocket for a collection that my mom would toss out, just the way my son does today.

My grandfather – a World War I veteran – is long gone now, but I can still remember him taking us into those woods to teach us the virtues of spending sunny days underneath a leafy canopy.

The terrain in McConnells Mill is more rugged than in the woods where I grew up about 60 miles south and east of here. McConnells Mill and nearby Moraine state parks mark the southernmost glacial advance about a million years ago during the last ice age.

Those walls of ice carved out gorges and shoved massive rocks while lurching southward by a few feet every year until they reached the outskirts of present-day Ellwood City, then retreated, leaving behind the formations where my son can pretend to be a dinosaur.

I was probably about the same age then as my son is now, so maybe he’ll remember this himself some day. Maybe then, he’ll understand why that sunny Sunday afternoon last year was one of the best days of my life.

And maybe that memory will make it one of the best days of his life too.