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Comm|Tech
created a web site for Pulali Landowners Association to highlight
the natural resources and attractions of Pulali Point, in south
Jefferson County, on Hood Canal, Olympic Peninsula in Washington
State.
This
is a sample page of an extensive web site.
The navigation on the left is no longer active.
Comm|Tech:
Conceived the site design
Created images and logo
Gathered old photos and stories
Wrote the content
Developed the site
Hosted and marketed the site
John Pedersen's
Story
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Pedersen
(right) and fellow Scout at Camp Parsons
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John Pedersen was 13 when he first came to Camp
Parsons in 1929. He saved $15 from a Seattle paper
route to pay for two weeks in the Northwest’s premiere Boy
Scout camp.
“It
was rather scary but terribly exciting for a
youngster who had never really been out in the country before,”
he remembers. “The experience at Camp Parsons put something
in me that I carry to this day.”
It
was one of those life-altering, or life-shaping, events.
In the Jewish religion a boy becomes a man when he
turns 13. But John is Danish Protestant – hard working, rugged,
a family man with an artist’s love of nature.
Pulali
Point, an 80 acre peninsula that adjoins Camp Parsons, became the
Eden that he embraced for the
rest of his life. Camp Parsons helped him find the way.
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John
Pedersen in 1934
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In 1929,
the year of the crash that sparked the Great Depression, Highway 101
was a gravel road for Model T’s and Model A’s. John Pedersen
took a boat through Puget Sound and up Hood Canal to arrive at Camp
Parsons – a trip of awe and wonder. He slept in a tent with
eight other boys supervised by a Scout Master who “was very
godlike to us.” His unit was called “Copper City,”
he remembers. There were eight units total.
Mr.
Pedersen loved the pristine
wilderness that surrounded Camp Parsons and enjoyed his adolescent
freedom. He swam in Jackson Cove with dozens of new-found friends
and hiked up the hills through the firs, cedars, and madrona. He
played Capture the Flag, and marveled at the herd of Roosevelt Elk
that drifted through and loitered around the camp, munching on fruit
trees
and rubbing against posts.
Mess
was a thrice-daily highlight. The Rudyard Kipling inscription in
the mess hall introduced John Pedersen to the power of poetry and
the mystery of the mountains. He remembers the inscription verbatim:
Go
and look behind the ranges,
Something hidden – go and find it.
Something lost behind the ranges
Lost and waiting for you. Go!
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His
first mountain hike was up Mt. Walker, down into Quilcene and up
the trail to Marmot Pass. The unit slept in the woods and the next
day hiked to below Lake Constance and then into the snow at Constance
Pass. It was four days in the mountains with a Trapper Nelson pack,
blanket rolls, dry food, and a “godlike”
adult guide. Mr. Pedersen dedicated his Seattle paper route to saving
the money
to repeat the experience the following year.
His
third year at Camp Parsons, John Pedersen joined the Rangers. It
was the
most rigorous group, expected to face challenging tests necessary
to earn the
21 merit badges required to become an Eagle Scout.
“We
had an option to climb Mount Olympus with a legendary leader named
Ted Lewis, a young man in his 20s. He selected the ones he wanted,
and I
was one of those chosen. I was very honored,” he remembers.
“As
I’ve told my family, this was kind of the making of my love
for the wilderness.
I had come up a frightened youngster and I had a pretty rough time
of being so
far from home, and gradually when I had succeeded climbing Mt. Olympus
I felt
like I mastered what I set out to do. It gave me a feeling for the
wilderness
around here that many consider unmatched. It is just such a marvelous
place.”
John
Pedersen earned the merit badges to become an Eagle Scout. Later,
he
became a Scout Master with a troop outside Seattle, while his wife
Marilyn
organized a Cub Scout group. Their eldest son, Hans, also attended
Camp Parsons, and became an Eagle Scout.
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See
John's Album from Camp Parsons
Whatever
drew John Pedersen to Pulali Point in 1929 enticed him again in
1945. He joined three others to buy a seven acre strip of land
along Hood Canal, land surrounded by Camp Parsons. With his wife
Marilyn, he raised four girls and two
boys. As a family, they hiked all around the Olympics, canned
the fruit they picked and grew, ate fresh vegetables in the summer
and cut their winter wood. They
ate fresh oysters and clams from the beach, kayaked and sailed
around Hood
Canal and Dabob Bay, and provided directions to Scouts who strayed
from camp.
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John and Marilyn Pedersen
April, 2003, at the Pulali Point home
they built and have lived in for 55 years. They are dressed to
go to the symphony in Port Angeles.
Today,
John and Marilyn Pedersen live in the house they built adjacent
to Camp Parsons. They have had an excellent relationship with Scout
leaders at Camp
Parsons and feel part of the Scouting family.
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