Warren Samuel Walvatne

Warren held firmly to what he loved. On a nice day, you wouldn't find Warren at the beach, instead you'd find him chainsaw in hand, sweat dripping down his brow up on a logging road sawing some debris logs from a recent clearcut - or at a local friend's place helping with a tree that fell down. He was a connoisseur of firewood. If you ever had the pleasure to share a campfire with Warren, he could talk to you all night about the types of wood that were burning, the dryness level, the amount of "BTUs" that were stored in the sappy ones. It was impossible to ignore the amount of passion he held about nature and especially trees. In his off time away from the woods you'd find Warren at a table enjoying a good porter and playing a game of cribbage and hearing him say "From the Penthouse to the Outhouse!" when the cards turned the other way on him. He cared little about how his truck looked, or the wear in his clothing - what he cared about most were his friends and family.

Saying Warren was "a people person" would be an understatement. He was larger than life. Often the life of the party, known to many of his friends as "Wahoo", he captured the nearby audience with his story-telling , His stories/sayings sourced from characters he befriended along the way, including a mentor while apple-picking in Eastern Washington where he picked up the sage advice "Never get to the point where you need the job more than the job needs you." He had a knack for connecting with anyone he met - people often described meeting Warren for the first time and said it felt like they were talking to a lifelong friend. He followed a moral compass. If he had a shirt on his back he'd give it to you, and was obsessed with not wasting a damn thing.

Warren was born a twin in May of 1948, one of ten children on a small family farm located on the west shore of Otter Tail Lake. MN. As a big brother, his sister, Annette, remembers how he would walk ahead of the younger kids in the woods, knocking all the spider webs down for them. As a boy attending a one-room schoolhouse, he was always the one to stand up to 'bullies' and wasn't afraid to take on the whole school in snowball fights. After graduating from Battle Lake High School in 1966, Warren enlisted in the US Army - initially stationed in Germany and then later, sent to the Central Highlands of Vietnam, where he worked alongside the native Montagnard people. Returning to the US, he spent some time in Minnesota attending Alexandria Technical School. The Universe turned out to have another plan for Warren's destiny in the form of a job offer from Lake Crescent Lodge in Washington State as a bartender. It was here where he would meet his future wife of 53 years, Chris with whom he'd have 3 children - Anna, Daniel, and Joe. It was also on the Olympic Peninsula where he'd form his "Peninsula River Rat" company. He hired a young crew that despite facing extreme working conditions - often sawing at debris with their chainsaws in a river with a sheet of ice on it - would become lifelong friends. He was noted in Husqvarna magazine as saying "You've got to be mentally tough to do this type of work, otherwise the conditions will kill you". In the late 80s Warren and his family moved to Port Townsend, where he took a job with the Port Townsend Paper Mill and began running Marathons with his brothers at the age of 40, including Boston, New York, and the Twin Cities.

A wake/party/ life celebration for Warren will be held at Old Fort Townsend State Park on Saturday, May 23 from 3-7. It's potluck and you'll need your Discover pass or purchase a $10 day pass at the park.