How do You Tell Your Story?
Authorship is more than just words on a page.
I am a storyteller. I am also a woodworker. These two things are not mutually exclusive of each other. In fact, it could be argued that these two aspects of my life intertwine more than any others. Like the canopy of a Pacific Northwest rainforest, the branches of these two trees reach up toward the sun, hungry for light at the same time they reach out for the companionship of the other.
To put words to page is no mean feat but has stumped even the most genius of wordsmiths to grace the shelves of libraries far and wide. But for me, it is not only the bound slices of tightly pressed tree pulp that hold the stories of life and our Mother Earth. The innumerable miles of horizontal plains crafted from the fallen elders of such families as Pine, Oak, Maple, and Cypress, hold aloft parliaments of literary works ranging in all shapes and sizes and flavors.
Consider the epic tale of a masterful oak from conception to ash. A forest many leagues away, dating back eons no one can count is home to a woodland creature preparing for the long, cold season ahead. Our furry friend of yore plucks from an ancient oak long since gone, the seed of future stories. Her work is laborious and in the shuffle this particular seed becomes lost, abandoned on the forest floor. Winter comes and goes. Seasons change and years pass. Over time, the seed is interred, warmed, watered, nurtured. Like the beak of a baby bird cracking its shell, a small sprout reaches out of the ground to take its first breath.
Time slips. Years creep. Decades inch by. The march of life and progress surrounds the sprout that has long since risen from the dirty depths of the forest floor to become a long-standing member of the arboreal community. She has produced her own offspring who are beginning their own journey toward the heavens. A century has faded into memories no one holds. But our proud oak friend stands resolute, having weathered storms and droughts and fires and sentient forest creatures claiming space in her limbs as their home or using her trunk as a scratching post or urinal. She doesn’t mind. She is happy to give of herself so that others may feel safe. For many more years she provides shelter and love only a devout mother can provide.
Her friends disappear. The land around her is cleared for oddly shaped trees with no limbs or lush greenery that seem to contain hairless creatures walking upright. She comes to accept them as her new family and friends. The smaller of these creatures climb her trunk to rest in her limbs or attach spindly vines to her in order to sway in breezes that aren’t there. As age begins to weaken her, she grows more and more tired releasing her tender limbs until she can longer recognize herself. She is ready for sleep.
Knowing she is not long for the earth, she accepts her fate when two of the furless creatures begin to prune away what is left of her beauty. As they take her down, piece-by-piece, she can only hope that she is going to a better place. This is not the end of her story.
Much of our Oak has found her way to the hands of a loving craftsman who cleans her dried bark and begins to shape her in to more uniform bits. Slowly he begins to compose a new story from her hearty flesh. The craftsman is an author, writing the lines, reviewing pages, editing his work, and redrafting when necessary. With every cut and paste a structure begins to form. The flow of her grain lends structure to her new chapter. The oak finds herself reborn as several new volumes of a collection that becomes a library in the home of her author.
The rhetoric of this new tale is underscored by the grammar of the flourishes he adds. Sanding and buffing. Staining and sealing. Trim work. Hinges and handles. When finally the Oak is published, her newfound glory is revealed. She stands for decades more earning new scars of joy and tickles of injury. A scuff on a door panel earned from a dog running passed with a shoe in its mouth. A gouge on a shelf left from and antique clock dragged sideways for dusting. A crescent moon watermark discarded on a ledge during a particularly raucous party several New Year’s eves ago. Each of these is not a new story but a continuation of one that started long before any of us were around to witness.
And as time continues to pass, her uniformly shaped limbs gather the remnants of ancestors and descendants alike. The books she now holds remind her everyday of the once luscious leaves she brandished each spring and summer. Perhaps one day, she begins to think to herself, a fire like those of her youth may release her spirit back into the air so she may return to forest and begin anew. But for now, she is happy providing shelter and comfort and in her own way light to those around her who seem to need it most or even only occasionally.
There she stands. The Mighty Oak. Whether rooted amongst elders or supporting the enlightenment of mankind, her story is beautiful and epic.
As a woodworker, it is my privilege to peer into the soul of a tree and find its next chapter. My love of the craft of composition goes well beyond the words on the page but deep into the grain that binds those stories together.
