I picked up a few requests over the holiday, so I’m out in the garage, cutting some Cherry and Butternut blanks, and getting to work on the initial steps of bringing an antique handaxe back to life.
The heater’s finally taken the edge off the chill, and the workshop’s warm and welcoming; it’s the perfect day to be out here with my tools, enjoying the space that inevitably opens up after the blissful chaos of the annual celebrations.
I’m reminded, in the silence of this space, of the feeling of sitting on the beach when the waves have withdrawn. There’s an openness to it; and a deep and palpable grace that only comes from the knowing and accepting of its impermanence…
I guess it’s a good idea to go back to the beginning.
Lately, I’ve been watching some videos on YouTube where a bunch of guys have been touting some inexpensive axes from Harbor Freight. The story goes that with a little tweaking, these bad boys can become a fairly decent camp axe. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at something like this, and at just under twelve bucks a pop, I figured I had nothing to lose.
I won’t go too heavily into the details; there’s a ton of videos out there explaining the process, so there’s no need for me to reinvent the wheel. But the upshot is that the videos I’ve been watching do seem pretty accurate.
Here’s a picture of what I started out with:
First, I removed the stickers and sanded the varnish off the handles. I left them rough to ensure a better grip. Then I drilled each of them out to accommodate a lanyard. I’ll be using paracord for this, but I don’t have any on hand, so I’ll attach the lanyards later, when it comes in.
After sanding the paint off the heads of the axes, I got to work reprofiling them with a rag and Bastard file. They were pretty thick, so I thinned them out and lengthened the cutting edges. When that was done, I ran them across some diamond sharpening pads and took them down to 3200 grit.
Once they were sufficiently sharpened, I burned in my maker’s mark and oiled the handles.
They’re drying on my carving block in the workshop, and I’m really looking forward to testing-driving them when I get the chance.
Overall, I’d say it was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday afternoon…
I roughed out a piece of Box Elder this morning. It was the first time I ever worked with it, and the blank was a little bit dry and unforgiving. It was a struggle at first, but somewhere in the middle of things, we reached an agreement.
My brother and I have a saying that we use every now and then: “Christmas in December.” It’s shorthand between us for “business as usual,” or “same shit different day.” He said that in a text he sent me today, which is what got me thinking about it.
Sometimes, you get the idea that things are going to pretty much run to form – that the work you’ve done time and time again will end up being “Christmas in December.” But then, it decides to throw you a curve ball, and best laid plans can quickly turn into a generous portion of “what the hell am I going to do now?”
When this happens, it can either end in failure, or it can give you some insight which you couldn’t have gotten any other way.
Such was the case this morning, when I cut too deeply into the blank, rode the grain, and because it was dry, ended up taking a chunk out of the bowl. I spat out a couple of appropriate Germanic expletives, stared at it for a minute or two, and then I stopped, and let the spoon tell me what to do.
Sure enough, it had a few ideas.
The blank was still pretty thick, so I took my carving hatchet to the end of it, repaired the bowl, now a bit shorter and shallower than I initially intended, and went back to work roughing out the spoon.
It’s drying in the wood chips as I write this. In a few more days, I should be able to fish it out and finish everything up. I’ll approach it a bit more carefully when I do.
I got a request from someone I know to carve some spoons as Christmas gifts for his wife and her sister. He said it would be nice for them to have something to pass down from generation to generation.
And so, it occurred to me that I’ve finally reached the age where someone actually came to me to ask me to create something specifically intended to reach the hands of people I’ll never meet – people who will only know me through my work.
This got me thinking about some of the things that were handed down to me: my father’s anger, my mother’s codependence. My wife and I don’t have any children of our own, so it falls to me to make sure they don’t go any further.
The work’s been long and difficult – a lot more difficult than setting knife to Butternut. It’s a strange thing to find myself in the process of creating new potential heirlooms, while doing my best to remove all traces of a few of the old ones…
I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately. Standing in the workshop, sharpening my knives, and watching a swarm of bumblebees patrolling the Russian Sage, it isn’t hard to stay connected with this.
There’s a recognition in ceremony of those who’ve come before – of objects carried by other hands, and words by other voices. Every time I pick up a blank or a billet, and set to work roughing out a spoon, I’m aware of just how many hands besides my own are touching it.
Almost every tool I used today was a Christmas present from my wife or another member of my family. The Butternut was donated. My Carolinas were also a Christmas present. And even my apron came from a box that showed up when my brother in-law dropped off his Shopsmith.
It’s good to be aware of these things. To let them into the work; let them help in the shaping of it. Let them carry it – and be carried by it – from this set of hands to the next…
Yesterday, we gathered for a ceremony in the back yard while most of the rest of the civilized world 9-5’ed. As is generally the case whenever we get together, our focus quickly turned to the state of the world.
Our conversations are usually free-form and heavily seasoned with laughter and wry observations. That’s not to say our ceremonies are unstructured or lack direction. The form is there, though largely marbled through the meat, instead of plastered over it like a cast. There’s a necessary sacredness in coming together with laughter, especially in a world which seems to base so much of its existence upon cruelty, greed, conflict, and fear.
Eventually, we got around to the topic of peace, and how we might bring a little more of it into the world. As a great deal of our work is based upon the Medicine Wheel – or at least the version presented to us in the teachings of Grandfather Joseph Rael (aka Beautiful Painted Arrow) – I attempted to approach the question from this perspective.
The path of the Wheel begins in the East, with the rising of the sun. From there it follows the sun through the sky as it passes into the South, West, and North.
Agriculturally speaking, the East is where the seed is planted.
In the South, the garden is tended. It’s a time of expectation and uncertainty. Will there be too much rain or too little? Will the temperatures run to extremes? Will there be enough food for us all come the harvest? Will we have to deal with insects, deer, or rabbits?
In the West, the questions fall away, and the results are gathered in. We fill the cupboards and begin the necessary preparations to take us through the winter.
In the North, the long, dark time of howling winds, warm fires, and taking stock of the past year’s endeavors, we sustain ourselves on whatever we’ve put aside. If we planted good and healthy crops during the spring, that’s what will feed us as the snow piles up and the windowpanes rattle. If, instead, we’ve planted weeds and thorns, then that will be the source of our nourishment for the winter.
Perhaps, then, the process of peace begins with asking what we’d like to feed ourselves and our loved ones with and simply planting it. We can’t transform the crops once they’re in the ground, but we can learn to pay attention to the seeds we’re sewing.
It’s a blessing to have these things in our lives: fruitful and light-hearted conversations with the Elders of our tribe, an afternoon to sit and write after a morning of errands, pruning the squash vines, and removing the surface rust from a jointer.
Maybe this is how we sew a little peace into our corner of the field…
I spent the morning out in the yard pulling weeds. I’m a lackadaisical weeder at best, but they’d finally gotten to the point where I could no longer convince myself they were “helping the garden.”
After a few hours of that, I grabbed a quick lunch and sat on the front porch covered in dirt, drinking coffee and watching some honeybees working the Russian Sage.
The neighborhood was traffic, crows, and thunder.
As I write this, there’s a slight breeze, a quickening rain, and a tornado warning for the next half-hour or so. But the cat is sleeping comfortably, and the air is full of birdsongs, so at least for now, it appears that we’re okay.
My intentions are to get back out there and cut the grass once everything blows through. That’ll probably take another hour or two, so I’m content to sit here typing away, listening to the rain and the rumble of the thunder.
When I was a kid, thunderstorms used to terrify me. I remember wrapping a pillow around my head so I wouldn’t be assaulted by the noise. Now, the fiercer they are, the more I love them. Apparently, there are some things in life we begin to make peace with as we get older…
I’m at the point in my life where cashiers younger than I am call me “Sweetheart”. Thankfully, I’m also at another point in my life: the one where I can graciously accept it. For a while, I wasn’t sure about this whole getting older thing. It was all kind of weird, actually – sort of a second teenagerhood. I was too young to fraternize with the Elders, and too old to hang around with the young’uns.
But sixty-two has proven to be something of a magic number; almost a kind of sweet spot. My body certainly doesn’t lie; I’m sixty-two not twenty-two. And I occasionally have to rest between rounds of yardwork…especially when the heat index approaches anything north of ninety-five degrees. But instead of catching myself thinking, “Shit, I must be getting old,” as I often used to do, now I simply smile and think, “Well, it’s not like I have a deadline…“
Those of us with garages or sheds that double as workshops understand that free space is a privilege. Mine, for example, is packed to the rafters with odd-sized lengths of various kinds of wood, tubs of billets waiting to be turned into spoons, carving tools, a meager but appropriate assortment of power tools, a lawnmower, a couple semi-retired bikes, a rolling shop table, other bits of assorted stuff too numerous to mention, and a nearly ready-to-braid harvest of this year’s garlic. I’ve gotten used to walking – and working – in there through dedicated practice. It’s easy for things to pile up after a while. Still, with a bit of adjustment, I can find the room to put my feet up with a craft beer or a cup of coffee, look upon my work, and call it good.
There’s a sacredness to the spaces in between things. They’re little doorways that allow the Medicine in. They give us time to rest and breathe, to harvest what was planted in the action, to take it in and let it nourish these bodies of ours which move, perhaps, just a little bit slower these days…
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to get myself out to the garage and putter around in the workshop. Recent changes in the weather required turning it into a staging area for some new patio furniture, so there was barely enough room for walking out there; let alone tinkering with hatchets and knives or any of the other implements of destruction that have made the place their home.
Yesterday, however, the weather shifted a bit, and I was able to put together a new deck box and move the furniture out to the patio. I also rearranged the garage, and set to work sprucing up this old beastie, which I recently rescued from the workshop of close friend who passed away a few years ago.
It’s an old-school, cast-iron Craftsman scroll saw that’s seen its share of use. It’s hefty, clunky, and low tech; and I absolutely adore the thing…for exactly those same reasons. It’s currently sitting atop the platform he built for it, adjusting to its new surroundings. And after a good going-over with a steel Chore Boy and some WD-40, it seems to be settling in just fine.
As an added bonus, someone dropped a couple of small Maple trees right down the street from us. This windfall landed me a nice stack of clean, spooniferous* wood.
I ran the chainsaw through it earlier today, and my plan is to haul out the bandsaw and my carving axe and turn the lot of it into billets later this afternoon.
It’s been an abundant week so far – very little of it planned, but all of it rewarding, none the less.
I fell into a discussion with a fellow traveler a while back about recognizing the work we’re here to do, and how that actually compares to the stories we’ve told ourselves about how our lives should be. This is not to discount the value of planning or the uplifting quality of dreams. And yet, as is often the case, we’ve both come to find that our current lives bare little in common with our past imaginings of them.
“If it lands at your feet, it’s yours to do,” he told me. It’s a philosophy that flies in the face of a culture that often demands of its children an answer to the question, “What are you going to be when you grow up,” and then proceeds to herd them headlong through high school and college, and straight into the workforce, with little or no time for self-discovery.
These days I’ll admit that I’m blessed with a life that reveals itself on an almost moment-by-moment basis. Living this way is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who demand a world that bends to their ideas of how it should be. It’s often unpredictable, and therein lies its Medicine. Having said this, it also readily offers up its own unerring guidance if one can simply listen for it, and answer, “yes…”
*Spooniferous, Adj. – A type of wood – regardless of species – possessing qualities rendering it appropriate for the crafting of wooden spoons.
When supper was ended, He took the cup. Again, He gave You thanks and praise. He gave the cup to his disciples and said, “take this, all of you and drink from it. This is the Blood of the New and Everlasting Covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of Me.”
Memory…
It’s a strange thing, but if mine records it correctly, I was somewhere around sixteen-years-old the last time I served mass as an altar boy at Saint Mary’s Visitation Church in Dickson City, Pa. As I write this, that was nearly forty-six years ago, and although I’ve only found myself inside a Catholic church a handful of times since then, if pressed, I can still remember a great deal of the liturgy verbatim.
During my years as a parishioner, I was not only an altar boy, but also a student at the parish grade school, which saw me regularly attending services like First Friday, Ash Wednesday, and Stations of the Cross with my fellow students.
There was a great deal of structure marbled through the meat of my religious upbringing. Confession on Saturday afternoons. Mass and Holy Communion on Sundays – but if the Host gets stuck to the roof of your mouth, don’t you EVER touch it with your finger… and for God’s sake, DON’T CHEW IT! Dietary and sometimes social restrictions on Fridays and High Holy Days. A whole legion of could’s and couldn’t’s, should’s and shouldn’t’s, do’s and don’t’s.
The rules and restrictions, and the rewards and punishments based on one’s ability to comply, brought a sense of order and purpose to my existence. They also brought an almost ever-present sense of guilt, shame, and fear. And while they certainly handed me more than enough of these things, what they never actually gave me was an intimate and personal connection with the presence of God.
That experience arrived decades later when, having just come through a very dark and heavily grief-ridden period in my life, I crawled into what would be the first of many sweat lodges. As I’ve said time and time again since that evening, some twenty years ago, I have talked to God many times, but that was the first time I actually heard Him talking back.
I wish to be absolutely clear that it is not my intention to set Spirituality against Religion. It is my deeply held belief that while many of us might be travelling along different roads, we are all pretty much headed towards the same destination. And if that’s true, what a wonderfully diverse assortment of stories we might share with one another once we get there!
The main point of all this is that aside from the occasional ceremonial guideline and teachings at the foot of an Elder, there don’t tend to be a lot of formalized restrictions to adhere to these days. Certainly, there are signs, if I’m aware enough to notice them; but the most important guidance comes from working to maintain a direct and open connection between heart and Spirit. Living this way has allowed my faith to deepen. It has also taught me to trust my instincts, and to accept with gratitude the portion that I’ve been given.
Some days there’s wood to chop, raised beds to build, stones to gather, or spoons to carve. Or perhaps, I might find myself holding space for someone who’s come to see me; or working through my own recovery in solitude or with my teacher.
When my humanity gets the best of me, it’s often convenient to wish for the times when the do’s and don’ts were laid out a bit more clearly and concisely. But just as my carving continues to evolve through the subtle – and not so subtle – lessons of wood, axe, and knife, my faith also continues to evolve through the subtle – and not so subtle – lessons of instinct, heart, and Spirit…
Bonja the Bodger 