Bonja the Bodger

Plum lines…

November 6th, 2023

I was gifted with a couple pieces of Plum by some friends of ours whom we visited yesterday for a ceremony honoring the Fall. Plum is a heavier wood, and it’s difficult to carve, even when it’s green. What they gave me seems a bit dry, so it’ll probably end up feeding the band saw instead of a hook knife and hatchet.

Their property is pretty heavily wooded, and by now most of the trees have gotten down to the business of shedding their leaves, so the ground was littered with tatters of red and brown.

So much of this season and the work it involves centers around the release of things which no longer continue to serve us; the allowing of them to drop like dead leaves amid the lengthening shadows of November.

A teacher of mine with whom I’ve worked for the last several years has encouraged me to study the trees during the Fall; to sit and meditate on how easily most will release their burdens to open space for the new growth of the coming Spring. And yet there is that occasional defiant Oak, roots driven stubbornly into the soil, that clings to the skeletal remains of a few dead leaves even as its branches rattle against the frozen tirade of January’s winds.

I wonder how often we have found ourselves hanging onto our old ways with that same Oak-like tenacity, all the while cursing our seeming inability to release them…

But there is also another teaching wrapped inside the fabric of this meditation. Just before they drop their robes and stand shivering and naked before the icy truth of Winter, the trees breathe in every available photon of light and hold it deeply as if to remind themselves that the coming darkness is not a permanent thing; that the light remains even in presence of so much apparent death and decay.

It’s important to remember this; to find those places within ourselves where the light has gathered; and to know that it still remains, even though all apparent evidence of it has crumbled and fallen away in the long, cold, necessary dark of Winter…
Potluck…

October 30th, 2023

There’s something sacred about cooking for a potluck. This is especially true when it involves using a utensil created with my own hands. There’s a feeling that the piece itself is somehow transformed during the process.

It’s kind of a neat idea that a hunk of wood from a fallen tree can find new life and new meaning in the service of others.

When we share the results of our labor with a community, we give away portions of ourselves and receive likewise from those sustained by our efforts. We fortify each other; in essence, become each other – grateful for the opportunity to help one another survive.

An old man in his kitchen turning food into gratitude: this is good work for a Monday afternoon…
Im-perfect…

October 26th, 2023

The template says, “This is what it’s going to look like when it’s finished.”

The spatula says, “Oh, yeah?”

Crafting a spoon often means setting out on a journey into the realms of the unknown. Factors such as the age and genus of the of the wood, hidden deposits of sap, or an unexpected deformity in the grain can quickly waylay even the best-drawn plans, and send a carver scrambling for their compass.

Faced with these challenges, one incurs the risk of becoming overly-attached to the original idea of how things should be. Left unchecked, such rigidity – especially when keenly-sharpened instruments are involved – could result in fuel for the campfire or a trip to the first aid kit or emergency room.

Learning to dance with the inherent unpredictability of working with an organic medium – itself the product of random influences like climate, soil content, and geographic location – means letting go and listening to what that medium has to say.

When approached in this manner, one often discovers its willing to cooperate down to the finest details. And yet, there are times when the material will have its way; and one is left with the simple choice of struggle or surrender…
Rough cut…

October 20th, 2023

Yesterday I had a chance to visit a friend of mine. We spent the day in his back yard by the fire carving spoons. He’s a bigger guy and visibly strong, with military experience. As we worked however, I noticed that his axe cuts seemed measured and precise; his use of the hook knife, subtle – almost delicate.

I stopped for a few seconds and thought about my own technique, which can sometimes best be described as unorthodox. While there’s no doubt that I enjoy this craft immensely, I occasionally find myself growing impatient and forcing things along. When that happens, this work will inevitably become the object of my frustration.

That this pattern affects my life in areas other than my carving isn’t something that’s lost on me. And recently I’ve become aware that I’m finally closing in on the part of me that requires things to be this way…
Prayer ties…

October 8th, 2023

We collect our pain into bundles of black cloth and tobacco; gather them in; and crawl silently into the palpable medicine of the lodge as we have done so many times before.

Outside the seasoned Oak burns brightly, imparting heat as ancient wisdom into the Grandfathers, now fully awake. They’ve traveled miles and many millennia to share their stony stories; and we sit, huddled in the darkness, ready to listen.

After the sweat we take our prayers and offer them to the fire. One by one they disappear, releasing those things we once held so tightly to ourselves – at times perhaps, even more tightly than our own names.

Lately it seems there’s a healthy portion of letting go to the work; the opening up of secret places, and waiting in the spaces left behind.

Waiting…

Nothing so much about crafting this time as recovery. And yet with both, there is a shaping of something integral in the process; and in that shaping, a removal of that which is no longer needed, through practice often arduous and repetitive…
Falling in…

September 28th, 2023

I have always felt a deep and personal connection to the cool, dampening mystery of Autumn. Shadows lengthen; and the trees draw in the last fading flickers of light, only to throw them back into the world before resigning themselves to the long, dark, healing sleep of Winter.

Leaves once green – now red and gold – whither and fade to brown, and the trees turn their attention towards the letting go of that which no longer serves them. . . and then they will rest; gathering their strength for next year’s growth.

Working with the bodies of dying trees makes tangible the transformative qualities of the cycle of death and rebirth. While it is certainly my hands and tools that shape these items, one could also argue that these are simply the means through which they enter the world.

Viewed from this perspective, my role in all of this seems far less that of creator than of midwife. . .
Better wood than blood…

September 15th, 2023

First a bit of stropping, and then it’s on to the work.

I love these brisk September mornings: the ones that require an extra shirt, but aren’t cold enough yet for the kerosene heater. There’s a whiff of finality in the breeze that nudges the leaves of the ornamental pear trees across the street; perhaps inciting them to remember that their days are numbered.

But there is also a sense of beginning. The calling in of shorter days and darker nights; of heavier meals and slower mornings…The in-between-ness of it all imbues it with a sort of magic; a chrysalis-ness where old patterns dissolve and newer ones emerge all wet-winged and wide-eyed.

It’s a blessing to live this way, even when the spoon gods demand their occasional tribute.

Still if one is called to sacrifice, it’s no doubt far more preferable to pay in wood than in blood.

We break things in this work, for that is the toll of its wisdom. But it is often in their very breaking that these things become our teachers…
A spoonful of prayer…

September 4th, 2023

The fences in our neighborhood are a dapple of white and grey: rickety colonnade and garish vinyl randomly overlapping; huddling impossibly close to virtually nonexistent property lines; taking their half, as my mother would say, out of the middle.

Yet somehow the occasional seed finds sanctuary in one of the small and nearly sunless canyons created by this assertive demarcation. It takes root there among the stray blades of crab grass and tendrils of Virginia Creeper, only to hurl itself emphatically towards the light; threatening in its struggle to topple the very walls of the fortress that surrounds it.

One such seed became the Mulberry tree I was forced to drop earlier this summer. As a rule I never fell a living tree for my carving. I typically resort to road-kill wood or timber brought down by storms or high winds. But the location of this particular tree and its impending assault on my and my neighbor’s fences meant that it had to come down. As I needed to replace the fence panel anyway, I decided to do the deed myself. And so armed with chainsaw, axe, and root-cutting shovel, I went to work

The tree was gracious in its death and generously gifted me with an abundance of beautiful white and golden-yellow billets, one of which yielded the spoon pictured above.

My ongoing recovery has taught me to acknowledge the contributions of the ones who’ve come before us: the sacrifices that put the food on our table, the lifework of Elders handed down to generations of children walking behind them, the impact of our parents’ sickness expressing itself as the wounds we seek to heal.

Grandfather Joseph Rael (aka Beautiful Painted Arrow), the visionary of Picuris Pueblo and Ute descent whose teachings resonate at the heart of so much of the ceremonial work undertaken by our spiritual community, tells us that work is worship. If so, then perhaps the spoon itself is a remembering of this; a prayer of gratitude given form and released into world for the service of others…
That moment when…

August 30th, 2023

…you look upon your work and call it good…

I spent a couple of hours this morning repairing the edge of one of my carving axes.

After that I broke for lunch and worked in the kitchen until almost 4 o’clock.

Now I’m relaxing on the patio with a cup of coffee and a piece of cake; the events of the day settling in around me.

No matter what happens beyond this point, nothing can ever change the fact that my life was blessed with the gift of these last few hours…
Crossing the line…

August 29th, 2023

There is an obvious sense of ritual about the process. Laying out the tools. Stropping the blades. Testing their sharpness against the hair on my left arm.

When speaking of ceremony, we often talk of entering liminal space; of crossing a line into that place where one experiences directly the presence of something beyond words – something powerful, unknown, and unknowable.

And yet, there is also an awareness of something familiar.

There’s a definite feeling of coming home…although we’re not quite certain what – or where – that home even is.

I find myself entering this place almost every time I pick up my tools to carve. Even if the billet I’m working on is as square as my current level of mastery will allow. Even if the template is precisely traced and my tools honed to their keenest edge, there’s still a bit of the Trickster in the recipe: a hidden inclusion in the wood, a random twisting of the grain, the occasional exchange of greetings with a neighbor walking by that momentarily pulls me back across the line from that place of silence and mystery.

And yet, these things are all still part of the ritual. Their very presence changes the objects in my hands; changes the hands themselves. It’s this transformative quality that lures me to the ceremony of this work – the slow and determined removal of excess matter obscuring the truth of whatever lies beneath it…