Sometimes I find an unfixable chair someone has thrown out. Or a piece of discarded wood–an offcut–in a pile. Or sometimes someone calls me and says, “Hey, I have a tree that must be taken down. Can you use any of it?”
Wood: It’s Marvelous
In all such cases, I do what I can to give the wood another life. Because wood is a marvelous thing. Every kind of wood has its unique color, smell, and texture. And each tree in a species of wood has its own pattern or grain. I never know just how a piece of wood will look inside until I work it on the lathe. I like to say it’s opening a gift when I press the gouge into a bowl blank and reveal the beauty within.
Wood: It’s Useful
It would be a shame to let such a miraculous substance go before it has fulfilled all its purposes. There are, of course, pieces of wood whose best last use is giving heat and light. A woodsman once said that a tree can warm three times: when you cut it down, when you cut it up, and when you put it in the fireplace.
A tree in its lifetime gives shelter, shade, and sometimes fruits and flowers. But always beauty. Have you ever noticed how many different colors a single tree possesses–many variations of greens, yellows, browns, and grays in a pine tree, for example?
But man does not always have to be part of the journey. A tree that falls and decays in the forest is providing for animals and insects and releasing its nutrients into soil that will support the next trees. Robert Frost wisely calls that a “slow, smokeless burning.”
Second Chance: It’s Mutual
So wood comes to me in many ways, and I move it on to its next career. Often that is its second career. A few other times, it is a third or fourth career.
I hope that the ornaments I made from the dilapidated chairs are in Christmas boxes in attics or closets until they are needed for another season. Perhaps they will be handed down to other generations. In any case, that wood got another chance to be useful for yet a while longer. And so, then, did I.
I found these gentlemen in some chair slats.
