Carving Black Walnut

            I lived in a cabin in the forest of the Sierra Mountains. I loved living there, more than a mile from my nearest neighbor.

            One summer day, I decided to go see what Sam thought of my new songs and to see what new songs he had written. I carried my guitar and hiked a deer trail through ponderosa pine trees and manzanita brush, over a ridge, across the highway, and along another ridge to Sam’s place.

            We arranged chairs so we could play guitars and sing songs. I noticed a dark, triangular piece of wood in his wood box. I picked it up and said, “This is black walnut. You can’t burn this. It’s valuable. They sell this stuff by the pound.”

            Sam said, “One of the places I cleaned out, they put that with the stuff they wanted me to haul to the dump. It was a blank for a rifle stock, but it’s cracked, so they threw it away. You want it?”

            “I do. I could carve that.”

            “It’s yours. After we play some music.”

            We played some songs, worked out rough spots in the way our music went together, and we visited. I hiked the trail home at dusk. A waxing moon gave me light as day’s light faded. I carried my guitar and the piece of black walnut.

            The next morning, I carried the black walnut out into sunlight. I cut off the narrow end of the triangle, where the wood had split, and I started carving. A small spiral in the wood’s grain suggested a cheek and an eye, so I planned the carving to fit.

            The heavy, dark brown, close-grained, piece of wood slowly took on form. I was a little surprised that I began to find realistic figures in black walnut. I wasn’t surprised that carving the hard wood was a slow process.

            I started forming the wood into two women, two generations, back to back, an older, heavier woman facing one way and sharing part of her back with a younger, slimmer, woman, large with child, facing the other way. The heavy wood began to represent three generations.

            Norman stopped by one day when I was removing small shavings of wood with very sharp hand tools. He said, “I have a small, high speed router you could borrow and make that go a lot faster.”

            Next time he came by, he brought the electric tool and left it with me. I tried the tool. I didn’t like the screaming noise it made, and I didn’t like the wood dust the small, spinning burrs threw into the air. I realized that feeling the carving process was as important as seeing what I was doing, and with the electric tool, all I could feel was the high-speed vibration of the machine.

            Next time I saw Norman, I thanked him and gave him back his router. I continued carving with wooden-handled gouges and knives, pleased to again achieve quiet progress toward a far-in-the-future goal.

            I carved tightly spiraling grain until it looked like a young woman’s cheek and eye, and I smoothed the upper part of the figures with sandpaper. Carving became a study in blending deep patience with vision.

            I had not finished the figures emerging from black walnut when I started working contracts for the Forest Service in the Sierras and camping where I worked. I gave up the cabin and carried everything I owned with me. I trimmed possessions and couldn’t carry much beyond the essentials for survival and work.

            I sold my carving tools. I gave the sculpture to a friend. She said, “It doesn’t have to be smoothed out and polished. It’s emerging. This one emerges from this one, and another will emerge. The form still emerges from the wood.”

            Yes. Still emerging. Like my life. Like life.

            I thanked the wood, the tree it came from, and the force of life for growth, for the learning I gained from the wood, from carving, from finding figures in heavy, dark wood. I kept memories of seeking form as rich, newly opened smells of wood rose to my face. I remembered that sunshine soaked hot into me as I carved. Trees grew all around me on the mountain.