Craft as Nature Contemplation

There’s an old story about three trees – an Oak, an Ash and a Hawthorn – who were growing
together on a hillside overlooking the ocean. One day the three trees were discussing what they’d
like to do if they weren’t a tree.
The Oak, who had spent her long life gazing out over the water, declared that she would like to sail
the ocean and see the world. The Ash, tired of the continual buffeting of the wind, said that he
would like to live in a big sturdy house where he would be sheltered from the elements. But when
the Hawthorn, whose branches overlooked the schoolyard, said that he would like to look after
children, the two other trees laughed.
“You’re covered in thorns and raggedy bark” they scoffed, “how on earth are you going to look
after a child? You’d scratch them to pieces!”. The hawthorn’s branches drooped, and for once
even the laughter of the schoolchildren couldn’t cheer him up.
That night a great storm came, and all three trees were blown down. The next morning a
carpenter came to salvage the wood. The timber from the Oak was firm and even, so the
carpenter used it for the spars of a boat she was building. The limbs of the Ash were long and
smooth so she used it for the beams of a big house she was working on. But the branches of the
Hawthorn were short and gnarled, and so she tossed it into the back of her woodshed and forgot
about it.
A couple of years later the carpenter fell pregnant, and so she decided to start work on building a
cot for her child. In the back of the woodshed she found the pieces of Hawthorn which were the
perfect size for the bars of the crib and once she’d turned and varnished them she was delighted
with their rich, rippled pattern. In time so was her child, and they would play for hours tracing
their finger over each knot and whorl.
And so it was that the dreams of each of the trees came true. The Oak sailed the ocean and saw
the world. The Ash lived in a big house, protected at last from the wind and the rain. And the
Hawthorn, in spite of the laughter of his companions, did indeed look after that child, and their
children, and their children too.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I think about that story from time to time as I sit in my study, surrounded by the dreams of trees.
The table at which I work was made from reclaimed construction timber. The arms of the chairs
on which my guests sit, mass produced though they are, have their roots in some distant conifer
plantation. The guitar in the corner is expertly crafted from multiple shades of carefully selected
hardwoods. The books on the shelves, the shelves on the wall, even the wall itself with its
chipboard paper, all of these carry the remnants of the woods from whence they came, and I
sometimes wonder how many of those trees would be happy with where they have ended up.
But I think about that story most often when I am sat in my corner of the garage, on a wooden
stool, at a wooden chopping block, with a wood-handled axe and knife, turning a fresh chunk of
Birch or Damson or Sycamore into something that, in a way that would surely please William
Morris, is both beautiful and useful.
There is a certain pressure, a profound responsibility, to the act of turning a branch into a spoon.
The piece of Birch which I hold in my hand came down in a recent storm and, if I had left it, would
gradually have worked its way back into the soil from which it had spent the past thirty or forty
years escaping. None of this would have been wasted, it would have become food or shelter for
countless creatures, it would have enriched the soil, and it may well, in a final act of life-giving,
have nurtured the growth of its own great-great-granddaughter from the earth on which it fell.
But now it will not do that because I came along with my pocket saw and claimed it as my own and
brought it back to my garage – a longer journey than any Birch tree might reasonably expect to
make. And so, with each blow of the axe or cut of the knife, I must do what I can to ensure that I
too am life-giving, making the most of the gift which I have taken from the woods. In transfiguring
that Birch branch into an eating spoon I am enabling it once more to give life and nourishment, not
to its own kind, but to mine.
I am well aware that the Birch tree does not care about any of this. That its capacity for instinct
and understanding, though doubtless wise beyond my comprehension, is devoted to the craft of
root and branch and leaf and seed. That the concept of a spoon is as meaningless to the Birch as a
radio is to a river. And yet it still matters.
It matters because my taking and using of that particular section of that particular tree is, in
microcosm, the story of us all. When we look at the world around us we cannot pretend that we
are not connected. The air we breathe, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, all are woven into
the web of life of which we are a part and my choices, my decisions, they affect the balance of that
web.
And so, as I eat my dinner with my birch wood spoon, I am reminded to be thankful. Thankful for
the Birch, so beautiful and fragile and life-giving, and for all the trees and plants and creatures and
people with which I share this fragile and beautiful life. And I wonder whether one day, when my
time comes to be felled by the storms of life, my body will give life and nourishment to that Birch
Tree’s great-great-granddaughter.