The very root of sculpture, for me, is wood. Perhaps it was the linseed-oiled, well-worn handles of Grampie's garden tools, kept in the old hen house; perhaps his pipe burl, held in dark, scarred hand as he told hunting stories to his little grandsons (Steve and I). Perhaps it was Mirkwood, from Lord of the Rings, mingling with memories of walks with Grampie, along the Scout trails at Crumhorn. Perhaps it was the Old Rugged Cross, whose shadow fell across my childhood with such a mysterious power.

With such rich, complex, and personal associations it is perhaps no wonder that my earliest memory of myself as sculptor was from the time I tried carving a copy of a wooden figure about 6" high, a deftly carved, ruddy-cheeked fellow in button trousers and wooden shoes, that my brother had bought somewhere. My copy was very poor. I was overwhelmed by a sense of failure. I didn't try again for a long time. Then we started getting Boy's Life magazine and I found "Whittlin' Jim," my first sculpture teacher. I whittled little faces, as instructed, from pine sticks brought back as souvenirs from Crumhorn. I was pleased by the result. and still have a couple: rough-hewn sailor's faces, with long beards.

Somewhere along in this time frame, I discovered X-Acto blades. No more pen knife for me, after that! Sharp as danger, X-acto blades made possible a revolution in carving, for me, though my carvings, dearly handled, were still squarish and naive, "folk art." I still treasure a couple of examples: a tall, stiff man in slouch hat and old coat, and a John Henry-ish figure with spread legs, broad shoulders and big hands (missing his hammer, alas).

A tree felled in the backyard gave me chunks to work with, and for a long time, as I remember, I hacked away at making a stern, primitive-looking face which eventually I recognized as very like the faces in the book, "Aku-Aku." The scale was enormous, compared to everything earlier, and I never finished. I wasn't really aware of what "finish" meant at that point.

If constructions count, I spent months working on a catapult, when I was in Junior High School, I think, based on drawings from an Eric Sloan book on ancient war engines, and built from 2x4's transported by bicycle one or two at a time from EG Home Center, which was miles away. With excited anticipation, I finally positioned my catapault on the patio out back, wound back the throwing arm, and placed a 16" softball in the sling at the end of the arm. Poised to witness this missile whistling through the air and out of sight over the trees, I pulled a string to release the catch: the ball plopped into the grass about six feet away. That's when I learned a truth about myself: I am not an engineer. Thank God, I was alone! After several days of depression, my mind went to work again, and I revised and strengthened my catapault. Same, dismal result. May I continue to build ambitious catapaults, and launch missiles toward impossible heights, until the day I die!

In college, I switched from carving to poetry, (bless you, Jo, for your attention, your inspiration, and your archives!), and to carpentry, after college, thanks to John Knight, "feckless" in his T-shirt, jeans, and toolbelt, wearing a wry sneer as he flicked his Camel cigarette, boundless in his confidence, insatiable in his love of building. He introduced me to Frank Lloyd Wright, too, and reading The Future of Architecture transformed my understanding of "built spaces." I stuck with carpentry for a long time, but eventually, weary from raising a child on a pittance, returned to graduate school and became an English teacher. Seemingly in the blink of an eye, I went from the sweat and sawdust of renovation jobs to the clamor and majesty of Paradise Lost

Eventually, my reading tracked toward Thoreau and Edward Abbey, and in time I went back to wood-shaping. This time, whole trees, at the invitation of good friend Rex Hartson, whose reverence for Native American wisdom and his beautiful land in the mountains north of Blacksburg, were a perfect context. Ancestor Tree, carved from a 30' Ash tree, took me about a year-and-a-half, and is meant to honor those "First People" who came to the land, and knew it for the first time, in a way we have since forgotten. I had originally intended to carve the tree with nothing but my grandfather's axe, and a big, boat-builder's chisel called a "Slick," but finally saw reason and switched to a chain saw. St. Francis, carved from a 25' Ash tree honoring the saint famous for his love of Nature, is still in process. St. Francis is different in concept than Ancestor Tree, which is carved in relief from top to bottom; St. Francis, on the other hand, is selectively in-the-round, big hands at the ends of limbs, open to receive the blessings of the Universe.

Last year, at a ceremony Rex organized in honor of St. Francis and the tree carved in his spirit, I made the following remarks:

When I got started again on St. Francis this summer, I was amazed to find that this tree, which had seemed thoroughly dead, or nearly so, when I began last year, was now sprouting new shoots like mad, shoots with big green leaves. What was I do to? Here I was supposedly shaping a sculpture to symbolize harmony between people and nature, and I was apparently killing the tree to do it. I'd started with an idea, and stumbled into a myth, and was out of my depth.

The Plains Indians understood the myth. They hunted and killed the buffalo, yet revered the buffalo at the same time, as the gift giver. The buffalo gave up its life that the people might live. And Christian tradition carries the myth at its core, too. The Son of God died, on a tree--died that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly.

So I hope it is not preposterous to imagine that when this tree died at my hand--or died more quickly--it was reborn into a different form, to enrich the life of the people with the soul food of St. Francis. I know it's fed me, because during the troubling months since 9/ll it has been very satisfying to climb the scaffold and work on shaping big hands open and uplifted to the heavens--praying hands, cupped to receive illumination and understanding. Surely, this openness is in the spirit of St. Francis.

It has been likewise very satisfying to begin each episode of carving with a simple sage-burning ceremony, to sacralize the work, and the tools, and the sacrifice of this tree. Holding the burning sage in the tree's heart, I watch the smoke, like prayers, rising up past the limbs and into the sky.

Of course, I'm not finished--and neither are the ants, woodpeckers, and numberless multitudes of invisible microbes, who are also at work on this sculpture. It's a group effort. Totem animals will go on: the mouse and the eagle, at least. And perhaps the two limbs rising straight out of the trunk will become Hindu mudras. Then we will have three traditions bound up together: Hindu, Christian, and Native American. And that will call for another celebration!

Afterwood: While sculpting in clay is a process of addition; carving in wood is a process of subtraction. Once subtracted, the wood cannot be put back on, and thus the challenge and the kick of wood carving is the no-going-back commitment to every stroke. Being a Virgo, and somewhat a perfectionist, I find the immediacy and directness of carving both fearful and bracing.