Wood and the Language of Love

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.
~ John Fowles 

A friend, (let’s call her Darla), told me once of a piece of furniture her husband had made for her. It meant a lot to her, she explained to me, because her husband is a pretty quiet guy, and she’s come to realize over the years that making things for her is his language of love to her.

Decades ago, I cut firewood to make extra money. Wherever I found trees being pushed over to make room for new houses, I’d ask permission to cut as much firewood as I could out of the area. Occasionally, I’d find an ancient tree pushed over that was big enough to harvest lumber from, and I’d work mighty hard to load it into my truck, and haul it to the sawmill, and have it milled down to rough-sawn lumber. Then I’d carefully stack and dry it.

I accumulated quite a treasure trove of excellent lumber – oak, walnut, and cherry mostly – much of which was 12” wide or more. I used it over the years, for things like bookshelves and fireplace mantles in homes we built. But much of it has stayed with me all these years, pieces of ancient woodland history harvested and cared-for by me as I’ve traveled through life.

I think I always held out hope that my kids would come to appreciate the deep wealth and history of those bones from within ancient trees. But, as is generally the case with kids, they follow their own paths, and those paths didn’t take them close to or through the libraries of ancient tree lore.

But fate crossed my path with Darla, whose husband used wood as a language of love. Who better to appreciate the thirty-something years of care my lumber received after the trees it came from had gathered life from the earth for hundreds of years? Who better to understand the significance of the language this wood can speak?

So I helped him load the wood into his truck the other day, and handed custody over to a younger man who can care for and craft the wood into it’s next iteration of language. While there was perhaps a tiny bit of sadness as the wood left, there was far greater joy that it might now be crafted into a rare and wonderful language.

My role in the transformation of those ancient trees was only to rescue their lumber, and to cure and care for the lumber through many years. Through those years, it aged and ripened in my care, preparing for the next step in its transformation. It’s now been given to its next custodian, who will help it emerge into a wonderful language – much like the language it must have spoken all those years ago standing tall and strong in the forest.

The groves were God’s first temples.
~ William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn

Lots of things in life are like that, aren’t they? We’re often called to play a role for a time in the transformations of this world around us. To protect a thing, not to possess it. To be a steward, not a tyrant. To be a gardener and a nurturer, not a leech and hoarder.

To every thing, there’s a season.
A time for seed to take root,
A time for growing,
A time for uprooting…
A time for holding on,
and a time for letting go.

I am the heat of your hearth, the shade screening you from the sun; I am the beam that holds your house, the board of your table; I am the handle of your hoe, the door of your homestead; the wood of your cradle, and the shell of your coffin. I am the gift of God and the friend of man.
~ Author Unknown 

Author: Neil Hanson

Neil administers this site and manages content. View all posts by Neil Hanson