Making

Some words seem strange to me. Perhaps it's my age. Making seems always to be, well, constructive, a sort of building word. In my world, it's taking something quite raw and mostly all-natural and reforming it in some way to transform it into something useful and pleasing to look at. Mostly this is without decrying its existing beauty in the natural condition I first found it. On my walks in the wild and especially in the real wild places free from human interruption, I see things with a different eye. In my second home country of Texas, I rarely walked anywhere more than a few yards in a given direction without something stopping me in my tracks. A wild javelina suddenly jumps up and out from the underbrush with that high-pitched, ear-piercing squeal of young pig trapped to the ground by a snare. In the isolation of soundlessness, it can be a scary encounter at high speed as it shoots across the seer grasses like a popped cork from a bottle fizz, especially when you're alone in 30 square miles of fenceless ranchland.

By wild, of course, I mean a dropped branch from a mesquite tree now shading its cast-off limb. You pick up such things in Texas and it's already seasoned and dried down to 6% by many weeks and even months of 40+ degree sunshine--centigrade of course. In that world, I discovered my wildwood supplies and made from what I found. Fire ants covering part of a limb meant food inside in the form of long-horn wood borer larvae which they'd despatched as food and the bug runs cleaned out for access to deeper realms. These then decorated the final coat rack yet to be made and had an especially high value to collectors of western-style woodworking for the ranch, home, and office. The deep black mineral deposits added ever hue between black and brown and then too that lovely warmth only mesquite can offer.

Here in the UK, it's the same yet different. I walk with my eyes open and my mind engaged to find. After Texas living I search for a dropped limb or two but knowing that here it will be saturated not dried through. In Texas, I could make camp from mesquite as dry as a bone and light the starter with dried grasses in an instant. Native pecan, live oak, juniper, mesquite all burn well and burn hot too. My kettle would boil and I'd make tea and toast my bread and the river water was crystal clear right from the Dry Frio River. When I was done I'd slide into the river to cool down and clean off and then head for home an hour's drive away beneath the mesquites and through the underbrush.

Here in the UK I am unlikely to find windfalls of rich and dark woods; more common to find a lighter-grained hardwood than the rich deep red of the mesquite growing in the southwest. Throughout the hotter regions of Texas, you can scarcely walk more than a few yards without finding mesquite. It's still amazing to me though that I can take a section of ash from a stem and make a mirror as shown below. All you need is a 1/2" thick piece 6" wide and 12" long and you're on your way. What would it sell for? I'd sell it for around £50 in English ash. If I were in Texas as in times past, and I had made it from mesquite, I would sell it for $95. Demand for hand made, truly hand made, was always high in the USA. Americans seemed always to find great value in knowing someone made anything by hand. I never had any problems selling my work and it was of great reward for me to not have to sell because people wanted to buy.

In a skip (US dumpster) I saw a leg sticking out from the junk and rubble. It was a beech tapered leg from an old and poorly made seat of some kind.

A spokeshave and a scraper takes it to round and I salvaged something yet again. In my looking, I saw a rolling pin where others see only an odd leg. I know, it's a small thing, but somehow I feel good about taking the lost and forlorn and seeing something beautiful and useful come from it.