Earlywood: If We Sacrifice Trees, then Who is the God?

Publisher’s note: Good morning. Earlywood is a free excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. This originally appeared in a blog post in 2016. Each Earlywood entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. Enjoy!

Working with wood has always seemed like it’s something more than just refashioning dead vegetable matter into useful items.

Unlike metal, wood has a way of reminding us of the time it took for every stick to grow. Pick up a door stile and look at the end grain. Count the annular rings, and you know it took 40 years to make that part for a cabinet door. A door panel might take 100 years to grow. I have a piece of slow-growth huon pine in my shop that is about 4" wide and took more than 300 years to grow.

If you respect your elders, we all need to tip our hats to the scrap bin every day.