On curiosity, balance, and love.

I had the Joy of taking a class with Drew Langsner a decade ago, and he shared that woodworking was the meeting of animal, vegetable, and mineral: you are the animal, wood the vegetable, tool the mineral. Truly nearly anything is possible with the right combination of these things, but if it doesn’t seem possible maybe one of the three is out of balance: you, the animal, don’t know enough, the wood is not correct for the work, or the tools not as they should be.

Intention is creative spelunking of these factors: it is a playful “what-if?” On the horizon: it doesn’t just apply to the work though. It also applies to all aspects of the work: what if our sourcing contributed to a healthier more vibrant place? What if we had a vibrant, thriving community, working in harmony with the natural world?

Curiosity and Love are the two propellers of this work, and we see it, slowly changing how we do things on a daily basis. If you are looking for intention, I highly recommend falling in love, with anything, everything, and letting that force propel a curiosity that dares to say what if? Then follows through with the joy of finding out.

Fall in love.

Fall in love with the air. Fall in love with the spread wings of a turkey vulture, waving high high above on the breezes. Watch a cache of house wrens take flight for the first time, find the wings of a butterfly on the ground, probably eaten by a bat. Watch a pair of ducks find a home on the new pond you made. Gasp at the colors of the sky in the morning, in the evening.

I’ve fallen in love with this planet, with living on it, and can’t help but strive to show it in our actions: to try to always move more and more towards work that is more celebratory, restorative, and whole. It is a long way from the broken systems we inherit to where we are going, but I swear love makes the steps possible: growing our own work for craft again, making things from urban trees that come down. Celebrating the beauty of an individual sense of place with our work. Stewardship is just another name for love.