Many of us love wood in our homes, but rarely pause to observe forests as they grow and evolve. Our writing tools may be fashioned of wood or technology influenced, but there is always wood gathered up and reshaped as desks and chairs and shelves for books beneath us. Many things we take for granted until they are no longer there or when we have no option to simply look at what is before us, around us, and under us. Catastrophe can clarify what matters. Crisis can communicate what needs to be healed. A pandemic can permeate our psyche and threaten us with extinction as does the logger in charge of deforestation. In all things sacrifice, beauty, and renewal await as lovers crossing the bridge together.
"The grain under his fingers swings in uneven hands - thick light, think dark. It shocks him to realize, after a lifetime of looking at wood: He's staring at the seasons, the year's pendulum, the burst of spring and the enfolding of fall, the beat of a two-four song recorded here, in a medium that the piece itself created."
There is a story in the woods and in the wood. Humans always want to understand and control the story, but we fail miserably at nature's hands. We must be happiest when we simply accept her states as equally important and work with the beauty we are given.