My Sycamore

Another selection from Food, Clay, Wood 

A grand sycamore stood sentinel by the sidewalk at the front lawn of the colonial revival house where I grew up in central New Jersey. The entire Levitt planned community was planted with this and a handful of other species, and they must have been fairly large in 1967 because I could easily climb them a decade later. I would hang out in one particular sycamore along the sidewalk. It had low limbs, evenly spaced, and was very easy to hoist up and into. I went as high as I possibly could, hugged the main trunk and let it sway in the breeze as I twisted along with it. My neighbors claimed that I would sing opera up there, which may be true. Eventually I nailed a plank of wood into the main V-section about 20 feet up as a seat. It’s still there, the wood grew around it, and 45 years later is almost completely engulfed. The lowest limb is now maybe 40 feet up; it’s a massive tree today.

What I liked most about my tree was its resonance. You could rap any limb, with your ear up against the bark and it would offer distinct mellifluous tones. You couldn’t get a conventional scale out of it, but definitely worth slapping and knocking. I like to imagine that the tree knew me, responded to my moods, maybe even hugged me, as I definitely did its limbs. I came to know that strange mottled bark so intimately and even saved pieces as they peeled off.

After college, when I moved home between degrees, I spent more time in the tree. I wrote up there. I even threw parties in it. At one point there were 6 or 7 people in the tree, drinking cocktails hoisted up in Ziplock bags, and snacks in little bowls. I started dating the woman who is now my wife right up in that tree. I went away of course, eventually so did my parents, literally. Until recently, I still visited the tree, thousands of miles from the other coast where I live now. The last time I saw it was long before I started carving, and a limb fell off. I took a few tiny pieces. What I would give now for that whole limb! Sycamore, as it turns out, is utterly gorgeous wood, with a clear set of rings, but also tiny vertical lines cutting across them that create a gorgeous pattern in carved wood. Even the smell of that tree I think I could recognize blindfolded.

I say all this because I think people can have very intimate relationships with other living beings that don’t react like pets, but in a very different primordial way. When I encounter a huge old copper beach or a valley oak where I live now, it’s more awe inspiring and intense than seeing a large animal. Just knowing they were alive hundreds of years ago thrills me. In the case of the towering redwoods in the California foothills, they were around at time of Plato. They stand as living witnesses to the past - if you are willing to listen.

I say all this because I have a deep empathy for wood. So it felt strange the first time I carved it. Some trees have deep pink striated flesh that resembles tuna or rare beef. Sometimes wood will be so fresh and wet that it seems to bleed, or practically splashes with the fall of the axe. This isn’t a bad feeling. It’s no different than butchering an animal. I’ve never killed a large mammal but taking one apart I truly enjoy, cutting around the bones, following the sinews connecting to muscle tissue. The same is true of wood and its own internal structure. When a limb falls down in a storm, I’m happy to make use of it. Or when a tree needs pruning.

That’s exactly how I got into carving in the first place. Two olive trees – Scylla and Charybdis, so named because I planted them too close together. Today they not only can’t be disentangled, but steering between them is treacherous, especially when trying to pick the olives. A really low branch needed to come off as it stuck out over the sidewalk, and I thought, this is such nice wood, something must be done with it. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had a pocketknife. And I so wish I hadn’t ruined so much of that beautiful wood. But a few of these early olive wood spoons I still use. It carved so wonderfully that I believe I have never worked with a finer wood.

All this is to say that a tree you know well, have harvested fruit from, see every day perhaps, or best of all planted with your own hands, is one whose wood you will respect and cut with care. Even those in my neighborhood, I treat with a certain reverence, and knowing full well that a branch will end up chopped and used as compost, gives me great satisfaction knowing something else might be done with it. At times I’ve been tempted to knock on people’s doors, not to ask if I could take some wood, but to say I already did pick up a branch on the curb, and carved it, and here’s a spoon, thanks so much. There is actually no feeling better than giving someone a spoon or anything handmade for that matter, and knowing they will be using it for a long time to come.