THE DOG AND THE WALKING STICK

 

 

nose to the ground

 

Early afternoon I went out the door with dog and new walking stick. She saw me pick up the stick and flinched slightly. It told me something about her past and her insecurity. I assured her the stick was not for hitting dogs. We don't do that here. I would use it to hit a dog attacking my dog friend, only then. Dog protects me. I protect dog. She's not yet saved me from a bear attack, but she makes it possible to walk in the woods again without concern for four-legged surprises. Dog would smell and see it before I would, and bark aggressively, alerting whatever it might be to leave primate alone. Primate has a ninja dog blood brother, in this case sister, who will die to protect him. The barking alerts me to look for what it is dog sees, most often a twig shifting in near distance, maybe a squirrel running for a tree after seeing a dog. She bounded with joy walking toward the road. She knew we were not going to the car, but beyond the car into walking stick world, paradise for dog's inquiring nose.

 

rhododendron walking stick

 

The wood for the stick came from an old rhododendron in the woods behind the barn, dead for so many years the wood cracked from the drying process. The bark was paper thin, loose and falling off. The bark under the exterior bark was fused to the wood structure. This layer of bark I carved off with the pocket knife. It takes several hours to carve the bark away and round the tips. The end that is the handle needs to be smooth as glass for walking comfort, sometimes in the palm of the hand. Also rounded the tip that touches the ground to inhibit splintering and splitting.  The wood has been dead for so many years the rotting process had begun. Rotting starts in rhododendron with black lines like drawn with an extra-fine-line pen running in abstract patterns with the wood's flow lines and some discoloration in abstract absence of pattern. It has the strength of the living wood, as dry as the wood can be before decay sets in. I think of the abstraction of lines and discoloring something like the patterns retained from memory of experience in the soul, called impressions and sanskaras. Mental impressions, mind tattoos, experience carried from lifetime to lifetime. This is my stick for the rest of this lifetime.

 

dog head and water flow

 

In my own personal symbolism, the stick represents the journey of the soul. I've never used a walking stick in the years I roamed the mountains following a dog. In this time of advanced age, I'm not as firm on the feet as I one time was. I walked over varieties of ground with the stick to get a feel for handling it over different terrain. It is good for balance, extra good for climbing a steep hill and walking down a steep hill, good for a sideways slant. The stick is a good brace for jumping from one big rock to another, a hand to hold. In the past, a walking stick became a nuisance I carried over my shoulder soon after starting the walk. I'm slower now and not so lithe on the feet. A walking stick makes a good assist. It is good to lean on during a break, standing still watching dog play in the water, run over the ground, up hills, over trails of the night people, following her nose like it's attached to a meandering rail.

 

lady in red

 

Early in the walk, I came upon a place to approach with attention to foot placement. Went within to my "center," just below the navel, focused balance there, instead of in my head, and balance came so naturally so quickly it felt something like shifting gears. I took an interest in photographing water flow over small rocks, over sand, over big rocks, channels of flow, looking to catch the lines of flow on the water's surface like the continually changing flames of a fire. Walking in the woods makes dog deliriously happy. It lifts primate's spirit as well. We will take longer walks as time goes by. Winter is a good time for walking in the woods. The serpents sleep in hidden places. I like not being concerned about stepping on a snake. Another thing I like about walking with a dog is they find snakes first. The dog alerts me to the snake and we walk around the snake. Dog's senses are hyper-alert out in the woods. I'm enjoying seeing a dog run free in forest, a dog only familiar with city life on a leash. It's how I felt in the beginnings of living in the Blue Ridge, let off the leash. I'm used to it by now, it's the grain of my life. Dog is refreshing foggy memory of wonderment in the first years of walking over these mountains. I review my own awe in the time of discovering these mountains were the terrain of my spiritual path of liberation from self by way of understanding, attitude toward life, allowing, and mere being.  

 

the same place maybe 3 seconds apart

 

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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THE RHODODENDRON WALKING STICK

two views of today's finished stick

new rhododendron walking stick

Another walking stick is leaning against the wall to dry after first coat of tung oil. Two days of carving I only whacked my fingers half a dozen times. None of them were blood-letters, just nicks. I've thought about putting a bandaid around the thumb I hit 4 times. It's like wearing gloves putting up barbed wire. In the early years on the farm I'd wear leather gloves to stretch barbed wire. Put on the gloves, stretch the wire, hold it in place, take off the gloves take hammer and staple, hammer it into place. Put gloves back on to handle the barbed wire, then take them off again. There comes a time I stuff the gloves into my back pockets and do the best I could to keep from the scratches being too bad. Old man Tom Pruitt's hands dripped blood after he'd put up a barbed wire fence. He never wore gloves. It wasn't long before I didn't either. A few years ago I ran into hillbilly country singer Raymond Oakes. We talked a little and I noticed the backs of his hands had a webbing of scars that looked made by a spider on acid. Exactly like the back of old man Tom's hands. I said to Raymond, "Stretched much barbed wire?" He said, "Yeah, stretched some helping my daddy." Had I continued with the farm work, the backs of my hands would look like that. I have a pretty fair beginning. They're my tattoos. Now I'm in process of putting new scars on the hands, this time the fingers. Putting protection on the fingers doesn't feel right. It takes away from the raw interaction of the knife and the wood. It feels elemental to me. A tool of only one moving part and a piece of wood. Sharpen knife and carve. I have to call it carving instead of whittling or shaving the wood. It is carving from first swipe of the knife to last. Yesterday I carved the bark off this rhododendron branch that has been dead a few years Today I cleaned it up with the knife, an even more painstaking process than stripping the bark. It's detailed carving and smoothing tiny places. It's an excellent meditation. Focus of attention is close. My fingers are at stake. I have to be aware of every move consciously. 

the stick and the knife

I love carving rhododendron wood. Enjoyed the poplar and dogwood too. I've messed with wood all my life, but it feels like carving these walking sticks I'm discovering wood for the first time. I want to carve different kinds of wood now. I've sawed wood, sanded it, run a planer over it, painted it, but never carved it. Never had purpose. I've never kept the pocketknife sharp for not wanting to cut self using it. Now, for the first time in my life, I am keeping the pocketknife as near razor sharp as I'm able. Cutting wood doesn't seem to dull the blade. It keeps a good edge. It feels sometimes like wood's purpose is to be carved. Again, the giving tree. Suddenly I understand that African masks were carved by people who carved wood, good at it unto masters in later years. I am learning subtleties of using a knife carving wood. There are many approaches to the wood. I kept three prongs at the end that touch the ground for novelty. The idea is to be walking on the ground. It would be excellent footing on the ground. Maybe. I did it because I liked the idea and believe they won't break. I like using the knot where branches leave the main branch for the tip that touches the ground. It won't split. It was fun digging with the front part of the blade between the three prongs pictured above. Every place along the stick where a branch came out, I carved down to a smooth round bump that flows with the shape of the stick. Rhododendron limbs make a crooked line between the handle and tip that is a straight line in the stick's balance. Functionally, it is a straight line, same as a straight stick. But it goes this way and that, which doesn't mess its balance up at all. I hypothesize the bends give it spring a straight stick could not. As I pick these limbs to carve, spring is foremost in my mind. The spring is, essentially, negligible. One thing I see it does is vibrate like a bass string and a straight stick vibrates like a high string. Maybe it is a consideration of resonance, whatever resonates with a given individual. 

the handle after carving off the bark

  

Incorporating the scar in the limb into the stick's design was fun. The hand fits nicely between the knot above and the crook below. It is made for the hand the way a pistol grip is made to fit the hand. The stick hangs straight down from the handle held lightly. I sit here at the desk, the pocket knife lies open to my right. I've learned to admire it for what it can do. I've begun to have a feel for its physicality. It is tool of exquisite design. Folds up, goes in the pocket. Open, it is locked open the same as if it did not have a hinge. It is a Case Sodbuster made  in 1977. I've known of Case knives from displays in hardware stores, heard about them, thought it was one of a few makers of knives. I looked online and found a very long list of knife makers. I'm partial to my Sodbuster. Of all the pocket knives I've carried, this is the one. I like the feel of holding it. It has a good balance. The blade holds a sharp edge, it's practical. One of my friends said one day years ago, "I've never carried a pocket knife." I spoke automatically, "Carry one once and you always will." Don't need it much, but when I do, I need it. It's like carrying a pen. I always carry a pen in my pocket when I go to town. And always regret it when I forget. Don't always need one, but when I forget one, that's the day I need it. All pocket knives I'd ever seen had three blades. It's not like I'm an aficionado of pocket knives. This was the first single blade knife I'd seen. First thought: how practical. I've never used more than one blade on knives I used in the past. Talking with my friend Carole, she has her dad's pocket knife. It was the only thing of his she wanted. After he died, she snitched the knife knowing no one would miss it. It is a Schmidt & Ziegler made in Solingen, Germany. It is the common pocket knife. She said he only used the small blade. Again, I thought: how practical.

the handle finished

Today, carving the stick the second time, I wondered why I am doing this. For enjoyment. I like carving right now. May not two weeks from now, but right now carving is what I'm doing. I may sell them if anybody will buy them and may give them away or both. It's a meditation, not a regimen. I've found sitting with a stick carving on it with a sharp knife requires immediate focus of attention. It clears the mind. I like the focus. The consequence of lifting focus for a second is a sliced finger. Focus keeps my fingers safe. Every touch of the knife requires sharp focus. Earlier today, I was feeling like I wanted to write, wanted to read, wanted to watch a movie, all at once. I picked up the knife and stick, went outside, turned over the five-gallon bucket and proceeded to carve. Turned the radio onto the interview program, Fresh Air, followed by Robin Young, then The World. Good interviewers, interesting people they talk with, and I find The World always interesting. I carve and hear in the air well-educated people talk about interesting subjects. I find that with focus on every movement with the knife I hear what they're saying better whether it's the emergence of ISIS in Iraq or the lives of Tibetan women in India. I like BBC radio at night. They tell a lot of Africa news. Africa has a mystique for me from the Pyramids to the Kalahari. Lawrence Durrell's novels, The Alexandria Quartet, were set in North Africa, Alexandria, Egypt. I think of Africa the world of our origin. I think of wood as one of humanity's great teachers. The other, rock. I could  have been a rock mason in this life happily. I have the same appreciation for rock as for wood. Basic, least moving parts, foundational. And I appreciate the life in the wood. The shape of the wood is its life. Carving away the bark I get down to the beautiful wood, caress it with sandpaper and rub the tung oil into it, changing it from something pretty to something beautiful instantly. Carving on the rhododendron branches I remind self from time to time, this is it, this is basic element.

the first rhododendron stick

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THE MOUNTAIN DOGWOOD WALKING STICK

I  had on my mind a walking stick for my friend Lucas. I'd found two oak saplings I thought would make a good walking stick. Plan was to cut them in the fall and let them dry through winter and carve them into walking sticks next the summer. However resigned I was to the wait, it stayed in my mind that I did not want to wait that long. Id just finished a walking stick for his wife, Judy, and really wanted to have one for him too by next time they came to visit in a week or two. I had a dead mountain dogwood sapling maybe ten feet from the house. It died about three years ago. I've never cut it because I had not yet seen what to do with it. It was too nice a wood to cut it for kindling. Tuesday I was thinking about Lucas's walking stick, saw the dogwood sapling: there it is. I took the long-handled clippers and cut the branches and the top off, then measured it looking for 46 inches, the length I'd made Judy's stick. It feels to me a good length for a walking stick. Fired up to get started, I turned a five-gallon bucket over outside and sat on it with pocket knife for a few hours whittling away the bark, cleaning it down to the raw wood, smoothing the knots, making it smooth from one end to the other. At the handle end, I whittled a rounded dome that fits the palm of the hand comfortably. One doesn't use the palm of the hand on end of the stick while walking, but sometimes it comes in handy to grip the end for whatever reason. I wanted it to be smooth in the hand, wanted the stick smooth to the hand the whole length, tip to tip. A good smooth piece of wood is a sensory delight to the hand. After carving it, I ran my hands all over it looking for rough spots I'd missed. Took a square of sandpaper to it, smoothing the ridges left by the knife, smoothing it to the tip. I left the knife markings on the upper foot I call the handle to designate the handle visually, to keep in its design a step in its process and maybe to give it a better grip. 

This picture shows the round dome carved for the hand and the handle section. I brought the stick in the house after sanding it, enjoying the result of the hours of sitting on the upside down bucket, which, by the way, makes a good stool. It also carries water. The stick has a couple of bends in it, good for spring. My thinking is that a perfectly straight stick, like a dowel, has no spring. A stick with spring in it doesn't jar the hand so much when it hits the ground. The vibration runs through the bones to the feet. A little bit of spring in the stick reduces the jarring factor. I just now conducted a scientific experiment. I happen to have a dowel five-eighths inch diameter, almost the same length as the walking stick. I held the dowel vertically a couple inches above a rock and dropped it to see its vibration. It bounced and vibrated like a banjo string. I did the same with the walking stick and it vibrated quite a lot more, even jumped and gave a nice ring. The lower foot of the stick's length is a good curve where much of the stick's spring is located. Up by the handle is a curve in the stick. I like about a sapling that its grain runs the length of the stick from one end to the other uninterrupted, the flow lines of its growth, of its life. I have such a respect for trees, I want the stick, the tree, to be itself with my carvings minimized to exposing the beauty in a given life form. I avoid the temptation to carve a ring around it or carve initials into it. I want my only influence to be exposing the beauty in the wood. The thing itself, a walking stick, is a creation of the human mind. I want my mind's influence be no more than that. Mind cut it to length, removed the bark and smoothed the knots branches grew from. It's smoothness to the touch from tip to tip is as far as I want to go putting mind influence into it. You might say this is a creation of my aesthetic sense. My ideal for an art creation is to make it look inevitable, like it grew that way, like it is itself without reference to my ego. I allow the stick its own shape with the least altering. It's how I am with the donkeys. I want to allow them to be themselves as much as possible without my "training" altering their minds. 

     

Here is the stick where it touches the ground. The tip is a joint a branch grew from. It makes the tip solid and I feel like the tip end will never split. The tree took up, volunteered, close to where I keep a birdfeeder. The tree does not grow to be huge. It has clusters of flowers like a Queen Anne's lace. It's a dogwood, a mountain dogwood. Another name is pagoda dogwood. I prefer mountain dogwood. We don't have many pagodas around here. The flower of the regular dogwood is four petals. The mountain dogwood is a galaxy of flying bugs when it's in flower. I have sat on steps looking at one in flower that lived here about 25 years. Walking by I saw only a few bugs with big wings. Sitting by it for an extended period of time I saw more and more bugs until I saw the air inside the tree's branches was alive with tiny flying bugs feasting on the nectar in a hundred thousand flowers. They don't make good ornamental trees. This one I watched the bugs in was a volunteer that took up soon after I moved into the house. I let it grow until it died. I was cutting dead branches off every year. I didn't care. The cats loved climbing in it, walking out on the limbs like a tightrope. I didn't think of it ornamental. It took up with me of its own and I accepted it. I liked the tree itself, and these non-decorative characteristics I saw as the life of the tree. The tree the walking stick came from lived a short time, just long enough to give me a walking stick. A giving tree. It lived its short life to be Dr Lucas Carpenter's walking stick in his retirement. He's a doctor of literature, not medicine. He's the kind of professor whose classes I would have loved in 20th Century American poetry and American lit. I'd take as many of his classes as I could. We went to school together and explored writing together, bouncing ideas off each other, reporting discoveries, inspiring each other's interest in the art of writing and reading. Reading is important to both of us. We read very differently. He reads fast; I read slow. He reads a lot of contemporary lit criticism, reading I can enjoy for a paragraph and that's enough. It's valuable to his interest, though not to mine. And what's valuable to my interest is not to his. We don't often read the same books, though we educate our own interests by way of reading. 

I like this bend in the stick that helps to designate "handle." I applied the first coat of tung oil after sanding lightly. The wood soaked the oil up so fast that the end of the stick I started at was dry to the touch by the time I'd oiled it to the other end. I pour a little oil into the palm of my hand and rub it into the wood with bare hands. A cloth soaks up too much oil to satisfy me. I want as close to all of it to go into the wood. I like oiling it by hand too. The first two coats were soaked up by the wood almost immediately. I applied the fourth coat just before sitting to this writing. The third coat took overnight to dry. This fourth coat will be dry by tomorrow. I'll let it dry a couple days before the fifth coat and a few days before the sixth, perhaps final coat. That little dogwood settled the question of how I could have a stick made for Lucas at the same time I give Judy her stick. I did not want to wait a year. Voila! The little dead dogwood I'd never cut down was just outside the door waiting to be found. I left the tree there, seeing it would make a good walking stick, but never had reason to make a walking stick and couldn't decide what length I wanted to cut it. I took my measuring tape and measured 46 inches from where I thought would make a good handle to the tip, a joint where another branch was growing. I wanted that knot on the tip end. The length was just right. I looked at it in admiration of what a good walking stick its shape will make, enough bends for spring, not so much bend to change the course of its relatively straight line. I was happy with the stick. I left the limbs on the ground. I leave the limbs that fall out of the trees on the ground where they fall. They give the birds perches and the squirrels little tunnels to run through playing chase. The ground has a slope and slides downwards over the years. The tree limbs fade into the ground giving it fiber to hold the downward erosion. It's my way of building up the topsoil. It's not much, just a matter of I want the small spot of land that is my domain to breathe with the life of the earth like in the woods. I love having tree frogs and katydids just outside the open door.  

all photos tj worthington

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THE POPLAR WALKING STICK

judy's walking stick

This afternoon I sat on a step and whittled on a walking stick for my friend Judy. She and Lucas go walking when they're visiting, taking walking sticks found someplace. Nice sticks, old and dry. I made this stick for Judy, for her own personal walking stick that was made with her in mind. I cut the poplar sapling to length last year and let it dry after cutting off the limbs with clippers. Today was a sun shining day after a dry day following two wet days. Justin used the good weather to put a fresh coat of stain-sealer on the south side of the log house. I went to be there for company and for backup considering he was working on ladders. I sat on the step using my pocketknife, a Case XX stainless single blade with black handle. It's been my knife for over thirty-five years. It's called a "clod buster." Why? I don't know. I used to have pocket knives with two and three blades. I never used more than one. I like a knife with a single blade. I sat on the step to the deck shaving the top layer of the bark in careful slices. I wanted to leave the under layer of the bark, a light tan that would darken with oil. I whittled each place a branch came out from the trunk down to a smooth bump. Poplar wood is almost white. These places have a target in the center, the beginnings of rings, inside a white semi-circle, looking somewhat like an eye. I think of them as eyes to assist walking, watching for serpents in particular. A seeing eye walking stick. I don't like fancy walking sticks. Seems to me like a walking stick in these mountains is best like the way of life in the mountains, plain, uniquely itself. It's designs, the circles, I thought would make a good repeating pattern along the length of the stick showing the pattern of the branches growing out from the trunk. The pattern of its design is itself, its unique and solitary self.

the handle

 

I was of two minds about finishing the stick. I wanted to leave the rough marks left from slicing strips of bark onto my lap and the step between and around my feet. I wanted to sand it too, make it smooth. I liked both ways of seeing it in my mind's eye, though preferred smooth. I chose to leave the upper foot of the stick, the part the hand holds, semi-rough to let the beauty of the shaving lines have their place. Instead of being a length of it like a handle grip, I made the end of it rough and smoothed it slightly down the part I think of as the handle, fading into smooth the rest of the stick's length. It is forty-six inches, two inches shy of four feet. A walking stick really doesn't need a crook like a cane. A crook becomes an obstacle to deal with using it for a walking stick. A cane is more for keeping balance and favoring a leg. A walking stick is for moving ahead, sometimes an assist uphill or downhill when a third foot would help. The stick is smooth from one end to the other with soft bumps for the eyes, no sharp edges to snag a finger. The skin that is the under layer of the bark has intricate patterns of vertical flow lines similar to the lines on the outer bark. The lower three feet are a soft light brown and smooth as a woman's leg in panty-hose. The tung oil is bringing out the honey brown of this layer of bark I'll call the skin. The end of the stick on top is whittled into a smooth hump and sanded even smoother. Three rings for the heart of the tree and the white wood around them makes another eye, an inch in diameter. Poplar is a deceptively light weight wood. The stick has a few of my mistakes on it, places I cut too deep and exposed the white wood. No problem. It's the accidental element in the design, the human element that says a machine did not make this stick out of lumber. I want its design to be the flow lines of its life. I thought for a short time about carving a ring around it to designate handle. It was too conscious an interruption from outside the stick. I didn't want any of its design to be made by my mind. I thought about stripping a band down to the white around it in places where I slipped and exposed the white. No. Mind again. Let a few unintended nicks make their own design.

 

the human touch

 

I want the only part that is of the human mind to be the stick itself. It did not cut itself to this length or whittle itself. A walking stick is a human thing, a product of the human mind. As a walking stick, I hoped it could be its own design. A poplar is a beautiful tree. A pair of tulip poplar trees were in full flower the first time I saw this house toward making the decision to pick up and go to the mountains and start my new life working a farm in the place where all ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart (WB Yeats). Thoreau's Walden was one of the first books I read upon moving in during winter. Thoreau was instrumental earlier in my life by way of civil disobedience learned toward dealing with the madman at home. My first lesson in the Tao; resistance by way of nonresistance. I wanted to face solitude, learn to handle it. Comfort with solitude took awhile taking root. The tulip poplar flowers struck me at the time an affirming sign. Poplar leaves turn yellow in the fall. They will be all yellow and the leaves drop, one at a time, until the tree has a sprinkling of leaves like stars, and they hold the look for quite awhile. Not far from here on the road to Whitehead, a stand of poplars on a ridge in the near distance makes a sight a photograph only diminishes in the fall when the leaves are gone and these poplars sparkle with random yellow leaves like stars. I know a place in the woods where the ground is so nearly straight up and down, rock for the ground covered with layers of decayed leaves, very difficult to walk on. Need a fifty foot rope to walk in that place. It has the biggest poplars I've seen. They're giants that grow straight up, huge trunks. In the 1920s or 30s, lumber companies came through these mountains buying all the timber, causing erosion problems that washed away sides of mountains. Evidently, they couldn't reach these trees. Yes, I'm a tree hugger. I hugged one of them, honored them for being the elders of the Air Bellows trees.

poplar bark

The woods on the mountain are all new since the mountains were stripped of their trees and the owners of the land made a little bit of money to help paying for a new house, and new fields cleared to plant oats and corn on. I think of the forest here virgin forest. The trees and growth in the woods all started growing less than a hundred years ago. Some less long ago, having been corn fields for cornbread and oats and hay for the horses. What's left of hay fields has largely gone to Christmas trees, purveyors of cancer to residents of NW North Carolina. It's ok. They pay a lot of taxes, the county budget couldn't make it without them. I was thinking today while whittling on Judy's walking stick of all the farms that were on this mountain, big farms that raised food for work horses and milk cows, chickens, family to live on through the course of a year. This is where making liquor came in. Liquor making was the only way a farmer had to make some money. It worked pretty well until it worked too well and the liquor-making corporations lobbied laws to prohibit a man from making liquor on his own land. A really good movie was made about that time not far from here around Stuart, Virginia, across the state line from Mt Airy, NC. It starred Val Kilmer and a lot of local people from the area. In scenes where a lot of men came together to stand up against the G-man, I saw local faces galore. I felt at home among them. It was especially refreshing to see mountain people portrayed accurately by way of film, even sympathetically as something besides toothless. Lawless is its title. The story was written by the son of the man the story follows, the film made from his book. The history of these hills is in Judy's walking stick that grew out of the ground of its own accord within ten feet of the house. I've put one coat of tung oil on it with bare hands. The stick soaked the oil up immediately. I'll put another coat on it later, and one a day for several days until I feel like it has done what I want it to do, preserve it as a walking stick and bring out its inner beauty, the beauty of its unique self.  

 

stick from the ground up

 

 

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