Dendrology: A Tree-Huggers Guide to Making Friends.

I heard somewhere that passion and motivation is like a lens, and you have to know what direction its focused in. As I assess my growth and direction in my career, I notice how deeply woodworking and my relationship with wood has affected my life. If someone I knew had been this consistently a part of my life I would at the bare minimum have the respect to learn their names.

Dendrology is the scientific study of trees and woody plants. More specifically, and sometimes referred to as xylology, this science focuses specifically on their taxonomic classifications. The science of Dendrology is responsible for naming trees, logging their attributes, controlling their harvest to ensure ethics are properly applied, and studying trees that can give us a glimpse of historical patterns of the past to help us to see possibilities of what we can expect in our future.

The information provided by dendrology experts also sets the price for the wood industry, and determines the availability and the best use of any given tree.

It is significant to know about trees in my line of work, but my acquaintance with them has driven me in personal directions that have changed the course of my life. Over time, a more plant-based diet and a more holistic approach to medicine and health consciousness are two ways that I've been influenced by my study of trees. Being more particular about my furniture choices is an attribute that has derived from my acquaintance as well.

Another thing that Trees have taught me is how to make friends. I see the beauty of tangled burls and roots every day in my line of work, and I can't help but think that all of that beauty is accomplished when roots mangle, and intersect, and grow together. I remember going over to Boatright's woodmill in Havana, FL for the first time. Being the only black woodworker I know, and living in a southern town-city like Tallahassee, I tend to rub shoulders with individuals that I'm less expected to befriend, and more expected to feud with. I'm no stranger to rebel flags, raucous recreation, and rural drawls. But Mr. Alan Boatright warmed up to us early on in the process of me becoming interested and later, assisted a lot more than he realized in me becoming passionate about my profession. As I came to purchase small quantities of wood for different client's projects. I got the feeling over time that we were becoming those unlikely associates, and I enjoy creating relationships that surprise people.

One day, while at Mr. Boatright's woodmill looking at a stump from an old almost-extinct type of pine, he told Davia and I a story about himself and his wife going to see the California Redwoods. He told of a winding road through a mountain called Coffin Peak, in the Valley of Death, and he spoke of fearing no evil, and pressing down a winding road with half his tire hanging off the edge of a mountain, but pushing forward... He expressed how it felt, reaching the Redwood Grove, Like had this actually been his coffin, it would have been well worth it. My lady almost cried. I stood aghast, feeling like maybe he knew how much he was alluding to the ups and downs of my career.

But his story, beyond encouraging me, rung a bell within. For the next few days, I played with the thought in my mind like a Rubric's Cube: what is my story with trees? If you ask me for a story about why I love to shape trees into long-lasting works of art and perfection, what could I say that would make you cry, or laugh, or emote? I felt like I had received something from Boatright. Older, well-off, and already beyond a certain point in business... many times you'll notice men who fit this description are unenthusiastic and short-tempered, but not Boatright. His eyes lit up like a 16-year-old boy. Where is a passion like this born? What spurns it, and what causes it to last as long as a life, and be passed on?

And then I realized what Boatright gave me. He gave me the power to remember. Not only to remember the trees, but what was happening underneath them, around them, and the feelings I had felt so long ago that draws me to them now. The trees watch us like we watch movies, and guard us and feed us like we guard and feed our pets, but their true provision to humankind is true, whether of a chair, a bookshelf, a bed, or a piece of paper: trees, and the things made out of them, show a piece of their nature. They have an uncanny ability to hold our thoughts, our things, and even us temporarily, and let us go quietly and leave them behind when we need them no more.

But I need them more than most.

Being from New Orleans, I lost all my baby pictures, tapes, and memories in hurricane Katrina. I've had to get help at times because the effect this has had on me is so scarring and detrimental. But identity is a funny thing, because when I work with trees, I remember. I remember huge, low-hanging oak trees in City Park. I remember Magnolias in Bloom Uptown. I remember the Fig tree in the backyard of 1716 St. Denis Street in the 7th Ward where I was raised, and waking up to the neighbor's fighting roosters crowing in the backyard coop next door. I can vividly recall the misbelief loquat tree in the neighbor's yard on the corner. I remember picking washing and eating misbeliefs with my parents, and admiring the largeness and round ness of the seed. Sometimes when I was all by myself, I would pick the fruit and eat my fill, and when I was full, I would pick some more and put them in a plastic grocery bag from Zuppardo's to eat my fill again the next day... and when I left there were still so many more. I never thought about it then, but if we needed that tree, how many people in a village would it have fed?

I remember talking to leaves and purposely breathing on trees when I found out they breathe in carbon dioxide, and I breathe it out. I'm reminded of my love of helping others, and the good in my nature, the child-like desire to give back double and triple what is given to me.

I remembered being afraid of the ghastly sound of the weeping willow tree on windy nights, and the way that it would wake the neighbor's Siberian huskies, causing them to howl to the moon. I remember when I matured, and transitioned from being afraid to having a strange affinity for the sound, understanding that it was a reminder of home, and it told me where I was from. It wailed to remind me of my village, and my identity, in case it ever needed to weep again due to my disobedience to my original purpose.

I remembered the pecan tree, which my mother used the fruit of to make pralines, and sometimes flavored pralines. Another staple of my hometown that would be impossible without the trees that naturally grow there.

I remember when our neighbor across the street hired a landscaper to come and plant a bunch of expensive palm trees. I remember how my father reacted, thinking of the expense it must have taken to landscape the yard that way. To this day I never understood why I didn't pick up on trees' value back then. Maybe I didn't get it yet because I was young, and sometimes mischievous, so my mother would send me to get switches off trees, to spank me, and to discipline and chastise me-as she should have- when I was out of line. That experience would definitely make any child resent everything about a tree, so Mr. Joe's palm trees didn't very much hold a value to me. I didn't know about Palm Oil, or thatching, or how the fibers could be woven. I'm glad I came to learn. They couldn't save me from everything, but thankfully those vines across my hide saved me from a lifetime of heartache, and pointed me in the right direction when the wrong one seemed more applicable. My experiences are held together by woven vines made up of these memories, like the fibers of the palm... a thatching, a covering over the parts of me most sacred.

Watching my father renovate our home, and make a living as a contractor, cutting wood and creating with it continuously, coming home covered in sawdust sometimes, having to leave his clothing at the door... It taught me the value of a hard day's work, and a good night's rest, and an early morning rise.

After Katrina, I remember the weird feeling when I first relocated to Winona. In the forests of Mississippi, where my ancestors hung from those same trees, I rode carefree with some of the most hospitable country white boys you ever met, skipping roots on four wheelers, and risking my life for a good time after just losing everything I had. It's funny how life- and time- can change things.

It changes things, but not everything. Some things won't ever change.

I think of how my ancestors used these same trees for medicine to treat the lashes across their backs from the whippings and beatings they cruelly endured. I can smell the perfumed oil, in the same way that I can hear my mother singing "Strange Fruit" to me for the first time. In that same haze I can see my 7-year-old eyes grow wide as I finally come to the understanding of the song's meaning... The experience of being that young, and picturing "black bodies... Swingin'... from the poplar trees" rings deeply true to me on a level of my existence beyond my personal self... Echoes of my ancestors in the hollow halls of history call out to me in a voice much like my own.

I feel mixed emotions as I work with raw slabs harvested from southern trees. It's a process I have to prepare myself for, not only mentally and mathematically, but also emotionally. I sometimes feel a sense of triumph, like my ability to conquer the wood from the trees my ancestors hung from, and to shape it into whatever my client needs in order to be paid and build generational wealth; well that must mean that in the end, we won. Right?

I recently visited Paisley and Martin over at Rebel Ventures, and again, one of the most pleasant experiences. I learned about the characteristics of the wood I was getting, and I learned some tricks to the trade. He told us that we were ok to process and resell his inventory as our own. As I walked the lot, observing his life's work, and talking with his son as he intelligently explained facets of the business, I decided what I wanted. I want the same thing we all want: a natural sense of happiness, and a definiteness of purpose. As an immigrant from England, Martin was picked out of the crowd, and targeted when he was younger. He stood up to that, and he stands up to the challenges of the industry every day, and he stands for his American values, and he stands for a culture that he wants to survive. On a backroad in Quincy, FL, I learned a lot about my industry, even more about our new friends, and just as much about myself.

Recently, while processing a camphor slab to give to a client who is opening up a new bookstore for the Downtown Tallahassee area, the smell drowned my senses. It was overwhelming. I couldn't understand why it was having such an emotional effect on me. Then I realized... My mother would rub Campho-phenique on my sores and small afflictions. Made from the Camphor tree, it is pungent and carries the same smell.

Recently I've been building bridges. Bridges to my own past, and bridges over the troubled waters of our collective past. Bridges that won't break, because of their foundation being solid in something we can all share: Our dependence on the land, our need for natural resources, and our ability to grow and transcend.

I'm appreciative of my experiences in the Big Bend region, and I plan to make a home base here long term. I'm an all around maker, but I love woodworking as well. I'm glad to be in good company in my area, and I'm happy to be making connections over a shared love of the elements that give our creativity a canvas and our existences purpose. The way I'm planting roots, It makes me wonder whose really the tree.

So each slab I use to create represents to me a friend I can make, a connection that I can show myself trustworthy to and eventually learn to trust. I purpose to let the death of the tree become a sacrifice to the life of a new connection, with someone, somewhere, who needs something that I can do something about. I put forth effort to build relationships, and not always ones in which I'm receiving... I find myself enjoying when I get to share what I've already been given. In my journey, I've had my bumps along the way, and everybody isn't your friend. But I'm learning early in my ownership of this company that like the trees, I stand for something. My Sovereign brand, my imprint, my trademark... It stands for friendship, and connection to the great King within each and every one of us, and his undyingly loyal queen: the Mother, Nature that sustains us.