Woodworking: About working with our hands, with wood and with time

Working with wood, for me, is simplicity in its purest form. Taking one step at a time. And experiencing that each step creates a process with its own unique timing, flow, rhythm and quality.

From the rough work of selecting and sourcing the timber from the right fallen trees in our forest, to measuring, sawing and sanding the last parts of a finished frame - and all the steps in between.

Working with wood in this way has a primordial quality to it that makes you feel like you’re transported back to foregone eras and times. This is what humans have been doing for generations. And you can feel that. You innately know that you’re allowed to follow in these footsteps. Your whole being knows how to do these things, naturally.

It knows that this is an activity and a way of spending time that roots you in the here and now. This is what we call spending vertical time; time spent in ritual, deep concentration and connection. Time that, in contrast to ‘clock time’ or ‘horizontal time’, which moves forwards, makes you stop moving forward and keeps you in the same spot.

In fact, time ceases to exist.
As do worries, thoughts and ‘problems’.

The only things that are there are your awareness, your senses, your surroundings and the materials and tools that you’re working with. The gentle sounds of marking the wood and sawing it by hand. The fragrance the wood releases carried around by the wind. The sawdust that slowly descends on the workbench and the floor. The birdsong and the sunlight that enter the space.

A way of concentrating and connecting that cannot emerge without all these elements being present and interacting with each other.

So simple and timeless, yet so powerful.

Huub