Rhododendron or Laurel?

As mentioned in my July 12th posting I have recently been re-learning something that I knew first hand at one point in my woodcarving life a couple of decades ago. What I'm taking about is understanding the difference between two of my favorite carving woods found in abundance in the acidic mountain soils of the southern Appalachians. That would be rhododendron and mountain laurel. Both species are part of the Ericaceae family so perhaps that explains some of my confusion over the years.

Image by Gertrud K. via Flickr

One of my fondest memories of hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine was a place in Grayson Highlands State Park in southwest Virginia appropriately called Rhododendron Pass. As the photo on the right so brilliantly shows how an entire mountain side can come ablaze with this magnificent flowering plant. The flowering only lasts a few weeks in the spring so you have to be there at the right time.

Just recently while on a hike at Stone Mountain State Park in northwest North Carolina a friend was generous enough to remind me of the difference between these two magnificent plants. As you can see best from the picture that I posted on the top of this article, rhododendron has a much smoother bark and longer, thicker, and a deeper green color than does the mountain laurel. The mountain laurel in my area has a more 'flakey' bark and tends to be dwarfed by the usually larger rhododendron plants.

In the past I'm sure that I unfortunately mis-stated my some of my carvings by refering to the wood as laurel when they were really rhododendron. I'm glad now that I've taken the time to re-learn the differences because they are obvious when given a little study time.

July 20, 1969- 'Lewis & Clark' of the 20th Century

July 20th is only about a day away now. That will be the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission that first landed man on the moon. I was only a toddler when President Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act but I was born at a perfect time in history to grow up during the age of space exploration. I think that being a first hand witness during such an inspiring era had a lot to do with my own need to explore and travel during the years that followed. But most of all I think that it was a catalyst for helping me to put meaningful priorities to the forefront in my own life.

I clearly remember watching all of the rocket launches from Cape Canaveral on our black & white TV from Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. I saved and still have all of the front page newspaper headlines of the space program milestones and especially those from all the moon landings. The space program fascinated me as a kid and it still does just as strongly today as it did in the 1960's. There's just something about space exploration that helps define the deepest mysteries of what it means to be human. Despite the debates I believe that there is no stopping of civilization when it comes to exploring the stars for as long as man inhabits this planet. To better understand the mysteries of life and to see what lies around the "next bend in the river" is at the core of what it means to be human. It's a huge part of what defines us.

Godspeed to Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins and the thousands of other people that it took to first put man on the moon and to all those who will put us on Mars during the next couple of decades.

Carving on the Trail

For the second time in a week I was fortunate enough to help lead a group of 8 kids on the 4.5 mile Stone Mountain loop trail at Stone Mountain State Park in the beautiful northwest North Carolina. The hike is listed as "strenuous" and it's the kind of trail that you want to run as much energy out of the kids as you can. That way they get to sleep on time and sleep hard that night... and that's very important in the life of a child.

We found a secret lunch spot back off the trail a bit that is like something out of Middle Earth with short rock caverns and a sweet rock crevice that the kids can follow around in a fun to explore maze. It's almost a magical place and we love introducing the kids to it about half way through the hike. This is also the spot where we have our first opportunity to do a little carving on the wood found along the trail.

Today Chief Davie, another counselor on the hike, was working on a spoon that he's been carving on carefully just a little bit at a time for a month now. I continued my tradition of carving a very simple woodspirit in found wood to give to a total stranger as a random act of kindness. This is always a great opportunity to teach the kids a good lesson about selfless giving and by choosing a total stranger the life lesson is magnified X 10.

After lunch I found a 6 or 7 year old boy swimming in the cool pool of water at the base of the 200 foot waterfall along the trail. He was thrilled when I offered him my woodspirit stick but he didn't immediately take time to study the carving since most of his attention at the moment was to create as many waves as possible. That's what little kids do.

Our students were full with energy today and we got done with the hike early so we decided to spend about a half hour at the trail head for another carving period as we drank our cola drinks and snacks. In addition to Chief Davie I had 4 of the kids join me for a lesson on how to carve the woodspirit face in the dead found wood they had picked up along the way. During this period I also had time to carve two more woodspirit faces and the kids had a good time too.

My lesson in selflessness paid huge dividends today when at the end of the carving period I set my woodspirits up to be easily found by a stranger on the park bench in the parking area. One of our students, Taylor then had a great idea and asked me if he could personally present them to two elderly ladies who were chatting on a nearby bench. I gave permission and he politely presented them to the ladies. These two ladies were even more thrilled than the children that I had chosen randomly before. These two ladies held them in the air for a close inspection admiring the art and making sure that Taylor received the due respect that he deserved.

Some of our successes today included completing a strenuous 4.5 mile mountain hike, observing and discussing wildlife observations of crawdads, a water snake, frogs, hawks, etc. but my biggest success of the day was when Taylor took the lead and offered his own hand in a random act of kindness. These kind of life lessons are just as important to success as reading, writing , and arithmetic but teaching values seems to be almost forgotten in today's classrooms. We will all sleep well tonight!

Backscratcher Carving Class Today

Most afternoons I arrange to have a Boy Scout class with a group and today I had 5 students join me and most everyone was working on backscratchers except for Russell who wanted to work on his walking stick. It seems that the popularity of backscratchers just won't die and this is another carving project that is proving to be VERY popular with the kids. They continually request them so I'd have to highly recommend this to be an exceedingly good project for kids.

As explained in earlier postings I just gather the fallen limbs from tulip poplar trees then rough out the basic shape of the scratcher with the bandsaw. Sharpen up the carving knives, grab a hand full of safety gloves and head for any group of kids where you are almost guaranteed success!

As the pictures above show some of my favorite designs for today's backscratchers was the one that Anthony carved a snake head into the end of the handle. Alex decided that he wanted to make a long handled ladle out of his rough out so he carved the bowl deep but it still scratches very good. Another one had the bowl carved into the shape of BigFoot. I thought that these were some pretty good ideas and I was very proud of today's class. These boys will have something good to dream about tonight! But most of all they'll have another nice craft that they made with their own hands to share with their families on next home visit!

WIP-Part 2: Carving a Mini Greenman

WIP= "Work In Progress"

I have just finished up the little greenman and he's most definitely turned out to be one happy little fellow that I hope will bring many a grin and smile to a lot of observers from the nick-nak shelf. First I must make a BIG correction because I said in my last posting that the wood used for this project was laurel. Not so... It's rhododendron. On a day hike to Stone Mountain State Park this week a friend reminded me of what I knew at one point in my life but I let my knowledge of plants slide to the far side of my brain for several years. I went on another long forest hike yesterday and I'm currently editing the pictures, but when done I will elaborate on the difference between the mountain laurel and rhododendron that's found in my region of the southern Appalachians. Perhaps it will stick with me this time!

Anyhow this has been another fun project and the latest addition to my collection of walking stick scrap characters. This particular greenman has probably been the most detailed of them all which can be credited to those shiny smiling pearly whites. This is also one of the first carving projects where I used my new Flexcut Pelican knives (both the mini and regular sizes) that I discovered and purchased after some research on the Woodcarving Illustrated Message Board. They came in really handy on the hollowed out areas such as in and out of the leave contours. These are two blades that I'm really glad to now have as part of my carving arsenal and they will be called upon on a regular basis now I'm sure.

Okay, it's on to my next project which I'm thinking will be a slingshot. If you look back to my posting on July 3rd I have been re-inspired by Rufus to make my own slingshot. I made several of them about 7 or 8 years ago but unfortunately I didn't take any pictures but I think that I can pull it off fairly easy. I've already ordered the rubber and it arrived this week. This is gonna be one fun project and I can't hardly wait to get started so let me get going........

The Buzz of a Bee

Consider this video an intermission from the woodcarving norm. Today I had a nice break from the woodshop and went on a great hiking day trip with 12 boys from camp to Stone Mountain State Park, in North Carolina of course. We took the 'strenuous' 4.5 mile Stone Mountain loop trail to the summit, then on to a 200 foot waterfall. Along the way one of the kids spotted a bee on a yellow flower so I quickly got a pretty nice video of it hovering overhead like a helicopter.

Also, not pictured, I carved a woodspirit in a piece of found wood and kept my tradition of giving it to a total stranger as an act of random kindness. Sometimes I like to just leave my carving somewhere that it can be found but today I gave it to a little boy about 8 or 9 years old walking the trail with his mom and dad. It brought a big smile when I said, "Would you like this woodspirit stick?" and of course I got a big "Yes" and a "Thank you".

WIP-Part 1: Carving a Mini Greenman

WIP= "Work In Progress"

Finally I'm back to working on a new or better yet, a semi-new project since I started it a while back then put it down for almost a year. I make these little faces from the scrap pieces of wood that I cut off of my walking sticks and you can find a whole variety of them that I posted on the Wood Carving Illustrated message board at: Mini-Greenman from walking stick scraps

When completed this little greenman will stand about 4" tall and I'm carving it from a piece of laurel that I cut off one of my walking sticks some time back. So far I've got the face mostly roughed out but there's still going to be a lot of smoothing up those initial cuts but I'll get to that after the enclosing oak leaves are roughed in. Right now I've got the bottom two leaves roughed out and will begin on the top two leaves next. I decided that this little fellow would have a little expression with some teeth to boot. These little carvings are a lot of fun but like anything that is small there must be a lot of attention to the detail and this is the type of carving that I do best when there aren't any distractions around but that's a hard thing to come by in my busy life so this little fellow might take a while to finish up.

Profile: The Slingshot Man

I've been away for a week taking care of personal business and didn't have time to update the blog but I'm back for now. Thanks for all the comments and I'll answer them ASAP and I'll post my latest carving project soon.

Meantime I wanted to post this link to one of the most amazing old timers that I've ever seen and he lives only about a two hour drive from me in North Carolina. His name is Rufus, he lives with no telephone or TV, and he's made over 4,156 slingshots since 1952. As the video shows, Rufus is the best there is when it comes to hitting a target. Absolutely amazing!