Funny thing happened on the way to being a woodcarver. You see, I never planned on being a woodcarver. I had a whole other life and career going. One that I had dreamed of since I was a child and one that could only be made of dreams. Or so I thought.
When I was a fresh-minted teenager I had already determined that I was going to be a photographer when I grew up. My father asked me what kind of photography I wanted to do and my answer … well, I was ambitious, to say the least.
“I want to be a photojournalist for The Associated Press. That’s my dream job. And I also want to travel the world and take pictures all over. But I love Yosemite and nature and Ansel Adams, so I also want to be a landscape photographer and share these places in nature with everyone.”
My father laughed and said, “Maybe you should just settle on one of those. Just pick one. You can’t do all three at the same time.”
It’s not that I set out to do so, but I proved him wrong.
DREAMS AND REALITY
When the fall of 2015 rolled around, I had been working as a contract photojournalist for The Associated Press for 15 years. I was the adrenaline junkie loving big news stories and deadlines, while at the same time comfortable photographing celebrities in Hollywood. And for well over a decade I had also been running a very successful academic landscape photography workshop company, taking aspiring photographers to Yosemite and other iconic nature locales. And I was 12 years in working for Semester at Sea, a global study abroad program that had taken me to over 70 countries in those 12 years. I sailed around the world three times on their floating campuses, the SS Universe Explorer and the MV Explorer. I was going non-stop, juggling like a mad man between all three jobs. One week I would be in Yosemite, the next in Germany and the next covering some big news story for AP.
You see, I had everything I had ever wanted and dreamed of, in addition to a beautiful, loving wife and two amazing daughters. But the universe teaches you that having everything you dreamed of … may not be what dreams are made of.
By the end of 2015, all three of those things I had dreamed of — and was in absolute heaven doing — were gone. It all came crashing down to a screeching halt. I wasn’t doing them anymore. I couldn’t do them anymore. That funny thing that happened? An out-of-the-blue health issue completely derailed what I considered “my life” and left me in a forced early retirement. Doctors made it clear: no stress, no excessive stimuli and easy tasks. Yeah, the opposite of everything I had been doing.
A NEW CALLING
Just as my father influenced my photography, he also ingrained in me the work philosophy of “if you can do it yourself, why pay for someone else to do it?” Based on that and his many teachings, one of the things he taught me was how to work with wood. He gave me a solid foundation. Then a stint working in a lumber yard during college led to pick-up work on home construction projects. I loved building things out of wood. But while photography was my “career”, working with wood was a “hobby”. Or so I thought.
I was always the handyman around the house and at work, but not fixing leaky faucets and such. I was tearing down walls and building new things. I tended to think on a grand scale. So when this funny thing happened on the way to where I am today, I realized that woodworking and making wood crafts was something that I enjoyed. I really, really enjoyed. And it wasn’t stressful and I could work at my own pace.
And I could bring to life all these fanciful signs and exploding ideas that formed in my head and then my hands would craft them into wooden works of art.
And I love what I do. I really love it a lot. Looking back, I love it more than what I had dreamed I would love doing the most in the world.
Thank you for reading this far in. Thank you for your support. Thank you to all who have supported this change in direction: friends, extended family, family and especially my wife and daughters. I feel like the luckiest guy alive.
Photo credit: Cindy Tarrango