Tobacco Pipe
I carved this tobacco pipe from a juniper tree overlooking the Rio Grande. It took me 2 months, every trace by hand.
It started with cutting a small, dead branch from a tree while the kids played. The bowl was carved into the knotted crotch where the branch forked into two limbs. Thus, the bowl is one branch and the stem another. Even now you can still see this.
All the first cuts were just the crude shaping of wood, all guesswork. I've never done this before. But the bowl revealed itself fairly quickly, its generous shape, a small protrusion the kids said looked like a nose. “Is it a face?” they asked.
The kids have watched me carve many things - rabbits, gnomes, pens, bears, and more. “I won’t tell you about this one,” I told them, laughing at the thought of a nose. That’s where the stem attaches.
One night I built a small fire outside. With a red hot nail I plunged the depths of this bowl till it had been burned concave. I was nearly sure I ruined it, the heat expanding and cracking the fragile wood. The fragrance was intoxicating.
The stem was much harder. You can't tell from this photo, but it comes off so that the two pieces can be cleaned and stored separately. Figuring out how to anchor the two together so that they fit snugly, yet disassemble without injuring one another - this was a very difficult step for an amateur like me.
It took me a month, maybe longer, to test different fittings and arrangements, all the while doubting, ready to fail. That’s what allows me to carve - welcoming failure if that’s what comes. All the while the stem was just a crude branch. "What are you making?" the kids asked constantly. “You’ll have to wait and see,” I said.
Stephen was the first to recognize it as a pipe. He stared at me with disbelief. "Are you going to smoke it?" he asked, hardly able to grasp the thought. Smoking. So uncouth. Pairs awfully with mountain springs, fresh greens from the market, and homegrown corn.
“Yes I am,” I answered, not failing to smile. After more than 18 years of abstinence, I'm teaching myself to smoke. Again. It’s not easy to explain, even to myself, but I’ve opened this door quite consciously. The delightful recklessness of youth, the pseudo-rebellion of teenage years. The posture. The attitude. I was addicted for 10 years.
That was the only relationship to tobacco I ever knew - the rotten one. Smokers are punks and losers, the out-crowd who missed the transformation at the end of the last century. Who can hold a cigarette today with anything but sneaky disdain? Who can hold it with honor and respect? Few, I'd guess.
When my daughter was two, I learned an important lesson. I learned it from a woman who loved cats. "You never tell them what not to do," she said, "You simply tell them how to do it." It was her tone, her choice of words, the picture in her mind. Every ounce of her inner vision was in alignment with what she wished the creature to do. The ultimate positive expression. There was none of the familiar negation of wrongdoing. This was a tremendous lesson in my parenting, and today as a teacher.
But for me, tobacco was entirely a lesson in negativity: don’t smoke. That’s what I learned. Sex and drugs too. Alcohol. I only learned what not to do with these things. The inner vision was all wrong.
My daughter is now ten. I started to smoke when I was 14. And I meant it. At first I was just playing, but you know darn well what happens when you play thoughtlessly with creatures of this merit. I was hooked, and it took ten years of my life, the last few cotton-mouthed and able to distinguish few aromas but ash. I loved it. I loved the burning and suffering of my own being, the loss of youth and innocence. Coffee. Alcohol. Tobacco. The sacred triumvirate.
That's why the cat lady got my attention. And it’s why today I carved a pipe. I did it with my hands in front of the kids. It's a rare and precious gift that people trust me, and I hope to make good of it.
Well after I quit smoking, I learned about the Native American relationship to tobacco. It was a strange and powerful healing for me. A sacred plant? I had to reckon with that for years. It didn’t fit with the shame I had learned. It had taken everything I had to quit cold turkey at 24, a task I entrusted only to the rigidity of an iron will. Suddenly, I was forced to ask - how can I honor this plant? How can I disabuse myself of my own history? As if that weren’t enough, I had to learn how to honor the indigenous folks I learned from - without appropriating their culture or techniques. I’m still learning. It’s is a very difficult and astringent teaching, and worth every effort. I mean to etch it into my soul.
Tobacco is held as a prayer. One speaks to it with honor and integrity. It embodies the intention much like the rosary I learned as a child, a votive candle, or the blessed sacrament at mass.
I find the posture and embodiment of prayer fascinating. Its truth is of little material to me. It's the physical expression I'm after, the tears and pleas made flesh, woven into fabric, etched in stone. Those are the prayers I place in this pipe. They’re prayers for my students, my daughter, my loved ones, myself. The cat lady taught right. I’m a thousand times unworthy. But it is delicious to try.
This is how I teach myself to carve, to write, to pray - by allowing the failure. It’s how I allow myself to teach kids, endlessly refining my mistakes.
The stem, small as it is, was harder to carve. It was the assembly that snagged me. I tried many configurations, but none that satisfied me. Yet I knew, even if the connection remained invisible, that this was the essence of the prayer, the teaching. The effort. So I grew patient. I was satisfied with my discomfort. In fact, I regarded the stem as a failure the entire time. I was humbled.
Then it got worse! When burning the hole through the stem, the bore went askance. My foot long branch came out just a few inches and I had to cut more than half of it off. This was the ultimate sign of failure, and I nearly gave up. You have no idea how hard it has been to stay with this process.
By then, all the kids knew it was a pipe. “It’s kind of short though, isn’t it?” they asked. I worked on a rabbit too, just so I wouldn’t have to stare at my failures all the time.
The night before I completed it - only a week ago - I looked at what I had. The bowl was pleasant. It was always pleasant, its round shape, the colors and contours of juniper heartwood. “Why juniper,” a seasoned craftsman once asked me. I stood uncertain. “It’s so brittle,” he continued. He was right, the bowl cracked when I heated it. But even with its crack, I knew it would work. Why juniper, I thought, stunned into silence because I thought it was obvious: it’s so beautiful.
After that miserable night of coring it, I had carved the stem down to a basic shape, stumpy and inelegant. The flakes of my carving strokes were still visible, quite vulgar. Oh well, I thought, perseverance.
As I began to sand it, the fragrance of juniper filled my nostrils. I had forgotten. Why juniper? This is why. When you burn tobacco the prayers are released. You can smell them. You can watch as they curl into the air, the wind, even one's breath, and disappear. That's how you know your prayer is received. It's spoken and placed inside, then released to that great spirit that walks right on top of this physical planet.
As a child, I loved the smell of incense at mass. The scent has a way of fixing a memory in place. When I served as an altar boy, I often got to help load the urn - a fun task with fire and danger. Learning the inner workings of the incensor provided a lot of opportunities for both awe and doubt. I’ll probably screw it up, I thought. Sometimes, I discovered the inner workings of myself.
That was the smell as I sanded the juniper, the fragrance that clung to my heart. The tiny grains of that once living tree even descended the depths of my lungs, becoming in some real and verifiable way, me. One hour I had with that pipe, softening its crudeness with tiny multi-colored stones etched onto paper. Dreaming. Thinking. Sanding.
If you've followed me this far, you can bear me saying - the world is a prayer. This is straightforward to me. As simple as eating a hamburger or taking out the trash. Pollution. The passing of birds. The soot and grime of my own body. Tobacco.
It wasn't till that moment, as the scent hung in my nose, that I fell in love with this pipe. The first from my own hands. The stem, short to be sure, is smooth and curvy like a woman. The bowl is stamped with the handprint of time. To take them apart and put it back together is a tactile joy, a puzzle, a craft. Every ounce my effort, my plea to be in right relationship. Tobacco.
"Ooh, it’s nice,” the kids said when they saw the final product. They’re easy to please. “What are you going to do with it?" one asked. They all looked at me uncertainly. "Are you going to be a smoker?" It didn't quite make sense.
Here's what I'm going to do - I'm going to give it back. In a small nook overlooking the gorge, I will sit and recognize this prayer. The pipe, the kids, the place where I found the tree. The time. Wood grain blended with fingerprints in dazzling colours, smells, and shapes. You'll find me there, honoring these kids and their families. You'll find the cat lady too, the fire and iron, the incense from church. You'll find me leaning against a mural, one leg up, collar turned to the wind, clutching a Marlboro in my hand.
And then I'll simply walk away. I'll leave it right there on the earth. All my sweat and tears, all my pride and grief. I give it back to you. Because you gave it so sweetly to me.