Wendell picked up a maul, which Meb had made from a hickory tree. It had a smooth handle and a bulbous head, squared off at the end. “With it,” he told me, “you can deliver a blow of tremendous force to a stake or a splitting wedge.” Thinking about a modern sledgehammer, I asked how the handle was inserted into the head. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “No, no, honey,” then hastily explained himself: “That’s our way of taking the sting out of it, you see, when we correct someone.” He showed me the swirling grain of the maul’s head, chopped from the roots of a tree, and swung it over his shoulder to demonstrate how it becomes a natural extension of the body.
When I was back home, he sent me a diagram and explained how the strength of the wood came from the tree’s immersion in the soil: “The growth of roots makes the grain gnarly, gnurly, snurly: unsplittable.” After you cut the tree, you square off the root end. Then, above the roots, where the grain isn’t snurly, you saw inward a little at a time, “splitting off long, straight splinters to reduce the log to the diameter of a handle comfortable to hold. And so you’ve made your maul. It is all one piece, impossible for the strongest man (or of course woman) to break.” He scrawled at the bottom of the page, “There is a kind of genius in that maul, that belongs to a placed people: to make of what is at hand a fine, durable tool at the cost only of skill and work.”
— “Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age,” The New Yorker, Feb. 28, 2022, by Dorothy Wickenden
It’s not resin infused?
Good to know. I need to make another one after mine, which did not use any of that wild root grain, split during use. Or maybe oak just wasn’t a very good choice.
Thanks for the link to the story about Wendell Berry. The excerpt quoted here reminded me of a letter from 1633. Francis Kirby, writing from London to John Winthrop, Jr in New England about tools & supplies being sent to the colony, noted that:
“…other such tooles … used about dressinge hemp [unless] some beetles of wood or such like which to send from hence [were] but to Charge you with unnecessary freight. every Contry houswife can direct your Carpenter to make them…”
I noted that Berry’s writing cabin is 12′ x 16′ – no electricity. So’s my shop…
Thank you for this link. Wendell Berry and Lost Art share much of the same spirit; of craft and work, the human condition and community – and hope.
I’ve enjoyed Berry’s writing for a long time now. Glad to see that he and Lost Art Press have finally crossed paths. He’s just down the river, after all.
It couldn’t be simpler; but ever so useful. Doubles as a “self defense maul”, in times of great trouble…