Trees stand over us. Then we cut them into slabs, lay them flat, and stand over them.

These slabs couldn't disappear into a tabletop. They looked geological to me.

I once dreamt of a meadow I would find decades later. There stood a megalith. Its purpose unknown, it gave me one.

Trees are nature's monuments. Megaliths became ours.

I wanted to stand one back up.

The historic Sauvie Tree was the mightiest walnut ever grown. When I found a piece of it, everything I knew how to build felt too small.

Years earlier, in Wales, I stood beneath Pentre Ifan.

Three enormous stones have held their balance there for thousands of years.

One tree. Three stones. Both outliving the hands that shaped them.

This is where they met.

Douglas-fir holds up our homes, yet we rarely give it a place at the center of them.

It was infatuation at first sight. Waving swirls, coral hues, and green glitches are an overlooked complexity that our backyards produce.

I just want her to be seen.

A walnut tree in Houston was severed into three boards. The moment I saw them, I adopted them.

For years, they stood upright against my wall.

When I moved west, they moved with me.

Nakashima called a tree "our most intimate contact with nature."

It was here with this table that I finally understood what he meant.

M.C. Escher isn't someone I hear woodworkers reference often.

He bent perspective until walls became floors and entrances became exits. What happens if furniture loosened its sense of direction?

Cabinetry has one way in.

Books open our minds. Their shelves should open our perspective.