Faith & Framing in America

This is an approximately 8-minute read about my introduction to the beautiful art of timber framing. In my last post, I was just getting ready to join a workshop in Upstate New York, and here are some of my impressions and thoughts from that…

Show Me The Way!

It was a hot day for hitching in Saratoga County, and my tool-pack was getting heavier for every car that passed me by and disappeared in the heat shimmer. The humidity was oppressive and the tarmac stuck to my steel-toes, but I was, nonetheless, in high spirits as I held out my thumb, and prayed for someone to pick me up and take me to Christ the King.

The boring machine that I am using here, was made in the 40’s. Apart from being quite efficient, it also allowed me to listen to the birds rather than the whir and screech from power tools.

I had seen the light, so to speak, only a few weeks earlier – in the Kootenay Rockies, BC – when a dedicated brother had recommended me to take up this journey. But it wasn’t so much Jesus that I was in search of, as it was the secrets of his worldly profession. You see, Jesus was a carpenter too, and I was about to discover a way of wood-working, that has been practiced since long before he was born and our calendar begun: I was about to take my first steps into the world of timber framing.

Finding My Feet In The Kootenay Mountains

There is nothing like camping out for a full week at an unimaginably loud and dusty electronic music festival, to make you feel like relaxing by a nice and quiet hot spring, somewhere deep in the Canadian mountains. At least when you know it’s an option, it can easily become a semi-serious obsession as the party progresses and you find yourself peeling your sleeping bag off your grimy back in the mornings. I am speaking out of experience, of course.

A snapshot from the Shambhala Music Festival by the Salmo River

I had been volunteering my carpentry skills at the legendary Shambhala Music Festival in the Kootenay mountains of British Columbia, and it had been a most delightful and wonderfully intense week of hard work and elaborate partying, but now I was positively pooped and – as per usual – down to my last 100 dollars. More importantly, I needed a long, hot bath and a 24-hour nap.

Welcome To The Jungle!

After a whole year in Denmark – the longest time I have spent there for about 5 years, I am now again on traveling foot and loving every minute of it. This time I have been granted a 1-year working visa for Canada, and although I am only a month into my travels, I already feel like it won’t be enough with merely 11 more! This country is just so incredibly beautiful and the people here are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Here is a brief account of my very first meeting with this great land and it’s awesome humans…