1. Visit the woods.

2. Find a sapling thin enough to bend by hand but hardy enough to promise solid growth.

3. Bend it and tie it with strong rope or an old leather belt.

4. Wait 4-5 years.

We lived on the lower elevations of shades mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. Hickory makes the best walking stick, so we'd walk down the hill into the woods to find the right hickory tree, bend it, and then tie it off with some strong rope. Or, one time, my father used an old leather belt.

Over the years, I'd walk past that skinny tree wearing a belt many times. Whether I thought his method would work or not depended on how my father and I were getting along at that particular time.

What stands out in my memory is not the ups and downs or the particulars our relationship. Instead, I see clearly the belt, the tree, and my father's hands tying it off.

The belt method does work. He made a fine walking stick and my grandfather used it daily until he died at age 98. Now it's back in my father's care, waiting for it's next assignment. It waits there like a history book of me, my father and his father.

Wood is the closest material I know of to human flesh. Growth rings, grain patterns and cellular structure tell epic stories of time passing. It reacts to stresses in its environment, compensates and adapts. It forms burls or twists towards sunlight, or succumbs to the grip of an old belt.