Carving walking sticks wasn’t meant to be a money-making hobby for me. I sometimes made them when backpacking, and I had always enjoyed taking my pocket knife to a piece of wood to see what I could make. I just hadn’t thought of doing anything more with the hobby.
One summer, when my wife Ana and I briefly got into the flea market business, I noticed the occasional vendor selling walking sticks. If the event was more of an arts and crafts show than a flea market, they sold for as much as $50 each. Ana suggested that we could sell them too, so I went to work.
I could cut 20 or young poplars in an hour with my “shortcut” saw, and get two sticks out of half of them. My favorite wood, however, was white cedar. In the Cedar swamps near home, it grew straight and died young from overcrowding. Cedar wood remains solid for many years after dying, so I could quickly cut many straight and perfectly dried sticks.
There was soon a pile of wood shavings behind the house, as I cut the bark off and carved each stick into various forms. Many were just rounded off on top. Others I cut into a spiral, or pyramidal shape. I put padding and leather...