Two weeks ago, for Yestermorrow's eight arriving Woodworking Certificate students, a forest was a forest; a place to hike, or explore, or get lost in.

Today, ten days later, for those same eight students, a forest is something completely different. It's a place of trees -- of cherry, and maple, and ash, and oak, and birch. It's a place of sap wood, and burls, of deciduous and coniferous. It's a place of forest management, and selective harvesting. Of sustainably felling, and skidding, and bucking, and milling, and stickering.

For these eight, the forest is now about splitting with froes and wedges, and about shaping with spokeshaves, drawknives and shaving horses. It's about steam bending, and mortising, and joining, of legs and rungs and slats.

It's about assembly, and sturdiness, and simplicity, and beauty.

It's about taking a seat in that forest, from that forest, listening to the trees sway in the breeze -- hearing, touching, feeling their essence. Understanding their wonder.

What will the next nine weeks bring?