| Summary: | Some years ago a friend of mine, Stuart Mace, gave me a letter opener hand-carved from a piece of rosewood. Over his 70-some years Stuart had become an accomplished wood craftsman, photographer, dog trainer, gourmet cook, teacher, raconteur, skier, naturalist, and allaround legend in his home town of Aspen, Colorado. High above Aspen, Stuart and his wife, Isabel, operated a shop called Toklat, which in Eskimo means “alpine headwaters,” featuring an array of woodcrafts, Navajo rugs, jewelry, fish fossils, and photography. He would use his free time in summers to rebuild parts of a ghost town called Ashcroft for the U.S. Forest Service. He charged nothing for his time and labor. For groups venturing up the mountain from Aspen, he and Isabel would cook dinners featuring local foods cooked with style and simmered over great stories about the mountains, the town, and their lives. Stuart was seldom at a loss for words.His living, if that is an appropriate word for a how a Renaissance man earns his keep, was made as a woodworker. He and his sons crafted tables and cabinetwork with exquisite inlaid patterns using an assortment of woods from forests all over the world. A Mace table was like no other, and so was its price. Long before it was de rigueur to do so, Stuart bought his wood from forests managed for long-term ecological health. The calibration between ecological talk and do wasn’t a thing for Stuart. He paid attention to details. I first met Stuart in 1981. I was living in the Ozarks at the time and part of an educational organization that included, among other things, a farm and steam-powered sawmill. In the summer of 1981 one of our projects was to provide two tractor-trailer loads of oak beams for the Rocky Mountain Institute being built near Old Snowmass. Stuart advised us about cutting and handling large timber, about which we knew little. From that time forward Stuart and I would see each other several times a year either when he traveled through Arkansas or when I wandered into Aspen in search of relief ...
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