A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger

Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident 

A pair of piliated woodpeckers visited our bird feeders for several days on the cusp between fall and winter, favoring the suet. Soon their work appeared on nearby stumps and deadfall. Most prominent among them was this shadow box. It is two feet above ground, approximately ten inches by five. The photo is overexposed to reveal the dark interior. 

“This reminds of something Gaudi might have designed,” I said to Kathleen. 

“Perhaps cave dwellings in the side of a mountain, or a grotto,” she added. 

Antoni Gaudi, the great Catalan architect of the first quarter of the twentieth century, was a serious student of nature. The caves of Montserrat, Collbato and Mallorca were major influences. His style is unique and instantly recognizable, even as it is reflected in the work of a woodpecker. He began as a typical if gifted modern architect. His passion for natural forms that flowed and defied conventions created a style impossible to imitate. His structures are unmistakable. 

Most woodpecker holes are hollowed. There was something about this tree that caused parts of its interior to be harder to penetrate than others. The rapid fire of woodpecker beak worked around the harder places, a natural excavation seeking the more yielding sections of a natural media. The result is this flowing pattern. The wood seems to be dripping as it forms openings and lattices, as does the stonework of Gaudi’s church of Sangrada Familia in Barcelona. The caves that inspired Gaudi also flowed and dripped. 

What connects Gaudi’s church, the woodpecker’s stump and the caves? The human’s brain, the bird’s beak and the natural elements at work over eons created them. This is like saying that a chisel created Michelangelo’s David. Some greater common element was working through the chisel, the hand of the artist, his love for the model and his devotion to its expression. 

This creative force has many names and no name. The caves, the church and the hole in the stump are so similar the same artist seems to have created all three.