Portal part 1

I built a portal. Portals, those gateways between the ethers and earth, creativity and death, angst and humility, wisdom and knowledge.

Seems apropos - a physical representation of awareness - a reminder of what is. A stack of beams sit in a builder's lumber yard. Six by twelve by twenty. Plenty long. Plenty wide. Culled stock, stored for reasons lost to time. Throughout the summer and well past the middle of fall, I walk by every morning at 5:30, imagining, creating, building, staining, sanding, measuring, constructing. The beams wait.

A few weeks ago, I dug two holes three feet deep, left cash under the door of the shop, and loaded the beams into Little Grey's six foot truck bed. Two trips. The first four beams are seven, nine, thirteen and fourteen feet long requiring strapping and leverage. The second trip required a chainsaw to cut the beams to their exact size. Cut, trimmed, sanded, and stained, then assembled and fastened with brackets.

The beams are leveled laying flat to ensure exact square during assembly and in final upright position. This process involves placing beams under beams and shimming those beams with thinner wood stock. Eventually, I wrangle the fourteen foot top beam in place and anchor with brackets. Next, raising the gate.