Jessica and her family generously put me up for the night last Monday, and we spent hours talking all things poetry-and-more over cups of ginger tea and, later, glasses of red wine. Like the beautiful oaks in her backyard, Jessica is an old soul; we traversed time and space, experience and emotion and creative expression, in our rich, wandering conversations. She’s as tuned to language and the heart as white pines are to wind and birdsong. Tuesday morning, I left their home filled with deep friendship, gratitude, and a baggie of delicious chocolate-chip muffins.
The road north lead into more snow. Due in Interlochen by late afternoon, I wanted to make a pilgrimage first to one of my early mentors in traditional fine press printing—Chad Pastotnik of Deep Wood Press. The ground began to whiten the further I went, until snow-plow piles of the dirty white stuff were banked higher than my head. I wound west and north of the small town of Mancelona until I found Chad’s place, tucked back in a grove of conifers along the swift Cedar River. Walking up to his shop across shoveled but icy walks, I inhaled the heady scent of the trees, the cold. A merganser floated past; a few chickadees announced me to the woods.
Opening the studio door at my knock, Chad ushered me into his world—ink and iron, lush papers and sharp tools, eagle eyes and exactitude. One of the most accomplished fine press printers on the planet, he has operated Deep Wood Press since 1991. I came across images of Chad’s work early on in my learning about traditional printing and bookmaking, and it was truly an honor to experience DWP first-hand. He has an excellent collection of hand-set type and Linotype matrices for book work, and prints mostly on a venerable old Vandercook 219. In the time he generously shared with me, we talked over equipment, inks, his stunning library of fine press books, the business of book arts, and some of the finer points of colophon construction. I left filled with new knowledge, inspiration, and more gratitude.
