As bowyer Bear Brooks gently shaves away yellowed strips from a length of old osage orange wood and works his way around a knot, his flat metal tool cuts across the supple length of what will soon become a traditional longbow.
"You have to treat a knot in a piece of bow wood just like you would a rock in a stream," Brooks says later. He explains that you have to flow with the grain of the wood, moving your tool around and over the knot to work the bow down into the proper shape and weight without it being weakened.
The Knoxville, Tenn., native's head is shaved save for a feather-adorned lock at the base of his skull, and he works his craft dressed in simple clothing decked with tribal necklaces by a lean-to set up at Chattanooga's Pow Wow on the River.
For Brooks, who has been working his trade for 20 years, his role is as much educator as it is craftsman. "There are lots of bowyers out there," he said, "but not many demonstrate how to make a bow or talk about the process."
He works gently, shaving away the belly wood of the bow evenly and pausing at intervals to test how it bends by placing the end against his foot and pushing as it flexes inward. Occasionally he will attach a string and hook the piece around the top of his workbench to measure the weight it would take to draw the bow at that stage.
He will continue to shave away pieces until the bow is properly shaped, evenly worked, and down to the draw weight he intends before sanding and finishing it.
Brooks wants to keep the tradition alive and honor his Cherokee ancestry, which is why he does what he calls living history demonstrations at Native American festivals across the Southeast.
His attire and lean-to with simple tools are all a part of that, and as he works people stop to quietly observe, some for many minutes, and ask questions. He has trained others to make their own bows over the years, and he hopes to continue to educate.
Yet apart from all of that, Brooks says, the experience of bow-making is therapeutic for him. When not turning wood into weapons he works for a moving company, and when he has had a rough day he comes home and begins to carve.
"As I'm taking off shavings I have to focus on the wood itself, which takes my mind off of whatever problem I've had, and as the shavings fall off I let my stress fall with it," he said.
When the work is done, he gathers his stress from the floor, now lightweight, small, and easy to carry, and burns it away in the fire pit, scattering it into ash and air.