APRIL 27, 2017 // 7
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CLOSE TO HOME:
LET THERE
BE BOWLS
By DAVID CAMPICHE
FOR COAST WEEKEND
In dwelling, be close to the land. In
meditation, go deep to the heart.” —
Lao Tsu, author of the Tao Te Ching
Up the hill from Tucker Creek in Astoria,
a fi re blazes inside the anagama kiln, or “cave
kiln.” Inside its belly, 300 bowls sit on clay
shelves and await the wood ash that gallops
up the long tunnel of brick and onto clay pots.
Flame and ash dance before rising up the four-
teen-foot chimney and into the soft air.
This hillside kiln — known locally as the
“dragon kiln” — on the property where Richard
and Patti Rowland live, speak to the same age-
old principles crafted in ancient Japan where
potters — artisans dating back to 12,000 BC —
plied their trade and craft.
The Rowlands replanted this wooded land-
scape 35 years ago after it was clear-cut. There
is something Old World about this property. It
resonates with community and spirit. Walking
up the steep hill during a full moon, listening to
the music that murmurs from the burning wood,
one feels part of a better time and place.
Bowl dinners
For more than thirty years, the Rowlands
have sunk their teeth into the meat of their
community. For thirty years, Richard and this
community of potters have thrown thousands of
bowls, shaped, trimmed and fi red these delicate
vessels.
The Rowlands help organize the Soup Bowl
dinners that benefi t regional women’s resource
centers.
This spring, a dinner will be held 5 p.m.
May 6 at the Old Mill RV Park & Event Center
in Garibaldi (210 S. Third St.) to benefi t the Til-
lamook County Women’s Resource Center. A
second dinner, to benefi t The Harbor in Astoria,
will be held 5:30 p.m. June 10, at the The Loft
at The Red Building (20 Basin St.).
For these events, local potters throw seven
or eight hundred bowls. After drying, the bowls
are fi red in the anagama kiln or in the stoneware
kiln at Clatsop Community College. On dinner
nights, each guest buys a bowls. Locals donate
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Richard Rowland bowl
large quantities of
soup, and everyone
takes their bowl and
helps themselves. There are
desserts, breads and coffee. After
dinner, there are introductions and
speakers, many of the women share their
experiences. Guests often make donations to the
women’s centers.
The community stands behind the ladies like
a wall of river stone, each cemented in place by
love and support.
The Way
‘Not biblical but spiritual’
Pots mature in a kiln for six days and six
nights, and then rest and cool from the seventh
day for a week. This process is not biblical but
spiritual, for magic seems to pass from bowl to
bowl, like singing stones tumbling in a winter
stream. Color is a gift from the wood ash, a
weaving of sorts: maple and fi r, pine, fl ame,
a mingling of ocean air — and of course, the
dedication of the potters.
The ash ascends from six cords of split,
dried and stacked fi rewood that is gathered
months in advance of the fi ring. Each piece
is split, stacked and dried for months under
covered sheds built by Richard Rowland and
friends.
The compound appears little different than
those same structures, hand-build by the Japa-
nese, Koreans and Chinese over eons.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Richard and Patti Rowland
The tinder-dry wood spits and crackles as
the fi re swells into white heat, and after many
days, fi nally reaches temperatures around 2,400
degrees. Ash is chemically changed from wood
to glass, in a process known as “glazing.”
The sun rises. A downy wood-
pecker gnaws at a decaying alder tree. In
a tall hemlock, a raven caws. Potters gather.
The fi re preens and arcs. Below, on the asphalt
highway, log trucks race between loads of 14-
inch Douglas Fir. Somewhere they are falling
trees in great numbers. Isn’t this all part of the
great Tao?
I open the kiln’s iron door and feed the
fi re. Down-valley, a mallard mother sounds an
alarm. “Attention — attention,” she seems to
crow. “Choose your path wisely.”
Recently, in a chance meeting, a doctor I
know expounded on a theory about kids and
cellphones. Neurological damage is occurring,
he said, from their obsession with these phones
and games. Kids don’t venture into the great
outdoors anymore. Instead, they gaze into the
tiny windows of technological marvels. In
doing so, they are losing their way with nature.
Way: sitting up all night with a Japanese
kiln, feeding bundles of fi rewood until red
coals turn white, and ash wraps around the
women’s bowl like love. Way: endorsing
tradition.
Pottery is meditation. The act of centering
clay is an act of centering oneself.
And all paths lead to fl ame. A new world
shaped by fi re.