The Staff

I guess I've always been a wands kind of guy. Maybe it was the promise of fireworks (I was quite taken by sparklers as a child). But there's an alternative to the wand: the staff.

I celebrate each of the eight points of the wheel of the year with a walk in a nearby forest. This time, I noticed that the rangerfolk had been busy cutting and clearing the debris left from our early summer windstorms. The thought came to me that I might find a nice staff somewhere among the tree pieces that were everywhere about.

I'm in good health, and not quite geriatric yet, so I'd never before seriously considered walking with a staff. But Merlin, The Hermit, and Gandalf the Grey were all doing it, so it occurred to me I might be missing out on something good. I found a gorgeous limb of tree, just the right dimensions, and with plenty of character. I gripped it firmly and set off.

It proved an excellent implement. Very helpful in those places that are a little too steep for walking and a little too gentle for scrambling. It also drew me into a determined, ponderous sort of gait. And it prompted some thoughts.

What a primal implement! This is surely humanity's first tool. It gives mobility to the lame, weak, aged, or just plain weary. It improvises into a lever, a digging stick, or a poker. (Who doesn't occasionally have the urge to poke things with something less vulnerable than one's own finger?) Furthermore, it is a weapon always at the ready. Not that I was planning on jousting with those irritating cyclists on the forest trail, mind you. But thinking back to times and places when a walk in the wood was a risk of encounter with predatory beasts or robbers, what a wonderful thing it is that a flick of the wrist transforms a walking stick into a shield or club!

And the staff asks nothing in return. You don't need to spend years studying the art of the smith to make one. You don't need to spend a fortune to buy one. You just grab a hunk of tree and you're set. You can remove the bark and carve the wood if you care to, but the staff is indifferent to that. It's ready from the moment you grip it.

The staff must have been a symbol that produced a bit of fear in the medieval nobility. One could restrict swords to those of noble birth by royal decree, and hope for some modicum of success. But no regal writ can stop the desparate farmer from grabbing a big stick and smacking it into the tax collector's head, if the spirit so moves him. No, I'm not glorifying violence, but has there even been a more pristine, uncomplicated symbol of the human desire to seize control of a situation than a good solid ka-THUMP with a big stick?

Halfway through my walk, I found myself relating very well (for the first time) with those quasi-comical figures in the Tarot of Marseilles, who seem to be carrying around half a !#$#* tree with them wherever they go. Big, woody, knobbly, weighty staves! Somehow, the staff becomes the quintessential symbol of will: it is the basic paradigm for extending your intentions beyond the limits of your body. It is the primordial power symbol, aggression, security, and mastery all rolled together: grip and go!

I brought my staff home with me. I like it a lot. For the time being, it has even displaced my urge to make a wand.

We've lost something in the modern world; only freaks like me walk with staves these days, and only in politically correct venues like the local forest hiking trails. My fantasy is to attend a staff meeting that lives up to its name.

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