In the late summer of 2001 while I was building the bridge over Brock Creek, in the back of my mind I was thinking about some symbol for my work. I wanted a sort of mark or logo that might suggest my work and my way, yet be simple and easy to reproduce.

The evening it was finished (September 16th, the end of a week when we all did a lot of thinking) I had stepped back to see how the final trim fit and looked. No one had yet stood on the finished bridge. Just as I was about to step forward, a dragonfly came out of the woods a foot or so above the bridge deck.

It stopped near the center and landed for moment before coming up and toward me stopping 4 or 5 feet in front of me at about eye level. We looked at each other for a while as it hovered there.

Now I am not spiritual at all, but I did decide that I now had my symbol. When I got back to the Mill, I drew him up as best I could rememeber, and as you see him now on each piece I make. The dragonfly, who sees everything, stops to study what draws his interest, then, taking from it what he can, goes on.

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