The workshop has been busy cutting pao preto, a dark and heavy black wood unlike anything I have ever seen before. Piles of different shapes and sizes are stacked and organized neatly on nearly every horizontal surface.  The table saw lets out a strain scream as the wood surrenders to the blade.  A mist of blue dust and a sweet aroma fill the air.

I accompanied Allan into the ‘matu’, or bush, to pick up another truck load of pao preto.  I left assuming we would be going to a workshop just like the one I am used to in Mezimbite.  After driving for nearly an hour off of the main road, Allan stopped the car.  There was not a person or sign of civilization anywhere in site.  Showing frustration, Allan explained that Ricardo was supposed to be here, in this site on the side of the road distinguished by two tall trees in the distance.  We did not have cell phone reception.  Standing in the truck bed, we scanned the open land in front of us.

As Allan was pointing out the different birds that flew overhead, we noticed some rustling in the grass in the distance.  As the rustling sounded closer, we could distinguish a maroon stocking cap bobbing just above the tip of the grass.  It was Ricardo.  After emerging, he took a short breath and turned back around to lead the truck off the road and into the sea of grass.

The grass came right up to the window. As we drove over bumps and mounds, potholes and tree stumps, we followed Ricardo as he jogged in front of us.  He brought us far from the road past the towering power lines (or the “pipe line” as Ricardo calls it) to the forest’s edge.  All the while, Allan pointed out the different birds that flew by. 

Finally we came to a clearing.  In front of the car was a stack of wood and a tree stump surrounded by several trees and a number of workers, each holding axes of different shapes and sizes.  The trees were pao preto - hundreds of years old, smokey-grey, twisted and narrow.  We began to pile the logs of wood into the truck.

After loading the last log, the truck appeared unstable.  The driver-side (the right-side) rear tire was flat.  Using the only spare, we dove back into the sea of grass.  After passing the “pipe-line”, we meandered back to the road. 

The wood was brought to the workshop to be cut into rectangular blocks of specific sizes.  Those blocks will be sent to an instrument manufacturer in Germany to be turned and formed.  They will make clarinets for orchestra musicians throughout the world. 

As each uniform block lies atop the other, a trace of the original twisted trunk remains petrified in fluid motion in the stripes of the rings.  On a small rectangular block cut to the dimensions of a mouthpiece, a dark ring folds over an edge of the volume.  Here, a branch had sprouted from the central trunk high in the tree following the year of the flood.  Cradled at this joint, a fork-tailed flycatcher had once constructed her nest.

Work was interrupted that afternoon when a swarm of bees invaded the workshop.  Whether it was because the bees were uncomfortable in the humidity or because the hive was splitting, this clarinet mouthpiece will arrive one day later to the performance at the Philharmonic Hall in Berlin.