On the morning of April 8, 2019, I was working on Inside Bear. The sculpture was laying horizontally on its side on my work table. As I turned to get a wood chisel, I heard a loud crash. The thin, hollowed log had rolled off the table hitting the concrete floor below, completely breaking into four pieces. I was distraught, because I had spent nearly fifty hours the previous week carving its wall from four inches thick to a quarter inch thick.

I had two options. Cash it all in and burn the whole thing, or continue working on it and try and mend it. I decided to at least try and glue it back together. I took two of the pieces and glued them together and decided I would be patient and go for a mountain bike ride and let the glue really set and dry before continuing gluing the other two pieces. Three hours later as I was finishing my ride, I clipped a rock with my pedal, flipped over my handlebars and landed on my nose, my bottom lip acting like a grader filling my mouth with dirt and rocks as my face slid across the trail, breaking my nose, and my neck. Five months later, I returned to my studio to continue working on Inside Bear.