As the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, noted in 1784, we are all "crooked timber" in that we are all fundamentally flawed individuals. He argued that the goal in life is to do our best to confront our flaws to become better versions of ourselves. At Crooked Timber, we embrace this notion.

At the height of a successful career as an academic researcher, I came to realize that while I was accomplished along many societal criteria, I was driven too much by others' views of success, which left me unfulfilled. As a result, I began to shift my focus from an external value system to an internal (or intrinsic) value system - a slow, arduous process of learning what is really most important to me and my growth. I gradually cared less about awards, honors, and recognition; instead, I yearned to be in touch with nature. My family and I started spending more and more time exploring northern Michigan - a special region of rivers, lakes, and woods, where my grandparents used to have a cabin on the Au Sable River when I was a child - the ultimate respite in my youth. My wife, having grown up in the woods (Ozark Mountains), shared my desire for being among the trees and on the waters. We hoped to use our trips "up north" to establish a deeper connection to nature for our girls.

Concurrently, I started to develop an unexpected, but strong affinity for woodworking, perhaps part of the call to be closer to nature or maybe just a genetic calling from my father, who was skilled in carpentry and passed in 2016. Woodworking became the physical yin to my career's mental yang - a shift from a structured, scientific-method of thinking grounded in economics and statistics to a world with no established rules, led by creativity and intuition, and manifested by hand. I became drawn to the "imperfect" timber - those with cracks, dents, knots, torn grain, etc - in the hopes that we could work together to make something beautiful.

Then, in the summer of 2020, in a miraculous moment of serendipity, we happened upon an older couple at a small fly fishing shop outside of Grayling, Michigan. After some small talk, we learned that they were actually the owners of my grandparents' old cabin; they used it as their summer home since the late 90s. Given our shared connection with the property, they offered to give us a tour of the cabin. It was surreal to show my wife and daughters the place that I had always spoken of so fondly. Unfortunately, a few months later, the husband passed. And after another couple of summers, the widow reached out to ask if we wanted to buy the cabin - and we did.

Today, responding to a strong pull to go north, we have decided to move to the cabin on the river, and live closer to nature, explore the surrounding waters, trails, and towns, and I will focus on my woodworking full time. It's this passion for woodworking and our immersion in nature that has created our brand, Crooked Timber....a call into the wild, where one crooked timber works on another in the hopes of creating better versions of both.