Hand crafts

I have told the story of my great-grandfather here before—the Horace Kephart of Great Smoky Mountains fame, whom Ken Burns brought to life with care and meaning in his most recent series, "National Parks: America's Best Idea."  Kephart was the father of six when he left his life as a librarian to travel and then to live mostly alone in the Smokies; one of his children, a son named George, would become a forester and an official in the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.  He would also be my grandfather.

This tiny porcupine-quill basket is among the many artifacts George Kephart left behind.  Recently I helped my father take this and a series of other Indian-crafted baskets to an auction house, with the hope that a collector will rightly make room for them.  It is hard, however, to give up family history, even if one doesn't quite know, nor will ever know, how a basket this tiny and carefully made came into the possession of a handsome, taciturn man.