Certain people can listen to the words wood speaks. Some of them are even able to respond. Yecid Robayo is one of the lucky few. When he was barely in his twenties, he was already aware that he was going to be permanently surrounded by sawdust throughout his lifetime. It was, after all, a family trade: his uncles and cousins practiced it. Although at the beginning he thought he knew a little bit about carving wood, he saw that he had a lot to learn. So, he started from scratch. He is still learning because the wood continues to tirelessly speak to him. He says that he even keeps sticks under his bed and that he stores his logs in his workshop until they tell him that they are ready to be carved, which can take up to five years.

“Wood is a being you have to connect with. If you learn to treat it well, it will reward you. If, on the contrary, you are prideful and angry towards it, it will give you a hard time because it is a very valuable being.” These are words he says with the serious face and sparkling eyes of someone who speaks about their true passion. To witness his wares is to behold the beauty of nature’s drawings. We are lucky to have the opportunity of decorating our daily lives —mainly our mealtimes— with them.

It is nice to listen to him describe his raw material with such devotion. “That wood’s grain is marbled as if it had silver threads inside of it,” he says. He insists that we celebrate food through the beauty he finds in each carreto, cocobolo, black cedar, walnut, cumin tree, moho cafetero, and cumulá log: the beauty he finds in his universe of woods, all of which have stories within its layers. According to him, citrus-fruit woods in particular are a delight to work with.

He knows that he works with a non-renewable resource. Therefore, he understands that the responsibility with its use and the traceability of its origin are ethical essentials of his trade. Yecid’s friends know that he will honor the life of any cedar tree that falls on a farm giving it a new life as a novel and harmonious ware. He knows every park in Bogotá and is always ready to pick up any guayacán or willow trunk that collapses down into the ground.

Moreover —as if all of this were not enough already—, he considers that another one of his passions, each equally important as the last, is, perhaps, being a luthier. Guitar-making relaxes him, and he always finds fresh challenges and new meanings in all of his tasks. His life is filled with mysticism. Miraculously, his aura illuminates but a small part of Bogotá’s 7 de Agosto neighborhood. This is another one of the city’s many secrets.