Saw Artist Lets Chips Fall Where They May

First things being first, Vern Fields checks for rattlesnakes.

If none are around, he fires up his chain saw and lets his muse rip.

That has been his routine for 18 years, and he loves it.

“Gets me out of the house,” he says. “Keeps me away from the TV. Don’t have to rob banks this way.”

Fields is the big man in blue overalls who carves wood on a patch of dirt beside California 33 just north of Casitas Springs. He is there four or five days a week as the spirit moves him.

“I’ve been here so long that people passing by think I’m just a part of the landscape, that I’m just like one of these trees,” he says.

Not exactly.

He used to give a neighborhood kid little wooden rabbits he could knock off in a short while. Now the kid has grown up and honks when he drives by.

In the space of 10 minutes, a passing motorist flashes his lights, someone waves, a customer stops by and a deputy sheriff and several drivers beep their horns.

“There go the two Jessicas,” he says.

Who?

“My granddaughter, Jessica. And her friend, Jessica.”

At 62, Fields is just as much a roadside attraction as the carvings he creates from odd stumps and chunks with his favorite Craftsman Turbo 2.2.

On this day, he has several works in progress: a 5-foot-tall Indian chief, a coyote, an eagle with wings unfurled. In the shade of a sycamore tree, he has his chain saw going full blast, splintering off all parts of a particular stump that are not an owl.

But on any other day he is as likely to be bringing forth a conquistador, an elephant, a tortoise, a penguin, a dolphin or bears of all types.

A hunk of walnut root lies near his ’73 Chevy pickup.

“I haven’t figured this one out yet,” he says. “Maybe it’s a big ol’ lizard. Maybe it’s a fish, maybe a bullfrog. Who knows?”

Ankle-deep in sawdust, Fields spends hours talking to anyone who happens by.

He talks about the job he did for 28 years--driving tanker trucks filled with propane, gas and other substances that a mean look can turn into a toxic fireball. He will tell you about his lousy pension, about his two heart-valve operations, about the car accident that shattered his hip a long time ago, about the pins holding one of his ankles together.

Of course, none of that stops him from hefting tree stumps the way a butcher swings sides of beef. It also doesn’t keep him from doing his part-time job as a hand on Canada Larga Ranch, which owns the sliver of land that serves as his open-air studio.

“When cattle get out, I bring them back. I mend fence, I cut trees, I do whatever has to be done.”

That feeds the man, but not the soul.

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For inner sustenance, Fields carves--a skill he taught himself.

“I couldn’t get very far with a jackknife,” he says. “I tried chisels, too. But there’s something about a chain saw . . . .”

David Luick agrees. He has stopped by to ask when the pig bench will be ready. Luick and his wife have two Fields bears and an eagle in their Moorpark backyard. Now the piece de resistance is about to be finished: A log bench supported at either end by a stout Yorkshire hog.

“I told him, ‘Vern, do it like you’d do it at your own home,’ ” Luick says. “His work is unbelievable.”

Fields gets his raw materials from tree trimmers who give him hunks of pine, redwood, cedar, cypress, Chinese elm. In return, Fields fashions their totem of choice.

He doesn’t think much of the revered California oak.

“Scrap wood,” he mutters. “Water suckers. They gorge on water, then explode. I’ve seen it.”

Fields specializes in wildlife but says he can carve just about anything. He draws a firm line in the sawdust, however.

“Some people have come by for pornography,” he says. “But I don’t do that. I tell them you need to see someone who works in clay.”