Mountain Lion Carving Wows Tam Valley

To Tam Valley resident Robyn Contini, the recent sight of a young Labrador retriever puppy plodding down the street, spotting the recently finished woodcarving of a mountain lion and coming to a sudden halt made it all worth it.

“It just stopped dead in its tracks,” she said. “We’re having a lot of fun with it around here.”

The carving, crafted over the past several months by Novato resident Devyon Harrison, is atop the large stump of a Monterey Cypress tree on Marin County property at Glenwood Court and Glenwood Drive. An anonymous neighbor paid Harrison, a professional woodcarver for several decades, to do the carving. Harrison said the wood needs several months to dry out before he can completely seal it, which he'll likely do in summer 2012.

“He did such an incredible job,” Contini said of Harrison.

The massive tree was more than 100 years old when it was taken down two years ago by the county, which cited concern over the tree’s age and internal rotting found upon study of its core.

The woodcarving, Contini said, is the culmination of an issue that was the source of some controversy. Many residents were angered to see the tree torn down, but the end result has become an attraction in the area, with neighborhood children climbing on it and sitting on it.

“It really has been a neighborhood project,” she said.

As for Harrison, who has a woodcarving shop in Petaluma, the mountain lion is just the latest in a string of eye-catching carvings in the North Bay. For the past 18 years, the gift shop at Muir Woods has sold miniature versions of the bears Harrison carved for the shop’s deck.

“He’s a very talented artist and a really, really nice man,” said gift shop clerk Deborah Duck.

The mountain lion carving is at Glenwood Court and Glenwood Drive in Tam Valley. For more info about Harrison's woodcarving work, call him at (707) 364.4947.