A redwood named after Henry Miller transforms into artful slabs and a fundraising boon.

It outlasted him by nearly 40 years, but Henry Miller finally lost his erection.

The slump happened on a sunny morning back in 2012. Soon, the fallen stack was sliced up and dried in an oven. Eventually, it was sold, piece-by-piece at three auctions to bidders from Carmel, Ventura County, New Jersey and beyond. The sale netted about $130,000.

“Miller’s erection” was the name given by the staff of the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur to an old-growth redwood once found on the property. They called it that because of a distinct curve that caused the 230-foot tree to lean at a 60-degree angle.

The tree had seemed sturdy. Enough so that acrobats had used it for balancing acts during a community fashion show. But a rainstorm came, lasting five days and, according to the leading theory among library folk, the tree guzzled up so much water that its center of gravity changed. Without the tree’s former structural integrity, the extra weight of the water caused the trunk to snap just above the roots – “like an asparagus,” says Magnus Toren, the library’s executive director, or like a “celery stalk,” according to Toren’s assistant, Mike Scutari, who was eating breakfast when the tree collapsed right in front of his eyes.

In a video interview a few months later, Scutari described an “explosion of sawdust” at the base of the tree. “It was as if someone had put a stick of dynamite in the trunk,” he said. “It slowly fell. It wasn’t a fierce descent, it was more like a glacial, slow whoosh.” The fallen tree, which knocked down a telephone pole and a fence but not the library itself, laid on the lawn “like a beached whale,” Toren said.

That’s what happens when a community of literary people experiences a dramatic event: you get an outpouring of metaphor, imagery and hyperbole.

Arborists counted about 500 tree rings but said the redwood could have been up to 700 years old. As the library likes to note, the tree predates: the arrival of Europeans in California; Martin Luther’s rebellion against the Catholic Church; and Galileo Galilei’s heretical assertion that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Growing from the roots of the dead redwood is a ring of redwood saplings – a fairy ring. These buried roots have supported an unknown number of generations of trees and could be thousands of years old.

The milling of the tree happened onsite and it was a community effort. Some recalled that a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers participated but they couldn’t say which one. The slicing yielded dozens of massive live-edge slabs, which were placed in kilns to dry. It was nearly perfect lumber, free of rot, termites and other damage. The library needed money for operations and improvements so it was fortunate that Miller’s erection became The Giving Tree: At two initial auctions, the library raised more than $100,000.

Now, it’s early October and a third auction for the final 12 slabs is about to start. A few dozen people are inspecting the lumber, measuring dimensions and noting attractive irregularities on scraps of paper. Slab #2 has a crack that’s shaped like a snake running through it. Slab #31 resembles a harp. The silhouette of slab #19 is warped by the protruding base of a branch. For some bidders, a digital photograph provides their best approximation because they are phoning into the auction from far away.

Toren is acting as auctioneer and minutes before he’s set to begin, he changes into a bright orange buttoned-down shirt. “It’s so that I stand out,” he says. He is positioned in a Captain Morgan stance under a red umbrella on the deck of the library, and the bidders are arrayed on the lawn below.

Very quickly with no competition, Slab #3 (flat at one end and curved at the other) sells to someone on the phone for $6,000. The next one is more interesting: slab #18 is one of those with a jutting branch bit and the bidding starts at $6,500. “Anyone for $7,000?” Toren asks and someone raises their card. “Can we get an $8,000?” Yes, we can. In increments of $500, the offers reach a high of $9,500. “Sold!” Hans Hess from Carmel is the winner. He’s with his son, also named Hans, who’s in a woodworking class. “I love the way the branch comes out,” he later says while sitting on his slab in triumph.

Ryan O’Donnell, a tiny home builder from Ojai, drove up for the auction. He tries to acquire #7, which has a cool hole in the middle, but his offer of $4,500 is quickly beaten. But later on, O’Donnell does manage to beat the competition, grabbing #11 for $6,500. It’s perfect for a large dining room table.

After expenses, three auctions brought in an average of $4,062 per slab: “Good for us since we are in the process of doing the water system and handicap-access upgrades,” Toren says.