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A nest is a place where you have a sense of protection and strength.
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It's like an earth temple or a nature temple.
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The wood is following a pattern, but not one branch is the same.
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As a nest builder, I'm following those patterns.
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Most of the work is trying to bring out the best of those shapes with each other.
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(elegant violin music)
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I'm Jayson Fann, and I'm a nest builder.
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I started building nests as a child.
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The nest building was really an intuitive process of just gathering branches and building forts originally.
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And the nest grew and got bigger and more elaborate.
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Now some of the nests are as big as a hundred thousand pounds of wood.
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The hardest part of building the nest is really gathering all the wood.
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I use a chainsaw to cut wood.
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I use a machete to cut off all the excess leaves and from there, I really assess, you know, what kind of shapes I have, what kind of material I have to work with.
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The construction process of the nest first is creating the foundation and the infrastructure.
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And then I follow those larger sculptural shapes that I bolt together with smaller material that I can weave in and around.
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I use every part of the tree, the trunk of the tree, all the way down to the very smallest twig and branch of the tree.
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I've gotten to where I'm used to building them on flatbed trailers and moving them around, and in many cases, I'm transporting them across the country.
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Because the nests are quite heavy, I use cranes and forklifts and different kinds of equipment.
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This is all eucalyptus.
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There's over 75 different species of eucalyptus on this property.
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I've built around 50 nests all over the country, and now primarily, I build the nests with kids within an educational setting.
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As an educator, like, it's really important to work with kids and help them realize that they have the ability to shape and create an environment.
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I'm gonna show you how we can integrate those branches into the spiral.
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I love getting kids out into nature, interacting with nature.
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And the nest is actually very much a collaboration with nature.
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I know I've done a good job when it looks like the nest is something that could almost have grown out of the ground.