My Mentor: Iron Mike Harrigan, perhaps the world’s greatest blacksmith…

…and a really good juggler and all-around decent and impressive human.

Mike Harrigan spent a bunch of years as commercial pipe welder. But then he ran away to the circus. Really. At age sixty, he left his welding job and joined a circus. He’s a first-rate juggler and knows a lot of other tricks. It think he even spent time on the tight-rope. He’s a very creative blacksmith. He makes up many things has he goes. He trusts the process. And I’m learning to trust the process too. Whatever he makes, turns out looking good. Or he starts again. He’s passionate about being alive it seems: he reads a History of Philosophy in his spare time, refers to William Blake while he’s hammering, and named his business Urthona Forge, after one of Blake’s mythological creatures, Urthona, a blacksmithing god. He loves to swing dance with his friends and often takes me along. He really knows how to get metal to do what he wants it to do. He says I’m his favorite student. And his only student.