Today, I tried to describe a beard.

Not just any beard. If photos on the internet are a reliable guide (of course they are), the beard in question qualified the wearer for the title of the Manliest Beard of the Whole Nineteenth Century.

In the Civil War, of course, wearing a beard was de rigeur. Especially for the Yankees, because they all had Lincoln envy, but most Rebels had beards too.

Some are iconic: Besides Lincoln’s chin curtain, you can picture General Longstreet’s long beard, General Burnside’s side burns, General Grant’s well-trimmed trim.

My subject’s beard was fuller than Grant’s, smoother than Longstreet’s. His mustache would make Magnum P.I. cry.

I need to get the beard description right, because it matters to my story. The beard appears in Chapter 2 of the biography I’m writing, on the chin of a man who so influenced my subject that the latter would use his middle name for the rest of his life to emulate his mentor. This beard needs to speak.

In The Hero’s Journey, the meeting with the mentor happens early in the story. It propels the hero out of The Ordinary World and (in spite of himself) across the line into the Adventure. We’re talking Obi-Wan Kenobi here.

I didn’t have that eureka moment in my beard description yet — a couple of aha moments, maybe. After the fact, I consulted an online writer’s guide for describing beards (just what everyone needs). I didn’t find anything I’ll use, but I learned with satisfaction a term I can use to describe those alt-conformist guys who hang around old-timey music jams: lumbersexual.

Just one small way that work as a law professor can pay dividends for everyday life.