5 days in the backcountry of Olympic National Park, padding through the great moss draped forests, I am tiny at the feet of those regal evergreen giants. Winding our way up rocky mountainsides, up to a world of stone and sky. I am swept clean by the swift winds. I am emptied by the long gazes across tree tops over mountain peaks. This is vastness. I am small. In all these places, along each stretch of varied trail, an impossibly generous gift of blueberries! Blueberries on gangly limbed bushes among the big trees, blueberries on stocky little red leafed plants crouching low among the rocks in the high country. SO MANY BLUEBERRIES! We were slowed by our grazing, stopping every few to gather a handful of sweet tart deliciousness. Every human we encountered on the trail had the same purple stained mouth set in an expression of sated wonder.
Flowers with Feelings
Perhaps the Poppy, more than any other flower, seems to carry a particular mood, an emotional disposition of sorts. I admit its vibrant red gold petals might stand contrary to this idea but I think Poppies feel generally sad, even a bit put upon. You can see it in the way pool their unopened heads hang heavy toward the ground, in their stunningly slender necks that quiver wiggle in the thrust of any little breeze. Their bright disheveled heads all lamenting “Oh whoa is us, why must we grow here in this rocky wind beaten spance beside this highway?” Their lace work leafy arms all suplicant, “Oh lift us up, oh mournful day!”
Stranger than Fiction
I planted lupine in my front yard last year and this spring it is flowering enthusiatically. The blossoms attract a particular kind of bumblebee, dressed in fuzzy black and yellow but with a tinge of reddish orange on his rear end. He bumbles about very systematically visiting each little purple purse shaped bloom, moving around and up the stem in a buzzy spiral. Bumblebee lands on the front edge of the petal sack, bending it downward, triggering a little violet talon to tap him on the back. Buzz - land - sip - tap - buzz - land - sip - tap. They do this bit of choreography again and again, bumblebee and lupin. It is intimate and beautiful and stranger than my imagination can conjure.
I am sewing strange flowers these days but I have yet to devise the dance, the method for their pollination.
Beautiful Machine
I’ve been hand sewing this piece to have the feel of a digital readout. It is a definite shift from the plant and animal subjects I am usually looking to. There I am striving to capture moving color and the elusive quality of the living. This is strictly pattern and order. I enjoy the measured regularity of the stitching but I must admit that a machine could make this faster. This turns the sewing into a philosophical exercise, each stitch a tiny “why?”. I have no answers for those “why?”s but something compells me to keep piercing the cloth with the needle. A small satisfaction wells within me as I reach the end of a stitched row and turn the cloth to start another. I am writing a story I cannot read yet…
She looked me in the eye!
Two Augusts ago I was backpacking in the Wallowas, moving fast along a flat stretch beside the Minam River, when a big blonde wolf loped across the trail just a few feet in front of me. My mind lept to dog then bounced off it as she turned her head and looked at me, wilder, more self possessed and critical than any dog would be. She was large and her fur was mottled, all the possibilities of blond across her lanky body. I was electrified! I was transformed for a moment into the naked, clawless, slow footed truth of myself.
When we got out of the mountains my encounter was confirmed by a woman at the Blue Banana coffee kiosk who showed me images and data on the Wallowa’s Bear Creek Wolf Pack. I saw her photo and I cannot stop thinking about her. I am slowly creating her image in cloth.
the possible merits of not knowing ahead of time…
I wonder if badger knows the shape of the hole before she begins the digging.
I am curious if bird holds a clear vision of the nest as he starts collecting those first twigs and bits of moss.
I notice in my own work, that lately I begin with very little vision, maybe just a curiosity about a shape or a texture. I think I used to start a piece with grander more fully formed outcomes in mind, but maybe that is a distortion of memory, a hindsight mirage. I recollect though, an agonizing with ideas, a striving and grappling at my mind’s work table that rarely happens these days. I don’t think I’ve gotten any better at finding ideas for what to make, maybe just more comfortable with letting those ideas find me.
A cup of tea
A cup of tea can be an act of love. Filling the kettle, turning on the flame, selecting a variety, opening the tea and inhaling the floral scents, dipping and pouring, stirring and dripping in honey or a squeeze of lemon or a splash of milk. Tea is ceremonial and one completes that ceremony by delivering that steaming, trembling cup, all hot and fragrant, as an offering, a gesture of attention to one you love.
