Apprenticeship

I’ve been stubbornly resistant to making a pack basket. I have all of the brown ash splints, I’m weaving baskets, I have the intention of spending lots of time outside and often want to carry things with me, so why not a pack basket? I think exploring that question could very easily become a long essay stretching back into my early teens and getting into my reaction to visual cues that mark people as belonging to certain groups. I’m not going to write that … Read More

Ash splints fill my bathtub and stain it yellow, shreds of ash are felted into all of my wool socks, my cat rolls in piles of scraps and then walks off to some other part of the house, leaving a trail behind him. Ash falls out of my hair, I find it in my tea, in my bed. My life is saturated with ash, and I’ve yet to weave a single basket. Every evening after dinner, I pull a splint out of the … Read More

It took two seasons of living on this land before I realized that these thick, plentiful vines are wild grapes. Many of them stretch high into the trees, where I can’t even see their leaves, let alone sample their fruits. These are for the birds. But each year I find enough grapes within arm’s reach to keep me happy. Do they taste good? Hell yes they do! Even the ones that don’t, do. Reaching into a thicket and pulling out … Read More

On a sunny and well-frozen day in early February, we learn to harvest red osier dogwood. Its color is stunning against the snow, and makes for a beautiful basket. Ray leads us to promising harvest spots, talking about the dogwood’s preferred habitat (open and sunny and wet). We fan out in search of long, straight, slender whips; a single year’s growth. If you don’t cut the red osier, it branches and becomes thick and woody. If you cultivate a relationship … Read More

“My land.” Oh dear, this is going to be a problem. This land doesn’t belong to me in any truly meaningful sense. I’ve tried calling it “the land that I live on,” and variations thereof, but the phrasing is cumbersome and feels detached. So I’m going back to calling this “my land,” in the relationship-indicating sense that I would say “my sister” or “my friend,” and not in the ownership sense that I would say “my sock.” Only two more … Read More