End of July.
A hike at Craggy Pinnacle on Friday–on the Blue Ridge Parkway outside Asheville. Misty, foggy morning starting to break when we reached the top. 
I’m reading Lee Smith’s work now–her novels that focus on life in these parts. Oral History for one. True to place.
So–Two things from an on-line class I’m taking with Jude Hill–“considering weave.” Threads were compliments of my sister–my sister the weaver–I mean as in a real weaver. A vintage weaver. A weaver of heirloom patterns. Big looms with many moving parts. Mind-boggling designs laid out on paper. I marvel…because we’re related…and because I clearly didn’t inherit the “weaving” gene and everything else that goes with it.
This tapestry figure is about 1.5 inches wide and about 5 inches long. I spent many hours on it. Asking myself from time to time during the process, “Why?” I still don’t know why. And I don’t know why I continued except that after a point, I was curious to see the result.
This one feels more like it. Kinda wacky. Loose. Unexpected in a way. The figure in on a pilgrimage. Arms and antlers to follow. Or not.
It’s been one of those odd summers for me. Quiet. Internal. A lot of processing and “looking at.” Then looking at what comes up while I’m looking. Following breath.
When I started this little not-much-of-a-post, an old Dylan line was running through my head…”you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” I deleted it at the beginning, but it wants to be heard.
following thread 
oh I like that wildy weaving with the B&W legs, he looks like a corn harvest spirit in the making, what a wild thing!
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yes–spirit of harvest, beginning a pilgrimage. i had thought about weaving its head and think i will. something so organic about the weave.
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i wrote a long comment…where did it go????????????????? i wait a while, see if it
appears
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i don’t know? but hope it gets here. love
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thinking of your thinking…..
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and right now, i’m smiling, knowing you’re thinking….
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thinking of your thinking….
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well, i must have done something or, not…
and really, this doesn’t need to be said, but
when i used to read novels i would become totally OF the story. my life would become
inconsequential, just go through the motions until i could turn the next page.
i know nothing of this writer but looked her up, looked up Oral History and i can
imagine this being the case here…her vivid characters, compelling story. and i look
at the photograph at the beginning of the post, thinking of you standing there last
Friday….in this WONDERLAND of a Surreal Place on the planet where people lived
intense and fierce lives in beautiful and daunting surroundings…made their way…
so i would think…No Wonder you are quiet. No wonder.
the actual weave, well congratulations…i will leave weaving till my next life
but the Pilgrim being…is You…even tho woven, i wait for the antlers and more glimpse
of the journey
but back to the first photograph….people lived and died in this Place like the characters
in your book, and i would guess there is still the mumble of these stories, lives, echoing
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yes. that is it. the sense of place here. the sense of beings who once walked these hills. still present. the presence of Cherokee energy–Sha-co-na-qe, Cherokee for place of blue smoke. it’s all so palpable, visceral, right here, right now. and it humbling and quiet-making.
we sat in a picnic kinda area. a bald mountain glade. probably cleared by some settler a long time ago. and i thought i heard the sound mules make when they’re hitched to a plow.
I look at these mountains and valleys, and cannot really imagine what it would have been like. to arrive here. with little food. and no shelter. to begin a life. a person can get pretty hungry waiting for a garden to grow. and that may have been the least of their challenge. but the main thing, the main sense, is the they’re-still-here quality that hangs in the air.
antlers to follow. and just read that the plants are pepper. good.
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and grace, i need to say a. bit more. the Cherokee. how they too were replaced. moved out. settlers wanted in so they came in. and i can’t help but think of things today. immigrants wanting into our country. why is that different from white settlers wanting native land? and the problems in the middle east. there’s a common thread here that i’m trying to grasp. and i’m wondering how the same m.o. can be right one time and wrong another. not trying to politicize things–just wondering.
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just quickly….will think about the other response a while, but
this second…there IS a thread. And it’s NEVER right. Ever.
to Displace is never right. Has never been never will be. There
is room for small lives. small good plain lives. Life Enough.
and it’s not politicizing, it’s human rights. the right to Be and
then the respect to Come To, with a hope to Be. to find ways
to Fit in to the existing energy, maybe give what you have…
i really love that first photograph. it pulls me in.
more later
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Oh, you have so captured my own musings while Considering Weave: “Why? … And I still don’t know why … But I’m curious.”
Sometimes it’s just about the journey I s’pose … and you seem to have found some wonderfully quirky companions along the way. Enjoy!
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Love your wacky creature and the woven ground
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the guys played subterranean homesick blues last night & Dennis remembered all the words without the placards, I was amazed!
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