Hands & Hearth: Shorn

Every two to three moons, the venerable Hawthorn must stand to have his fur shorn. I know it is not nearly so great a thing to shear a rabbit as it is to shear a sheep—and I've at least gotten as far as flipping a ram and holding him still with my knees, his horns to one side, which was so difficult it made my legs almost give out—but I am still getting used to the process, and so is Hawthorn. With an angora, it is very important not to delay when the wool starts coming out all over the hutch, because they are prone to "wool block" (essentially an enormous fur ball in the gut which they cannot cough up like a cat, and which will cause them to starve to death if not noticed soon enough—and rabbits like to hide any discomfort until the last moments, likely a survival tactic from those days, still close to the surface of their skin, when they were wild). So although he isn't very keen once I reach his chest or his belly, and I haven't yet managed to flip him on his back—apparently rabbits will go "tharn," to use a word from Watership Down (a state of paralyzed fear) when held down on their backs, which makes me feel awfully bad, and between that and Hawthorn's fierce claws, so far it can't be done—I can report that I am getting better at it. And so is he.

This past new moon, I sheared his wool for the third time, managing to cut it much closer, and preserve longer hanks of the lustrous stuff. I didn't actually mean to align the shearing with the phase of the moon, but I do hope the serendipity of it will encourage his wool to grow back thick and strong, as it does our own, and the seeds we sow. It took me until this round of shearing to really relax, and of course, once I am calm, so is Hawthorn. 

Hawthorn came into our lives because I was enamored of the idea of keeping a small creature whose wool I could shear to spin yarn. I did not anticipate quite how much I would fall in love with him, so that the act of shearing has become also an act of reverence—that this little being, fed nasturtiums and comfrey and raspberry leaves, and let loose to have adventures through the yard, creates upon his back every season a crop of the most silken thick fur imaginable. What a gift, what bounty! I'm sure those who keep animals feel the same—that there is something miraculous about the generosity of this exchange, no matter the histories of domestication. That the bees produce honey and the goats milk, the chickens eggs, and though some may argue coercion and domination in this pact, at our best I think these relationships humble us and remind us that we can't do this thing, this human thing, alone. Whether we are hunters or farmers, we take from the land and the animals in order to live; we need them, desperately. And we also need to be in right relation to them. But that's a story for another day, a deep and tangled one.

As for angoras, the harvest of their wool (which of course has some very negative sides in commercial settings) has more the ring of a strange, far northern, mountainous fairy tale about it. Hawthorn's is so soft and thick it lifts away from my fingers in the slightest wind. According to what seems to me a mildly legendary piece of history (for nobody is quite certain), angoras originated in the Carpathian mountains, probably in a slightly less furry state, and were tended there by mountain tribes who found their wool to be very warm and softer than that of the goats they also kept. Much later, in the 1700's, angoras found their way to France and England aboard Turkish ships bound from the port of Ankara, hence the name.

I don't know if this is true, but I do know that angora wool is so hot spun and knitted up into a sweater on its own that such a garment is unwearable, except in literally arctic or high mountain winters. Angora is better blended with wool, or made into smaller items, such as hats and scarves and gloves.

In any case, here it is, part of the Hawthorn harvest, his wool a tri-color, silken gift with the echoes of mountain bells and snowy peaks within it. What gratitude I feel, for the fur of animals.

And here he is, looking like a raggedy hare, except for his back end, which still needs one more trim. I think he's pleased, because now he can romp through the deep bushes and emerge with slightly fewer burrs and bits of leaves stuck all over the place. 

A Quilt of Moments-Between-Words: Newt-Track, Orange-Gold, Rabbit-Heart

Forgive me, dear readers, for my absence of almost a whole moon here! It has been one of the busiest writing months I've ever had, with three projects all going full-tilt at once, and so the scraps of time between that I've had I've spent outside, away from the crafting of words and the glow of this screen. These photographs below are the (somewhat disjointed) quilt of stolen moments between the pen-scribblings, the red notebook rapidly filling up to full! And in the midst of them is a wee surprise, a being who has stolen my heart, and will steal yours too, I daresay— and who also accounts for my absence here, as I have been writing beside him, out in the garden sun, beside the bloomings of all the plants brought back to life by the rains. 

One of the greatest medicines for my heart, as you well know by now, is to go out searching for the pawmarks of the wild animals of these hills. This can be difficult when there is no rain, and while of course my anxieties surrounding our drought had to do with more "important" matters than the pawprints of coyotes, I will admit to you that I was quite beside myself, imagining the trails cracked and dry for a whole year. So when the rains came at last, I was out on hands and knees. These prints are all from a single morning, and all probably about that fresh (between the previous midnight and dawn). The above coyote-print has a curious, slightly smudgy shape to the bottom left of its metacarpal (heel) pad. At first I thought this just had to do with the mud, but I later began to realize that it was a signature of sorts, a peculiarity to this individual.



Here he is again (dead center), crisscrossing the trail sometime probably near dawn. There were several separate coyote trails, distinguishable by the size and shape of prints, and given that a few weeks ago was the height of courting season, I and my tracking companions wondered if we were seeing some flirtatious frisking in those giddy, zigzagged prints.

In his more staid manner ("his" is a guess—the metarcarpal pad is quite fat, as befits a male bobcat), a bobcat crossed a more shaded part of the trail, from the creek up through a blackberry thicket and into the quiet of the oaks.

At last, the dear newts were out, dragging their swishing tails as they made their way, leaving feathery calligraphic trails, from their estivation burrows in the hills to their mating-creeks.

And even the little brush rabbits seemed not to mind the mud, bounding about the edge of the trail, not far from the coyote tracks, in perfect rabbit-leaps. I've read that Celtic peoples once read the tracks of rabbits for divination; I wonder what these trails told.

And smallest but certainly not least, a tiny harvest mouse went bounding through a mud-patch just before it became puddle. Those pawprints are no larger than my tiniest pinky nail in diameter!

After a rain, when the trail is a slate to be written upon by the paws of animals, it can seem as though everyone is out at once, in a great festival upon the path! But instead, it is a tale to be read in layers, brush rabbits venturing out to nibble sweet grasses when the coyotes have passed, newts not bothering who is nearby, as their skin is incredibly venomous, rival male coyotes avoiding each other or marking territory just after the other has gone. I like to lay my fingers in a track; for a moment, and only sometimes, I get a little flash in my imagination, travelling in a brisk coyote side-trot at dawn, air fresh, coat warm and sensitive, the world a tapestry of wildly vivid smells, my body so deep with sensation, it feels like my heart itself has a nose and ears and eyes. Then the feeling passes, and I am there again with my finger inside a muddy pawprint, and I am full up to the brim, and I wander home, where the lemons and oranges are heavy upon the trees in the garden, winter-sun incarnate.

Up in the lower folds of Mt. Tamalpais across the Bay, where we spent a week housesitting for my parents, a new storm rolled through, and left the fresh-bloomed Indian warrior flowers (pedicularis) wet and glowing. Oh, what strong beauty they possess! And to see them come up at last, after this dry winter of doubt, and visions of a desert land-- this is a balm for the heart.

The madrones glistened like muscled arms in all the wet...

... and my parent's hound, Louis, reveled as I did in the puddles and the damp grass.

I went up the mountain to greet the rain, and I found spring there too.

The star lilies, early bloomers, where open like great candles lining the trail, and the first lips of the irises had just begun to unfurl.

They seem to release Spring herself from their centers, as if she cannot really arrive in full, until they are here, impossibly purple, impossibly soft.

And then the gentle spirit of spring really did arrive, at least in my own heart and soul, in the form of Hawthorn, our new baby angora rabbit.

I named him thus, that he might be strong of heart (for the hawthorn is a great and gentle cardiac tonic), and sweet of heart too.

But as it turns out, he is Heart Medicine incarnate. He is Hawthorn, Balm for the Heart. Hawthorn, keeper of the sweetness of spring, and also keeper of the great old wisdom of rabbits, ears furred to the sound of every bird. Suffice it to say, we are all completely smitten around here.

He is only two months old, but I had to given him his first shearing before I managed to take very many pictures, so above he is a raggedy-rabbit, in his funny haircut. Below, you can see his fur in its full sweet fawn-colored glory.

Simon, Simon's father and I built him a hutch in the weeks leading up to his arrival, a hutch under a black walnut tree, and with a good sunbathing beam right through the middle.

Every day I sit with him in the garden and write while he leaps and naps and feasts on the tender grasses.

There is much to say about the deep magic of rabbits, about the process of transitioning him to an all-natural (pellet free) diet of only fresh greens and herbs and weeds and hay, as all healthy wild rabbits eat, about the softness he has brought to my heart. But you will hear much of him in the coming months, I can assure you. He has already become my companion of-the-word, and I have no doubt he will be making his way into my pennings soon enough, as well as my spinning wheel!

For now, you can find me often as not in the garden, with my notebook, finishing up tales (most currently the Leveret Letters) and watching him grow, learning the Way of Rabbit.



Now, the rained-on garden is a riot of color, as you can see from my birthday-wreath of flowers gathered yesterday morning and woven together here at the base of our candelabra, just like this little quilt of my Moments-Between-Words.

Each time I step from the page to the growing, fresh-aired, wet or sunny or starry world, be it in the garden or up in the hills, I am brought further into the great old Web of Things, where all of our days and nights, our work and play and stress and sweetnesses are held. I was about to write that for me,  the making of stories, the stringing of words, is like those spider strings above, and the moments I move outside to greet the wild world of sidewalk-dandelion, bewick's wren and redwood forest alike, are those beads of dew between. But then I realized how wrong a statement that was! It is our "work," our "creations," the way we shape our human days and lives, that are the dewdrops, and the spiderstrings are the more-than-human world that is always holding us, whether we remember it or not.

I'm glad to say, I think dear Hawthorn, he is one of those spider-strings, leading me ever deeper into the sweet animate world.

Days of Sulfur, Wool & Green

In all the cow pastures and trodden edges of paths, the green glow is coming up in the heart of autumn. These days have felt like a time for going in, seeking out the small green seeds that need those first few storms to grow.

Now, the wilder valleys, with their native grasses and chaparral, are starting to glow too. In this crisp and beautiful season, when the plants and animals are going in and under in the face of our (mild) winter, I feel I am doing the same, trying to determine which things inside myself to nourish, which projects to feed.

It has been a month of wool, and green-edged walks, and hot springs— all good compost for the soul. I spent a day at the Fibershed Wool Symposium , surrounded by many weaving, spinning, dyeing and shepherdess women (not to mention one angora rabbit-herdess!), as well as a few ranching and shearing men.

I fell a little bit in love with this Cashmere goat, a very friendly creature who nibbled at my hands.

And I become enamored of this angora rabbit, and the whole species in general-- their strange and luxurious history, shrouded in mystery and French aristocrats. I found a scrap of a tale that said they originated in the Carpathian mountains, and were reared by hill tribes for their luscious and extremely warm wool, then bred by monks high up in the mountains. Centuries later, so the myths go, French sailors docked in Turkey, and were so enchanted by the silken shawls worn by the Turkish women, that they brought a few rabbits back with them to France.

Whatever the story, I have been dreaming of angora rabbits, how soft and fine it would be to spin their wool, how otherworldly their faces, all hidden in dandelion-explosions of fur.

Imagine, if we were all dressed in wool, cotton, flax, skin, that was grown and fed, shorn and woven, sewed and dyed, within a hundred, or even two hundred, mile radius. It would be a step toward rootedness, wouldn't it, and how happy would our own skins be, no longer steeped in the chemicals that leech from all of our fine-woven, bright dyed cottons?

The green-bodied sea anemones at Agate Beach made me think of open mouths, full of salt and passing morsels of food, open all night to the stars, choosing their one place perfectly, and then being still. This is their story, their reality, itself a lesson.

I've been inland, to the sulfuric hot springs at the base of the Coastal Range, in hills that feel volcanic, and dry, recently burned. There are geysers, like the one above, encased in a stone fountain, that shoot water every forty minutes straight out of the skin of the earth.

Sitting in the silky green waters of the springs themselves (built up into a Japanese style-flumarium) with an old and dear friend, I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that the heat was heat from inside the earth, not from the sun. It was heat from the tectonic motions of the Pacific Plate against the North American, from magma and friction. I floated, and imagined being in the heart of the earth, listening to the groan and creak of plates. It felt strangely intimate, like being held by amniotic waters.

The minerals that flow from the geysers flow down the creek too— Cache Creek— and turn it milky and green.

Only two and a half hours from my home, this landscape felt hot and fire-colored to me, another world from the moist hills and ocean-wind I'm used to. The ridges had burned recently, black in some places, the oak trees were turning orange, the dead pines a pure amber. It felt like a place of heat and regeneration; I thought of phoenixes and firebirds and volcanoes, and how much of California needs fire to maintain ecosystem health. How many hillsides of chaparral ache to burn, so their seeds, adapted to the weight and chemical composition of ash and heat, can open up and grow. Of course, the way we work it now, this land does not burn frequently, so when it does, it is devastating, black, charred, barren. Fire is a bad thing now, not good, not a source of fertility.

There used to be a quicksilver mine tucked in that valley, near the geyser. The old mercury smeltery matched the umbered, amber land.

Like these trees catching autumn sun in the fecund Capay Valley, I have several projects lined up in myself, which will hopefully bear fruit (or nuts, as it were-- I think these are almonds?) in the coming moons.

Thank you all, whoever and where ever you are, for reading and continuing to read my small tales and words here. I've been meaning to say this for some time now. I'm really honored every time someone comes to visit, and I look forward to sharing these projects with you soon!