Elk Lines: The Stamps & the Story-Cases

On Saturday August 2nd, Lughnasadh, the inaugural mailing of Elk Lines began its arrival from here to Australia and back again. This time, much to my pleasure, all of the stamps on the envelopes were my own design... for of course I needed a strange elk with a hand on his belly, Old Sally's tea kettle and the alder-burl teacup of the Elk People, the Point Reyes Peninsula itself, a lupine flower, a California poppy. My several months' Gathering Time inspired in me enough confidence to begin using more of my humble sketching and watercoloring skills to enhance and decorate these Wild Tale offerings...and how liberating and satisfying it feels! I tend to draw very much from things I see, unlike in my writing life; it is a nice change for my brain I think, and I find I've learned the details of certain plants, landscapes and animals really well only through the act of sketching.

This new project of mine, this Elk Lines, is among other things (besides being a retelling of the Handless Maiden story) a deep exploration of the songlines and storylines of the Point Reyes Peninsula, its animals, plants, stones, waters, winds. So the stamp of the Peninsula herself is a particular favorite of mine; she is her own nomad creature, roaming ever north.

Here is an excerpt, to give those of you not subscribed a flavor and a feeling of this strange and many-faceted novel...

It is very simple. There is a doorway on the western edge of Tomales Point, where a line of granite stones, millennia old, bisects a footpath carved first by elk and native human feet, then, much later, by Spanish longhorn cattle, then the dairy ranching Pierce family, and later still, the National Park Service. Naturally, the doorway is difficult to see except in a particular slant of sun or moon, while the tide far down to the west reaches a particular degree of zenith.

 That’s where the Elk People came from. They sprinkled ocean salt, removed their shoes and held them in one hand, right foot first, and refrained from sneezing, though Old Sally later joked with her even older husband Mino that she might have ruined it all had she not plugged her nose, looked away from the sun, and made her cataracts very much worse for the effort. Nursing babies were pulled temporarily off the breast. Antonia and Zsusannah sang the offering songs—of fog, of elephant seal, of badger, of lupine, of ghost—and even the elk, weighted though they were with tents and kettles, fiddles, pots, pans and skins, stepped softly. When they were all through—twenty-nine men, women and children, nine elk, and one grizzly bear with a cub who had only just learned to walk—Antonia closed the door and locked it with a bone key. It is best to keep such doors closed, on the whole; one never knows who might stumble the wrong way to here or there.

The Elk People arrived on the morning of the first summer fog. In Point Reyes, as in much of coastal California, summer was not a neat three months in a seasonal round of twelve, nor was spring, nor winter, nor fall. Summer began when the last of the rain was gone from the bellies of the grasses, and the hills went gold, the color of mountain lion haunches and elk withers. Summer began when the pink clarkias and pearly everlasting flowers bloomed inside that dryness, and the fog began to roll in almost every morning along the coast, holding the wild beaches of Limantour and Drake, North, South, Abbott, Kehoe, McClure, with shifting, salt-sweet white. Summer began also when the last golden-crowned sparrows left for the northern tundras and the frequency of their mournful songs was replaced by the fecund trill of the just-arrived Swainson’s thrushes.

So the Elk People did not arrive in summer, exactly, but rather on the morning when summer first hinted again of her existence within the brief green hills of spring: a hip of fog along the Inverness Ridge that moved down its canyons like cloth unfurled from a woman’s hands. It was a morning in mid-April, when the wildflowers—baby blue eyes, irises, shooting stars, ground lupines, cream cups—were still at the height of their lives and pounced hourly by pollen-drunk bees, no hint of withering or yellowing yet at their petals. Only the faintest blush of gold had appeared on the south-facing slope of Black Mountain, which rose to the east of Point Reyes Station like a knuckled fist.

I am now hard at work on the second installment, which will arrive on September 21st, the fall equinox. This is also when the next round of new subscriptions will go out, so you are welcome to join in the elk-hoofed caravan and receive your first Elk Lines on the fall equinox! The whole thing works on a rolling basis... You can sign up here. 

I find I write best when the work of the mind is balanced with the work of the hands, as I've written many times by now. So I've also been felting and embroidering story-cases, to hold said Elk Lines.



These days, my studio desk is increasingly a haystack.



And since I was embroidering while using a haystack as a desk and textile studio combined, with hay everywhere underfoot, I learned the true meaning of trying to find a needle in a haystack. Let me tell you, this is a very frustrating experience. Needles glint just like hay when the sun is on them. They vanish immediately, even if you think your eyes have followed them to the ground. I lost at least two, and felt rather stupid, since it was after all my own fault, sitting in a hay-pile while sewing. I did, however, also find my needle in the haystack at least once, which made me feel like a fairytale luck had momentarily been bestowed upon me by the watching bushtits, or perhaps the mysterious hay itself.

Lost needles aside, sewing is much more interesting when done outside. These story-cases were felted and sewn as the towhees and hummingbirds watched, as the sun changed and the fog rolled in and the wind blew.

Some are naturally dyed an olive green with coyote brush, while others I kept the natural browns and whites of their wool.

I can imagine Old Sally or Antonia with such a felted case strapped to the side of their elk. When unrolled, it would reveal not envelopes full of stories but something far more mysterious and strange; I shall leave that tale up to you!

And so there you have it, a taste of these Elk Lines in word, image and textile. This story seems to want to come out of me through all possible mediums; and what a delicious feeling that is, to feel engaged hand and heart with it in this way with a tale, and to be able to share it all with you.

If you missed the link above, and would like to look more closely at these story-cases, follow along here. 

Walk With Me Past the Fennel Tree

You've probably guessed that my longer than usual silence here has to do with Elk Lines, and the rhythm this big beautiful new writing project brings to my days, filling them up to the brim. Well, the good news is--the first installment is finished, and has been sent out to its faraway subscribers beyond the oceans (and northern borders)! Eda, the Elk People and I have had a wonderfully intense month getting to know each other, and it feels a fresh and tender thing, like a birth, to send out the first pages of their tale through the air and over the water, to the hands of faraway readers. 

I was struck today, eyeing the first pile of these wild Lines (pictured here in my summer Felting Studio...) by how grateful I feel to all my readers and subscribers; that this is what I fill my days with (including all the frantic printer escapades, post office debacles and late-night wax-sealing meltdowns)...Thank you & bless you all; I put my whole heart into these tales, and into each little brown-paper parcel too. This week I feel like a dandelion seed-head sending the little ships of her seeds far out into the world, giving a little dance in the wind. 

Besides the long days of hand writing pieces of Elk Lines, typing them up, editing, drawing the Feral Palm Reading that accompanies it, I share my daytimes with this darling fellow, my beloved Hawthorn, who has grown up into such a handsome and rambunctious young buck, always escaping his pen to have adventures in the fennel bush, or to steal bites of other people's kale, or make himself a bedchamber in the sage. Long stints hunched over my little writing table (a lovely old Victorian letter-box my aunt gave me several years ago, tilted upright and so at a perfect angle for pen and paper) are broken by rambles in the yard with Hawthorn, who does indeed bring light and infectious happiness to the heart whenever one is near him. 

He leads the way, and I wander. Right now, the garden is a jungle, well and truly.  Those bean poles stand a good eight or so feet high, and I think the fennel is almost there with them. A fennel tree. This beautiful fecund vegetable plot (below) is tended by our landlords, who live through the main entrance of our big old Victorian home with their four sweet children. Regularly the little ones are sent on missions for string beans and tomatoes, to feed the chickens or collect the eggs, and I am privy to all sorts of strange and wondrous child-conversations as I sit in the shade with my notebook, or a needle and thread. Of course when Hawthorn is about, I may sometimes be seen with a small caravan of children behind me as we follow his hopping through the garden.

The amaranth grows in rich magenta spires, and puts me in mind of some great trunked being.

Old grandmother Comfrey has grown her leaves nearly as big as my torso.

The fennel seems to live in the sky, a gathering of yellow stars.

And the dark and elegant poppies have turned from lustrous purple silk to the old magic of seedpods.

The apricots and peaches are all but done on the garden trees, and the apples are starting to ripen. Nothing quite like a warm apple right off the tree, and ever-so-slightly under-ripe, so that it's tartness puckers the tongue.

In our own garden plot, the tulsi (holy basil) is vibrant and near to seeding.

Both the tulsi and the motherwort, harvested above, I grew from seed this year; I'd never grown either of them at all to begin with, and to have known them since they were tiny unfurlings, to their full medicinal splendor--what a treat! The motherwort is away in tincture form now. She is one of my greatest plant-friends, working wonders for moon-cycle related tension, anxiety, hysteria, and cramps. Hawthorn isn't especially fond of the taste of motherwort, as it is very, very bitter. I've gotten used to it, perhaps because I associate the flavor with an almost immediate sense of calm and grounded-ness, as if my mother has just given me a hug. But otherwise, this rabbit truly is a small herbalist. His diet is entirely medicinal, not on purpose but simply because rabbits adore herbs! Nasturtium, raspberry leaf, comfrey, plantain, dandelion, sorrel, basil, lemon balm, rose, borage, mallow—the main cuisine.

And speaking of Hawthorn, he is also the inspiration for a new piece of writing—a column, possibly for the rest of the year (though this is not certain yet) in the Plant Healer Magazine! As it stands now, this column will be for children and adults, and it will be the tale of a rabbit and his young herbalist companion, and all the thing she learns from him and from the Rabbit-witches who live in the brush. And by way of a small hint—the tale, which will include some plant illustrations, and which will be filled with herbal learnings, will also be set in the world of the Leveret Letters, in Wild Folk Land and Country, in the early days of the Holy Fool's Inn. Some of you will know what I'm talking about...In any event, I'm quite excited and honored to be sharing these writings in Plant Healer! 

Otherwise, I've been trying to balance the work of the head with the work of the hands. While writing with pen and paper does come from the hands, there is something different that seems to happen in the heart and body when other tasks are undertaken, such as the preparation of herbal medicine, or textile-making. Near the full moon, a dear friend and I gathered rosemary, yarrow and comfrey from the garden and made a salve with beeswax and coconut oil.



We named it "Wise Wound Salve," because the triad of herbs all have an old, strong crone feeling about them, the wisdom of the ancient grandmothers. And standing over the stove, stirring a pot of strained oil with shavings of beeswax—this feels an old, old, task, one that lives in the blood. Shortly thereafter, my lovely six-year-old downstairs neighbor came up to see if I had anything for burns, and she went away again with a little cap full of Wise Wound Salve! It rather made my day to actually have something useful to give her (though of course I would rather she hadn't burned her finger on a pot!). Both comfrey and yarrow in particular are excellent for burns, though probably best made into a cold compress/poultice rather than a salve. Still, one uses what is on hand, eh?

My busy fingers have also been at work sewing and embroidering and felting in my outdoor "textile studio," where the haystacks are my side-table.

These are soon to be up for sale at Wild Talewort--new story cases, embroidered with antlers, to hold Elk Lines! 

Something so nourishing happens in the mind when the hands are the ones literally telling the story against cloth, or wool, or chopped herbs, and the narrating brain can have a little rest. As I know I have already written many times, there certainly is a reason for the saying, "to spin a yarn"— as the hands make thread, the mind is free to roam and to wander.

Shedding the Velvet: A Wreath of Felt and Steel

 On this weekend of torrential rains, which swelled up Wildcat Creek to a foamy froth and knocked the bays and alders over at their roots, I've been inside, working on a felted wreath-commission.

We have no fireplace, alas, only this blocked-up hearth. But I lit the candles anyhow, as the winds whipped the redwoods in a wet gale outside, drank quite a lot of black tea, and teased out this wild and organic wreath design.

The metal spiraling behind it was made by Ferrous Studios. It is a meeting of steel and wool. A dark star, a nest, antlered felt-branches, all at once. I'm not sure quite what to call it—dreamcatcher, woodland star of David. It is a ragged wreath at the heart of a winter forest. The brown tendrils along the edges make me think of shedding antler velvet. There is another great image of this here.  (I don't want to risk any copyright issues by putting them here, otherwise I would! Beautiful photos.)

Whitetail shedding velvet

I'm fascinated by the lifecycle of antlers, how they are grown anew each year, how the velvet is there, a skin, to supply oxygen and nutrients to the rapidly growing bone, and then is rubbed off when the antler has finished its year's growth. Velvet antler, in fact, is of high importance in the world of Chinese medicine—the whole young antler is ground up, velvet and bone together, to treat a range of ailments, including cancer. I wonder, when that velvet is shed, if small creatures use it in their nests? If birds or shrews nibble at it, for nutrients, for healing.

The spirograph-star-web design was Simon's idea, drawn up from childhood sketching memories. I love the meeting of geometry and tapered pelt-shape. There's something alchemical about it.

Alchemical symbols in Kitab al-Aqalim by Abu’l-Qasim al-‘Iraqi

The strands, ropes and "antler-velvet" of this wreath were all wet-felted with merino wool from Jean Near's Utopia Ranch, in Mendocino County, Mrs. Meyer's basil-scented dish soap, and hot water. And the friction of my two palms, of course! All colors are wildcrafted—the brown is black walnut, from a tree down the road, the pale green of the big star is coyote brush from Tilden Park, the other green and the yellow strands are Japanese Maple from the tree right out of view in this photo, and the thin strand of grey-purple is elderberry, from a harvest last year in Marin County.

It is a web-wild woodland thing, what emerged! As the gale spun the trees outside, I listened to a Chirgilchin disc on repeat—Tuvan throat-singing, from Mongolia, where much of what we know about the traditions of wet-felting originated. I didn't think about this connection as I was felting, it just put me in a bit of a trance, and I couldn't stop listening as I rubbed and dipped and soaped the wool.

This is truly incredible music, from deep in the heart of the body and the heart of the earth. It blows me away. And yes, that whistling is coming from the throat. Miraculous!

By the end of all this mad felting, as you can imagine, I was just a little bit batty, picking away at the sweet seeds of a pomegranate for sustenance, and so took a quick walk with my father by Wildcat Creek and Jewel Lake as the sun came out. So much water!

The branches of the alders look like strands of felt. Or, really, the other way around. I love this blending, this correspondence between the wilderness and the creations of our hands.

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!