I receive healing from the more-than-human world. During this stressful summer and early autumn especially, I have been enlivened, inspirited by the infinite variety of greens that make up the strip of urban woodland behind our house and adjacent wooded areas — my teacher Old Oak and new saplings and thistles, ferns, mosses & lichens, the many shades & shapes & textures of bark — all the faces of the forest.

I receive healing from the green world that surrounds me. Especially during the turbulence of this summer and autumn, I have been calmed and inspirited by the myriad colors and textures of the patchy urban woodlands I see every day. Oak, pine, maple (now fiery with the turning season), all the different barks, lichens, and mosses. Some days it is especially the mosses — their tenacity and ability to turn even rock into soil; the seemingly magical fairy forest of their tiny spiraling leaves; the soft comfort they offer when touched gently. Mosses may fade during drought but flare forth in brilliant greens again at the first touch of rain. They help me remember how it can be.

Something about greens….. Late last winter, I often found myself looking often at Mother Moss, Old Oak: Resilience, and Willow: Healing — 3 pieces that farmers and flocks and dyers and I had invited into the world years ago.

Soon I noticed that I was suddenly acquiring more green fibers, more textures,
…but nothing emerged until…

In the spring, Judith-Kate Friedman generously offered a free afternoon of creative play on Zoom. We were invited to bring to it our own “toys” — any materials with which we wanted to play & explore. I warped a tiny loom and brought green wools and some luscious hand-dyed bronze-green Wensleydale locks.

Permission to play!

I am amazed when I stop to think about it — how rarely I give myself permission to just play with materials or words — and, even when I do, how often what was supposed to be play slides into something else.

With her usual magic, Judith-Kate created a container where deep and joyful play was possible. And so it began. I just let my fingers scribble….

…. and it was fun and I wanted to do it some more …

And so…

I can’t seem to capture in a photo the colors and the vibrant living presence of this being who emerged on my loom. I have never had such a strong reaction to one of my masks. I always feel a sense of responsibility toward the beings who emerge and for the context in which they will dwell. But my reaction this time was stronger, different. Quite simply, I fell in love. Little did I realize what a demanding creature he would be!

I understand that the making I engage in is not “my” production but an on-going conversation between me and the materials and their origins, and eventually with the masks themselves — a kind of co-creation. Most of my masks find homes in felted contexts but this time, as I began to arrange the fibers to felt, the Green Man spoke loudly and unmistakably: No!

He demanded a woven background — and he decreed that it must be one made with only hand-spun yarns.

I haven’t spun much for years (decades?) and I was never very good at it. Most recently, the little bit of spinning I had done was deliberately uneven and textured yarn. I did make myself spin yarns for the Green Man’s face because the unspun fibers I thought I’d use for the setting had been hand-dyed (not by me) in the same colorway as the gorgeous locks & I wanted the face and its context to blend together. But to spin for a whole tapestry? And doesn’t tapestry demand fine, even, consistent yarn? Little hope for that!

Still, obedient to the Green Man’s request, I began with trepidation. Eventually, as I spun, I relaxed and found pleasure in the smooth repetitive action. After awhile, some of the yarns even became a little more consistent. I spun on.

Weaving a tapestry out of a mix of thick and thin and some lumpy bumpy yarns was challenging, and I was making up the pattern as I went along. There were many days when I looked at what I’d done, shook my head, and un-wove even more than I’d woven that day. Sometimes I felt frustrated by the un-weaving, by the lack of “progress”. I tried to remember how slowly a forest grows, how parts of it must fall away to make room for something new. Not a rigid plan, but an emerging ecosystem.

Then, as I progressed, I discovered the Green Man wanted company. I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is what had happened as I tried to create Willow: Healing. After all, a forest is a community. So — spinning more and finer yarns for smaller masks…. Slowly, slowly, slowly….

As I approached the end of the weaving — the upper limit of the loom — I found I was running out of my green yarns & began to worry about how I’d finish. But by luck, not planning, things came out just right. When, several days ago, I finally finished the weaving, only this handful of yarn remained.

I meant to take a photo while the weaving was still on the loom, but I found myself fearing that if I looked too long, I’d start un-weaving again. I quickly cut the warp threads before I could change my mind.

Faces of the Forest: Resilience

Of course, there’s still work to do: sewing in warp threads, needle-felting the yarn ends into the back, sewing on the masks. Still much to discover, to learn.

In general, I don’t enjoy the stabbing motion of needle-felting; I would rather caress the fibers. But this time I am finding the slow pace and quiet rhythm of the action is calming. And there is something satisfying about integrating all the loose ends. I hope this work will help me retain equilibrium as I encounter the turbulent emotions and PTSD [from my 5 years working in a dictatorship — Libya] that are arising as wars, disasters, starvation, & extinctions sweep the globe and as the U.S. faces a future-defining election that pits democracy against authoritarianism.

How I do the work is how I make myself.

I know there is no way that my words or the work of my hands can express the deep joy I feel knowing we are all active participants in the larger-than-human Earth Community. Still, I have to keep trying. And as I engage with this piece, I inhale the green fragrance and something of the spirit of the beings with whom I (and the sheep who grew the wool) have exchanged every breath since the beginning of our lives. I give gratitude to the green beings who feed us and who continue to nourish the human imagination with more gifts than we can ever comprehend. For me the making has been like walking in a forest, remembering how to be here, in this world, in this story. I long to share that feeling.

When I am Among the Trees
~  by Mary Oliver ~

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”