Nancy inhabits a small minority of people I know who are brave enough to stay awake in the challenges of their lives. She contacted me...

The weaving is complete, and tonight the shroud makes its home with me. I met Melanie earlier today to receive it from her generous...

It’s challenging to weave in 30 degree temperatures, but I am doing it, calling on the homesteading ancestors of Southern Appalachia to...

I created a foot of shroud cloth today, weaving for my very first time. Melanie Wilder has set the loom up on the porch at Warren Wilson...

Yesterday we processed the remainder of the flax needed to make my shroud. The first of three panels woven by Melanie’s students at...

With a wiggle and a tug, my flax plants came out of the ground. Heavy-headed with seeds, Melanie and I gathered stalks until our hands...

I had no idea, truly, that flax is so beautiful. I am standing at one end of a 33 x 3 foot row of it, and its sky blue flowers are...

Cloth, Melanie Wilder notes, is the first and last thing to touch our skin as we enter and leave this world. A blanket swaddles us upon...

Two feet of wing feather from a turkey in molt, found me on the mountaintop I haunt. It was our first truly warm day, when layers, wool,...

Inside the universal processes of creation and destruction, there is a planet with a people in much disarray. They have lost their...

As they flew from my hand and made contact with the air, I considered their future, which is to become my winding sheet...

On the morning Hurricane Michael arrived in the South Toe Valley, I opened my email to find a request from a neighbor for help with the...