wild Fibers 1 0 t h A N N I V E R S A RY
Vol. 10 Issue 4
Preserving Traditions - Protecting Our Planet
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ild Fibers
Ten Top Moments (page 24)
America Flocks Together (page 44)
Tenth Anniversary wildfibersmagazine.com
John Teal and Friends (page 56)
Features 8 The Musk Ox Project
Nestled in the shadows (and winds) of the Mat-Su Valley, the world’s largest herd of musk oxen in captivity continue to thrive.
24 10 Extraordinary Years In Search Of Wild Fibers
From India’s high Himalayas, to the foothills of Transylvania, the search for wild fibers has touched nearly every corner of the planet.
38 Reflections On The Last Ten Years A photo essay of a few precious (and in focus) moments from the past 10 years.
44 America Flocks Together
America’s locavore movement is expanding from steak and potatoes, to socks and sweaters, creating new signs of hope in domestic pastures.
56 America’s First Musk Ox Shepherd
Undaunted by entreme terrain and frigid waters, John Teal’s passion for the musk ox launched many a wild adventure.
68 Herd About You!
Maine’s largest (and wildest) yak farmer looks back on where it all began.
80 OX OX OX
House guest Rules 101. Cover: Musk Ox Bull. Photo by Patrick J. Endres/ AlaskaPhotoGraphics.com
The Musk Ox Project (page 8)
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wild Fibers 10th Anniversary Publisher and Editor Linda N. Cortright Contributing Editors Chris Devaney, Leslie Petrovski Advertising Sales Linda N. Cortright Copyeditor Joan Phaup Circulation and Proofreader Suzanne Lacasse
Subscription rates are $30/yr. for four issues in the U.S. and its possessions, $42/yr. Canada, $58/yr. International. Please send payment to: Wild Fibers Magazine, P.O. Box 1752, Rockland, ME 04841. (207) 594-9455 or online: www.wildfibersmagazine. com. Contributions: Address all editorial communications to Editor, Wild Fibers Magazine, P.O. Box 1752, Rockland, ME 04841. We consider contributions in the form of manuscripts, drawings, and photographs. All material must be identified with the sender’s name and address. Material returned only if accompanied by sufficient return postage. Care is taken with contributions, but we are not responsible for damage or loss. All contents of this issue of Wild Fibers are copyrighted by Grumble Goat Productions, 2013. All rights reserved. Projects and information in this issue are for inspiration and personal use only. Exact reproduction for commercial purposes is prohibited and violates copyright law. Wild Fibers is published quarterly by Linda Cortright at 20 Elm St., Rockland, ME 04841 (Issue 10, Volume 4). Periodical postage paid at Rockland, ME and other mailing locations. Postmaster send change of address to Wild Fibers Magazine, P.O. Box 1752, Rockland, ME 04841. YMN0114-Zealana:Layout 1
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Touch You... Touch Me...
T
en years ago, I sat down to write my first Wild Fibers editorial. I was excited, exhausted, and riddled with anxiety. After 40 issues (and 40 deadlines) the best thing I can now say is this — nothing has changed. Okay, a few things have changed. In the old days, it would take six, seven, and sometimes eight CDs to hold the magazine file, which I would then take to my printer (an hour and a half drive) to Portland, Maine. My account executive Tina Lajoie would talk me off the ledge as one glitch after another would inevitably unfold, and after every issue, I vowed to do better the next time. Like I said — nothing has changed. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I no longer put the magazine on CDs. In fact, I don’t even have to get in my car. The printing process (from my end) now consists of just two buttons: “Save” and “Send.” I can only describe it in one word: MAGIC! Gone are the days when I would wait for the courier to deliver a fat envelope to my office containing the magazine galleys. Now, the whole thing is done online saving time, expense, and paper. Unfortunately, this has not saved on exhaustion or anxiety, but that’s not technology’s fault. The truth is simple; hard work is a byproduct of passion. And if you are a perfectionist about your passion (and many are), you will work even harder. And frankly, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. You keep working until you get it right. Right? Ten years ago, I had absolutely no idea of what was right. I have subsequently discovered that more than 10,000 readers are an acid test of finding out what’s wrong. If anyone has ever wondered what an editor’s hell looks like, try printing a magazine with a typo on the cover!
However, my tenth anniversary is not the time for self-flagellation — at least, not openly. Instead, it is the time to celebrate 10 years of spectacular travels, extraordinary people, and most of all, wild fibers. I am every bit as excited today meeting farmers and their flocks as I was 10 years ago. And sometimes, I am more excited meeting the flocks than the farmers. I still can’t help occasionally stroking the shoulder of a stranger and casually saying, “Hmmm … is that cashmere you’re wearing?” And I am even more likely to proffer my own sleeve and say, “Touch this — it’s qiviut!” But whether it’s a cashmere scarf, a qiviut sweater, or wool socks so rough they’ll make your soles bleed, there’s more to Wild Fibers than a giant ball of yarn. My mission, as I have repeatedly stated, is to understand and promote the role natural fibers play in supporting both the people and the land. The question I must ask after 10 years (and more than one million frequent flyer miles) is if, in fact, I have done just that? Judging by the letters I have received, the answer is yes. But something has happened in the course of the past 10 years, something quite different than I ever could have imagined; Wild Fibers has served as a curious conduit into people’s hearts. Unlike most magazines that feature a section for Letters to the Editor, I have always kept those correspondences to myself. Yet, they have offered me some of the most gratifying stories imaginable and there is one, in particular, I will never forget. A subscriber wrote to “thank me” not only for my work within the world of natural fibers, but for what I had done (inadvertently) to heal a broken relationship. After a lifetime of contentious relations with her father, she was
now his caretaker at age 87. Apparently, time had done little to calm the agitated waters between them until one day she began reading Wild Fibers out loud. She started with the back page (most people do) and after they started laughing she proceeded to read him the rest. Soon, they were talking about faraway places in a way that engaged both their heads and their hearts. There was nothing to argue about. There was no right, nor wrong, no political left or right wool. Suddenly, this little publication so often referred to as “the National Geographic of fibers” had begun to broker peace.
(Left to right) My first professional headshot as a magazine editor, and the wear and tear of 40 deadlines later. But nothing has changed ... right?
I have never read a copy of Wild Fibers to my parents; they have both been dead more years than I care to remember. And yet, I believe that just maybe, there is a chance that had my mother lived to see the day when her only daughter would have the words “editor and publisher” at the end of her name, we could have smoothed our differences. In my very first editorial, I promised that the words from Wild Fibers would seek to both educate and entertain its readers. I had little idea back then just how much those words would come from my heart. It is my great hope they have come to find a place in yours. And now, on to the next chapter. I hope you will be there to join me.
Linda Cortright Publisher and Editor 10th Anniver sar y 2013
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The Musk Ox Project Two million years in the making Story and Images by Linda N. Cortright
The Musk Ox Farm, Palmer, Alaska.
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Mark Austin wakes up every morning to the sight of 81 prehistoric mammals burping, belching, and butting heads. For 30 years the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska, has seen the best of times and the worst of times. A mere trifle in this animal’s 2 million years history.
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t’s a few minutes before seven o’clock. I can no longer postpone the inevitable and reluctantly emerge from the bedcovers. I put on a bathrobe, a pair of heavy socks, and a blue cashmere scarf, tied tight. I contemplate donning my fur hat, but the visual is too ridiculous to imagine, let alone the prospect of startling my host when I walk down the stairs. Quietly, or at least as quietly as I can manage in unfamiliar surroundings, I navigate the steps. Judging by how hard the winds blew during the night, I wouldn’t be surprised to find snowdrifts caressing the sofa. But both the floor and furniture are unscathed, providing a clear path to the woodstove. At my home in Maine, I am accustomed to filling a woodstove. But this is Alaska, and the stove is built for Alaskan-sized logs. I bend over to “toss” a few in and realize I would do better with a catapult. Any effort not to wake Mark, my host, is destroyed as several logs go banging across the living room floor. Within minutes Mark is standing in the doorway (also in a bathrobe, minus the socks and scarf ) and asks if I’m cold. “Maybe just a little,” I whisper as clouds of steam sweep from my breath. He smiles and reaches for the thermostat dial on the wall, a totally effortless—not to mention silent—gesture. “I’m so sorry if I woke you,” I said. The night before, Mark had graciously offered to fetch me a few minutes before midnight at the Anchorage airport, more than an hour’s drive away. But now, to be awakened before sunrise by a strange woman banging around the house seems doubly unfair. Not long after the thermostat tweak, the house begins to warm…slightly. Mark and I are sitting at the breakfast table sipping coffee, our eyes fixed to the window. Less than 50 yards from our perch, a group of 20-monthold musk oxen kids are just beginning to wake-up. Mark Austin has one of the most extraordinary jobs on the planet! He lives with his wife Kim and daughter Isela, at The Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska, founded by John Teal in the early 1960s. Every morning Mark looks out onto the world’s largest herd of musk oxen in captivity: nearly 80 animals. The only way to see what Mark and I can in the wild is to build an igloo (with a large picture window) somewhere on the frozen tundra and hope a herd of musk oxen wanders by. Mark Austin standing by his office which he keeps heated to a The opportunity to watch these animals for even a few minutes, let alone an entire day, is beyond compare. And even though Mark has been balmy 58 F in the winter months. running the farm for nearly four years, the novelty hasn’t worn off. Opposite page: A young musk ox takes a moment’s break from morning playtime.
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Unaware that warfare is about to commence, Paprika spends the morning sleeping in.
Wasabi prepares to charge Paprika who has now finally gotten out of bed.
After a brief but intense charge Wasabi has a change of heart.
Mark Austin has a manly talk with Wasabi.
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The musk oxen are a part of Mark’s family, a fact his wife has generously come to accept (she did agree, after all, to hold their wedding in the middle of one of the musk ox pastures). The animals all have names (every year there’s a different naming theme, from spices to trees), and they have distinct personalities—which at 18 months are in full force, from the proverbial troublemaker to the insatiable flirt. It is the end of February, and over 10 hours of daylight now shines upon the Matanuska Valley. Dawn slowly unfolds, and the musk oxen wake up sluggishly, with one exception. Wasabi is wide awake and itching for some fun. At dawn, a field of musk oxen are perfectly camouflaged. A nighttime dusting of snow covers their dark shaggy bodies, producing an expanse of white, punctuated by misshapen “boulders” that gradually grow legs and walk. Wasabi is up and appears hardwired for action. Nothing will wake you up faster than one of those full-throttle head-butts that these prehistoric mammals are famous for. The resounding crash of adult musk ox bulls will loosen your fillings. But Wasabi is still a kid, just looking for someone to bump around. Finally, in a distant corner he spots Paprika, and before she can get her bearings, Wasabi is in wind-up mode. Moving his legs in reverse with 800-pounds of determination (he weighs about 200 pounds), swinging his head from side to side like a Scotsman winding up for the hammer throw, Wasabi prepares to charge. I’m not sure Paprika is really awake, let alone aware that this powerhouse is about to smack into her headfirst. Even though I dearly love these animals, I am reluctant to run out in my bathrobe and warn her. Perhaps there is an algorithm for the number of backwards steps a musk ox takes relative to its own height, body weight and head circumference as it considers the size of its target. But when Wasabi finally reaches that magic distance, he locks eyes on Paprika and then blasts through the snow, whooshing his way like a plow at the head of a freight train. Intellectually, I know this is normal behavior. But still, I feel like I’m about to witness some type of arctic massacre. Mark is rooting for Wasabi like the favored team at the Super Bowl, where great clashing of helmets and compromised intellect results in hours of mindless play. This analogy bears a dose of reality, since the musk ox possess a “horn boss,” a dense bony mass that covers and protects its entire forehead. It looks like a football helmet strapped on backwards. By the time Wasabi reaches a gallop, Paprika is awake and has, at least, positioned herself to face her assailant. Seconds before impact my toes scrunch in fearful anticipation, but just before they clash, Wasabi throws the emergency brake and stops… inches from Paprika’s nose. Their eyes connect in a microsecond, and Wasabi sweetly extends the tip of his nose ever so slightly to touch Paprika’s—and my inner football commentator announces, “luv u.” I don’t know what to make of this behavior. Is this encounter the musk ox equivalent of Lucy snatching the football from Charlie Brown, except this time the fake-out nets a happy result? I was
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Mark Austin hand-feeding a few musk ox babies as part of the farm’s domestication program.
convinced Wasabi was going to punt Paprika into orbit. Wasabi and Paprika play a few more rounds of “Luv u – Bash!” until the rest of the herd wakes up. Although far from the thundering encounters performed by the adult males (no one is whispering “luv u” during those rounds), it is impossible to sleep through morning playtime. The boulders are now up and walking, and some have wandered over to the feeder, where there is some extra crunchy frozen hay left over from the night before. One of the perks of being the farm’s executive director is enjoying the animals from the comfort of one’s home, and not an igloo. But by eight o’clock, Mark heads to the office, an old dairy barn that has been retrofitted over the years to accommodate a growing herd of musk oxen. Musk oxen are members of the family Bovidae (the same as cows), but they belong to the subfamily Caprinae, which also includes sheep, goats and the Tibetan chiru, an endangered antelope with exceptionally fine fiber that in some parts of the world is illegal to wear. Musk oxen have their own genus, Ovibos (Latin for “sheep-ox”), although their closest living relative appears to be the goral; a unique blend of goat- and antelope-type creature weighing 75 – 95 pounds, native to the mountains of Central Asia. Not surprisingly, Janelle Curtis, The Musk Ox Farm’s manager, was raised on a dairy farm (in northeast Pennsylvania) and is hardly a novice around musk oxen. Janelle graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), where she met her first musk ox (UAF has maintained a research herd of musk oxen since Teal began the Musk Ox Project). She is Mark’s right-hand woman. But make no mistake farming cattle and “farming” musk oxen are two very different occupations.
It is the end of February, and over 10 hours of daylight now shines upon the Matanuska Valley. Dawn slowly unfolds, and the musk oxen wake up sluggishly, with one exception. Wasabi is wide awake and itching for some fun.
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A triad of adult bulls march to the barn for their weekly weigh-in appearing calm and orderly - it is a rouse!
Janelle Curtis walks behind one of the bulls as if she were out walking her dog in the morning sun.
Without warning the bulls decide to reverse direction.
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“Musk oxen are prehistoric animals—they’re wild,” says Janelle. “It’s pretty hard to find a wild cow. “Cows are so well domesticated they come into the barn and get in line without being told. Getting a musk ox into the barn is more like a rodeo; it can get pretty crazy.” No sooner does Janelle proclaim the herd’s unruliness than I am granted an impromptu demonstration. Nearly every day a particular group of animals needs to get weighed. One day it’s the babies, the next it’s the twoyear-olds, and then the expectant mothers, or even the notso-slim adult bulls. At one level, this is no more complicated than standing on a scale. But this is not the doctor’s office where you quickly shed your shoes and step onto the designated platform. This involves herding the correct group of animals from pasture to pasture, then through a series of gates and chutes and oneby-one through a subway-type turnstile (large enough to accommodate a rhinoceros), and finally into something called a squeeze chute, (which looks as medieval as it sounds), conveniently equipped with a scale underneath. Did I mention these animals are wild? There must be yet another (unproven) algorithm based on the size of the animal and the amount of time it takes to get them on the scale. Along the south side of the farm, Janelle and a few interns are casually walking behind a handful of musk oxen,
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while a fast-footed intern walks ahead of the pack shaking a bucket of grain as enticement. It’s all rather peaceful. The intern is walking. Janelle is walking. The musk oxen are walking, and everyone is on course until they hit the subway station. Then, Little Man has a change of heart and does a 180-degree turn, sending the entire group back along the 200-yard route they have just traveled. Depending on the animals involved—size is everything here—Janelle will either stand down the charging animal, frantically flailing her arms and appearing totally intimidating (even if she is at a 900 pound disadvantage), or she will lunge to the side, along with the interns. On this particular morning there is a halfhearted attempt to get the herd to turn around, but Janelle knows her animals; it’s clear that Little Man is headed back to the pasture. “These animals get weighed every week,” Janelle explains. “It’s not something new. But if one of them decides at the last minute to bolt the opposite direction, then we have to start all over again.” Although the bolt-and-run tactic makes for great entertainment, Janelle isn’t looking to be entertained on the job. “These are big animals and safety is my number one concern,” she says. “You always have to be prepared if something goes wrong. It doesn’t happen very often, but this is a farm, and these animals still have a strong survival instinct that’s sometimes contrary to domestication. “For most of the year things are surprisingly tame around here. We work really closely with the animals so they know what to expect, and typically, that reduces their stress level and ours. Rutting season, however, is when things get interesting. Trying to move certain bulls in between pastures when they only have one thing on their mind can get ‘exciting.’ ” Janelle’s job requires huge amounts of chutzpah as well as endless patience. Mark may be charged with overseeing the farm’s big picture, including opening the barn doors to thousands of tourists each year and marketing the animals’ luxuriously soft fiber, qiviut. But Janelle is directly responsible for maintaining the health and safety of the animals, which is at the core of their mission. “It’s not easy to tell if a musk ox has a bellyache,” Janelle explains. “Even when we have them in the squeeze chute they are still covered with so much hair, it’s hard to assess what’s happening underneath.” Weight is the simplest indicator of an animal’s health and if Janelle notices an animal is losing weight, than that’s typically a warning light that something is wrong. Musk oxen have roamed the planet for more than two million years. They have figured out survival better than most. But the animals at the farm aren’t in their native habitat. Relatively speaking, it’s warm in Palmer. Since the
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Baby musk oxen bonding.
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animals cannot range as wild musk oxen would, the farm is constantly on the lookout for any signs of parasites, which can often be the cause of sudden weight loss. Contrary to how the name sounds, a “squeeze chute” is a benign device designed to actually protect the animal (and handler). Slightly smaller than a ’68 Mustang, a squeeze chute is like a tiny prison cell with bars all around that confines the animal in such a way they can’t thrash around and hurt themselves if they panic, or if they are feeling just plain ornery. When Little Man (he outgrew that name long ago) finally enters the squeeze chute, Janelle calls me over so I can sink my hands into his glorious coat. I reflexively start scratching his back like a very, very big dog; I realize this is as close as it gets to petting a dinosaur. The feeling…is beyond words. With Little Man’s not-so-little four feet firmly planted on the scale, one of the interns calls out his weight, which is recorded on a piece of paper (eventually to be added to the computer database. Soon the front of the squeeze chute is opened by a large chain hanging overhead. Little Man blasts through the opening like a detonated bomb. “Getting them out is nowhere near as difficult as getting them in,” Janelle deadpans, and then tosses me a smile as she helps get the next “volunteer” onto the scale. During the lull, I take the opportunity to shove my hands deep into my pockets and subtly bob up and down to shift the blood down to my feet. I pull my scarf above my nose, leaving only a slit for my eyes. “Are you cold?” Mark asks. “No. I’m fine. I’m just fine. I’m as warm as toast,” I answer. Mark suggests we go inside by the fire, but I refuse. Instead, we leave the barn and head to what is possibly the cutest nursery on the planet: 15 musk ox babies, 10 months old, fenced in a pasture just a few frigid steps away. Mark begins to unlatch the pen’s 10-foot gate but it’s too late. I’ve already climbed over it. The babies, slightly shorter than an average-size German Shepherd, instantly gather in defensive formation: a semi-circular barricade that would typically shield the young from any predators. In this case, they are the young, and apparently, I am the predator! Although this slightly haphazard line-up of cutie pies is hardly imposing, I would be quick to hop back over the gate if this was a formation of Little Man and his friends. I find a spot far away from the babies to kneel down and let them get used to me. It takes more than a few minutes for them to realize I am not a threat, and after a period of sitting relatively motionless (because I’m now frozen), Ginger comes over to check me out. Actually, I suspect it was my long camera lens that has caught her attention. After she gives it a thorough once-over, I look at Mark and explain that I need to go inside and wipe the musk ox snot off my lens. 12/3/13 2:45:50 PM
When Little Man (he outgrew that name long ago) finally enters the squeeze chute, Janelle calls me over so I can sink my hands into his glorious coat. I reflexively start scratching his back like a very, very big dog; I realize this is as close as it gets to petting a dinosaur.
Mark and I return to the house and start pawing through ternational law and finance. You have to understand I was a a large assortment of exotic teas while waiting for the kettle lousy student, and the idea caught people so off guard they to boil. I talk non-stop about the babies and am surprised never asked another thing.” when, Mark hands me a clean dishtowel. “Did you really want to go into international law and “What’s this for?” I ask. finance?” I ask. “Your lens. You said you needed to wipe the snot off.” “Of course not,” Mark answered. “Oh…I lied. I was just cold. The camera is fine.” The career trajectory that eventually led Mark to The Mark gives me a look. The look all men possess when Musk Ox Farm began in college. they have just been duped by a woman with cold feet. “Sorry.” I pour him some tea. Running The Musk Ox Farm might appear to be easy when the animals are healthy, there’s plenty of hay in the barn, a competent farm manager is in charge, and the access road isn’t buried under 15 feet of snow. But there is nothing easy about running this farm, no matter the weather. Just a few years back, locking the barn doors for good was a sobering possibility. “We were hit by the economy like everyone else,” Mark explains. “We are a 501(c)3 and we depend on our donors. If they run out of money, so do we.” Musk oxen are big animals and it takes a big budget to maintain them. According to the farm’s budget, it takes about $1800 per year to support one animal, An empty squeeze chute which doubles as a beauty parlor during combing season. and that’s if nothing goes wrong. But anyone who runs a farm knows that something’s always broken. With two summer jobs already lined up in “I’ll bet we spend more time repairing tractors and bro- Colorado, Mark decided at the 11th hour to change ken pipes than studying spreadsheets. It’s just part of the course and head to Alaska instead. job,” Mark explains. “I worked on the “Beach Gang” in Cordorva, Alaska. It Mark’s admission, however, raises an interesting point. was a group of rough and tumble guys that did everything Just exactly how does one qualify for his job? If Mark’s re- necessary to get the fish from the boats into the cannery. sume is any indication, a limited few meet the criteria. On some days we would move a million pounds of fish off Raised in Denver’s suburbs, Mark claims that his first the boat. And on others, we would move the entire boat. dream job was to be a trash collector. “When you’re five I was driving forklifts and playing with the cranes. It was years old and you see guys hanging off the back of a truck great.” without wearing seatbelts, it’s a really cool thing. EventuI suspect this is better than hanging off the back of a ally, I figured that probably wasn’t a good career choice and trash truck. so as I got older, I started telling people I was going into in“I had a lot of crazy jobs, some making crazy amounts of 10th Anniversary Issue
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money, others, not so much,” Mark says. Less than 24 hours after Mark got his diploma, he hopped in a truck and drove to Glennallen, 120 miles north of Valdez. He was met by a bush plane that took him to a remote gold mine near the headwaters of the Chistochina river, where by the end of summer, he was doing all phases of the mining operation. This included going to bed with $80,000 worth of gold stashed under his pillow. (The owner of the gold mine was nearing bankruptcy and needed a safe place to hide his loot.) “Did you come to The Musk Ox Farm after the gold mine?” I ask, thinking the gold mining experience might attract him to the “golden” fiber. “No. After running dogs for a winter in the shadow of Denali, I went to Kodiak and worked on an 88-foot longliner in the Gulf. The roughest job with the roughest group of guys you can imagine; drug addicts, ex-cons, social misfits…” “And you!” I add with a grin. “I come from Denver, where kids mow lawns for the summer and sell popcorn at the Cineplex. These guys have been making three quarters of a million dollars a year since they were 15. It was a big lesson for me. All of that work and nothing more than burnt out sinuses and acres of tax debt to show for it.” “It was a big life lesson,” he says. Bouncing around from place to place and job to job, the only consistent in Mark’s life was Kim. By the mid-1990s they settled in Palmer and eventually opened Vagabond Blues, a restaurant/coffee shop/music venBaby Roux enjoying a nuzzle with one of the farm workers. ue that became the hub of Palmer’s social scene. “We were lucky. We hit the market just right. We offered great food, and we earned the reputation of having great bands from across the country. It gave locals a focal point that Palmer was incredibly ripe for.” However, Mark’s musk ox “career” began when an exceptionally tall blond man, with overtones of Adonislike charisma, came into Vagabond Blues one day and the two struck up a conversation. His name was Aaron Garland. His cousin, Lansing Teal, ran The Musk Ox Farm, and Aaron was Lans’ creative workhorse. “That’s how it all started, over a cup of a coffee and a cream cheese bagel,” says Mark. Aaron (a nephew of John Teal’s) eventually left the farm and Teal’s son, Lansing Teal, carried on solo. Mark and Lans not only formed a great friendship, but Mark also developed a keen understanding of the animals. “You know Little Man? The one you were just petting in the barn?” Mark asks. I nod my head for him to continue. “Lans and I bottle-fed him on a sofa that used to sit When the water tank freezes it serves as a perfect platform to properly align where you’re sitting. In fact, I bottle-fed my daughter with the fence for a big butt scratch. Just one of the reasons why the farm’s fencing needs to be very durable, and hence, quite costly. on that same sofa, too.” Still in their thirties with other dreams yet to pursue, Lans and Mark both left the farm—and Alaska. (Mark eventually sold Vagabond Blues and took off with Kim to spend five years sailing throughout the Pacific ocean and 20
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A handsome adult bull with a dense undercoat of qiviut. Note that his horns have been “tipped” to minimize possible damage during human interaction.
ultimately to Australia. Lans returned to Seattle, Washington, to raise a family.) A little less than four years ago Mark told (asked…) Kim to pack the truck (they had become landlubbers in New Mexico); they were moving back to Alaska with their newborn daughter, and Mark was the new executive director of The Musk Ox Farm. “Running the farm is the hardest job I’ve ever had,” Mark says. “Some things had been neglected over the years, and the balance sheet was heading the wrong direction. But the strange thing is that we really shouldn’t be here at all.” When John Teal started The Musk Ox Project he had an extraordinary vision. Already an esteemed anthropologist who mingled with an august crowd of adventurers and academics, Teal wanted to create a cottage industry for Alaska Natives based on a natural (and sustainable) resource: qiviut. Teal’s ultimate goal was to domesticate the musk ox (which had become extinct in the 1860s and reintroduced in the 1930s), so families could supplement their subsistence lifestyle by owning a few of them. This would provide enough qiviut for the women (or men) to make and sell knitted garments through a cooperative. Prior to Teal’s vision, musk oxen had been a valuable source of meat, and their enormous hides were used in totality. The soft undercoat (qiviut), that is now so deeply prized, was rarely separated from the coarse outer hairs and used on its own. Qiviut is most often compared with cashmere. To the touch, their softness is similar, although the structure of qiviut fiber makes it feel much lighter than cashmere Teal’s vision of gentle, sustainable agriculture was so far ahead of its time, it underscores his brilliance. But the project had a steep learning curve. 10th Anniversary
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The musk ox naturally sheds its qiviut in late spring. In order to maximize the yield, each animal is combed several times to ensure getting every last ounce. The smaller animals are combed in a small stall, but the larger bulls are combed in the squeeze chute and rewarded with treats to keep them occupied.
Erin Anders helping two calves get accustomed to being in a combing stall.
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Initially, Teal transported a small herd of musk oxen from Canada to his farm in Vermont. As the project began to grow, the operation shifted to a herd that was brought to UAF from Nunavak Island. Next, the animals were relocated to Unalakleet, a small village on the Bering Sea where Alaskan natives were trained in the care and feeding of the musk oxen. The results were less than ideal. For many reasons, the Unalakleet phase was choked with problems. Villagers weren’t accustomed to the daily needs of a domesticated animal (or one that was ostensibly heading towards domestication). The animals were big, and intimidating. Hay was prohibitively expensive. And, of course, the issue of secure fencing was omnipresent. In 1986, the herd relocated yet again, this time to Palmer where it was apparent that more animal husbandry (and funding) was necessary before anyone could successfully manage a “few” musk oxen in their own backyard. “We are the intermediary for getting the fiber,” Mark explains. “A portion of our qiviut is sold to Oomingmak, the knitting cooperative, which is a separate entity from the farm, but based upon John Teal’s original vision. If our ultimate goal is to get small herds into the hands of people living in rural Alaska, we have quite a bit of work to do first.” Although Teal’s vision may not have yet manifested itself precisely as planned,
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it has still worked out. Oomingmak boasts a membership of more than 200 knitters, and a permanent storefront in downtown Anchorage to sell its wares. The farm has one of the largest and healthiest herds in its history, and Mark’s massive enthusiasm has expanded their local presence with annual events such as “The Running of the Bulls” (an Alaskan, and child-friendly version of its Spanish namesake), the “Intern Summer Olympics” and the “Frostbite Invitational” (complete with a kilted bagpiper knee-deep in snow). Almost 10 years ago, I visited the farm for the first time. It was early June and I wasn’t wearing a hat, nor could I see my breath every time I opened my mouth.
ten. And few things have frustrated me more than being forced to keep my hands at my side. But there is a different philosophy now, and without prompting Mark leads me into a pasture of adult musk ox. Actually, he opens the gate and I practically have to step over Papaya, who is zonked out like a dog at the foot of the stairs. Several of the musk oxen pick-up their head as I walk in, but unlike the babies who are instinctively threatened by my presence, these 500-pound adults find me a trifling concern at best. Less than an hour ago I was touching a musk ox. Now, I was actually standing in a field with them! [Warning: do not try this at home.] For me, this is my “Disney World” moment, and my “10-year, no-touching resentment” dissipates in an instant. Mark leads me over to a female, a mature lady, and just starts scratching her back—no squeeze chute, no fencing, no anything besides complete trust between man and animal. And without any encouragement, I start scratching her, too. “Was Eve here the first time you came to the farm?” Mark asks. “EVE? ... This is EVE!” At that very instant I remembered the bottle baby’s name was Eve. In fact the article I wrote was titled, “All about Eve.” It seemed impossible. And yet, 10 years later, this once tiny baby I was forbidden to touch is now leaning her “mature” body against me like we are the oldest of friends. I look over at Mark and barely know what to say, and so I decide, instead, to lean down towards Eve’s face and just whisper in her ear ... “luv u.” Things always work out in the end, and what better proof than with a majestic mammal who has ridden the tide of more than two million years on planet earth. F
w
The day I first met Eve in June 2005.
I don’t think there were even 40 animals in the herd. Babies had been dying with uncommon frequency, and some of the older musk oxen were so old it was simply their time to die. The farm manager gave me a tour, but it certainly wasn’t like the one Mark was providing. There was a different farm philosophy in place: the musk oxen were rarely handled and about as far from being domesticated as one could imagine. There was, however, one high point to that visit. I got to see a baby musk ox being bottle-fed. I was asked not to touch it, but from a respectable distance of three to four feet, I could stand back and watch. Few things in my animal career have compared to the irresistible baby whose name I have long since forgot-
For more information on The Musk Ox Farm please visit: www:muskoxfarm.org/ and for Oomingmak: www.qiviut.com/
The author, Mark Austin, and a very grown-up Eve.
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10
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EXTRAORDINARY YEARS
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I
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IN SEARCH OF WILD FIBERS!
THANKS, TO YOU. 10th Anniversary Issue
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Summer 2004
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CASHMERE Chinese Australian Made in the USA Hay Etiquette Precious Vicuña Sentimental Sweaters Rabbit Rescue
Rare seaweed-eating sheep from Scotland Starting a cashmere farm at 90 Llama Rodeo The knitting addict Raising Angora rabbits Learning to spin alpaca
2004 Can 10 incredible years of traveling to some of the most remote parts of the planet be summarized in a few short pages? Probably not, but it’s a worth a try.
T
en years ago, before there was a magazine called Wild Fibers, before my passport collected so many stamps I had to upgrade it with 36 additional pages, and before I had teetered out of helicopters in New Zealand or swallowed handfuls of crispy worms in Zimbabwe, I was a goat farmer. I was living on 30 secluded acres near the coast of Maine along with my modest herd of cashmere goats, two dogs, and two cats: Bill and Elvis. At age 45, I’d had the remarkable good fortune of achieving my dream, or so it seemed. It may not have been a grand corner office with a petulant assistant taking irksome coffee breaks. And it may not have been a snappy sports car (I did own a dandy red truck), and it certainly wasn’t an impressive stock portfolio. I had my farm, my animals, and most importantly, a broken heart. Broken hearts are the sharp edges that teach us that life goes on in spite of unstoppable sadness. I was fairly certain that life would, eventually, continue. I just wasn’t convinced. Eat, Pray, Love, the runaway best-seller by Elizabeth Gilbert, was spawned from her own broken heart, caused by a dramatic divorce replete with fist-pounding hysteria on the kitchen floor and other signs of dire distress. Already an author of note, Gilbert took her sorrows around the world, eventually making herself nearly as rich as the Sultan of Bru-nei (a position that entitles to him a residence with 1,888 rooms, 290 of them bathrooms). Not that I wish to appear small, but Eat, Pray, Love was published two years after I started Wild Fibers. I think Ms. Gilbert owes me. I wish I had Elizabeth Gilbert’s talent—not to mention her bank account. But if someone had handed me 10 mil26
lion dollars on the condition that I could never leave the country, I would have to say, “No thanks.” Without hesitation, the rewards of being the editor of Wild Fibers are priceless, and it is thanks to you. Unlike Gilbert’s dreams (and frequent flyer miles), which were funded by an advance from Random House, every page of Wild Fibers since the second issue has been totally supported by its readers and advertisers. And so as I look back over the past 10 years and all the things both good, and not-quite-as-good that happened, I not only have to thank cupid for a broken arrow, but also a spinning wheel manufacturer whom I will simply refer to as “GB.” Before the first issue went to press I needed advertisers, so I reached for a recent copy of Spin Off and started calling some of their advertisers. I wasn’t exactly looking to steal Spin Off ’s advertisers; I was simply offering them a chance to “enhance” their marketing program. It was a Tuesday afternoon when I phoned GB, and to my delight he didn’t immediately hang up. In fact, he began asking some very thoughtful questions about this wild dream of mine, and I took that as my queue to give him the full sales pitch. Again, he asked more questions. And again, I continued with my exuberance. And just about the time I thought he was getting ready to take out an ad he said, “Well, you seem pretty excited about this idea, but I’ve been around for a long time and I see a lot of people like you come along with big ideas. They never last.” And then he said good-bye, good luck, and hung up. My heart broke. GB wasn’t a friend, let alone an ex-lover. In fact I wouldn’t have recognized him if the FedEx man had delivered him to my doorstep.
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Winter 2005
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Alpacas
The Life of Yak
The other “gold” of the Andes and American fashion
the culture the fiber the fashion
Acupuncture and Animals A Weaver’s Odyssey
Mulesing Merinos PETA attacks the wool industry D ow n Under
Summer 2005
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IcelandIc SheepdogS Viking Herders keep watch over American Flocks
No Ram is an Island The History of Maine Island Sheep
MInI MIllS Are they the Microbrewery of the Fiber Industry?
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P is for Pygora Lama Limbo How low can your camelid go?
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2005 But it didn’t matter. I stood in the kitchen steadying myself at the stove before collapsing on the floor into Gilbert-style sobbing. Eventually, I walked into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and cradled my head in my hands. “This whole magazine thing is just one big stupid pipe dream,” I kept repeating as I wiped yet another stream of snot away from my nose. And then I cried some more. Some people believe that often the best way to get someone to do something is to tell them they can’t. I would like to think that GB had that in mind, but I doubt it. Moving on up By the following morning I got my mojo back, and once again started flipping through the pages of Spin Off. Strauch Fiber Equipment had a nice full-page ad, so I picked up the phone and called. Otto Strauch answered the phone, and once again I started down the road of my wooly zeal, and once again, I got a line of thoughtful questions. For the next hour, Otto kept asking, and I kept answering. “It takes a lot of guts to start a magazine,” Otto finally said, “but you sound like you’re just crazy enough to make it happen. I’ll take out a full-page ad for a year, just send me an invoice.” When I am asked how I came to start Wild Fibers, I typically offer a rehearsed response about sitting in my spare bedroom with a second-hand computer, a bingo table I “borrowed” from my town office to serve as my desk, and a bootleg (oops!) copy of Quark software. I used up almost every penny of the less than $7000 in my savings account to publish the first issue. It wasn’t really as simple as that. Not only did the genesis of Wild Fibers take more than six days, and not only did a trio of men contribute in their own unique ways to its birth (may there never be a paternity suit to sort it all out), but I am still waiting to rest on the seventh. On the magazine’s 10th anniversary I can’t think of a more opportune time to look back at the top 10 moments from the past 10 years, celebrating, reflecting on and sharing some snippets that have never made it into print. 1. Scottish cashmere In 2004, my first official international trip as a “magazine editor” (a title that felt both uncomfortable and undeserved) landed me in the boardroom at Johnston’s of Elgin Cashmere in Scotland. If ever there was a time when someone was going
The author with James Dracup (plant manger), and James Sugden, heading out for a tour of Johnston’s cashmere’s mill.
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Vol. 3, Issue 1
The American Bison Charging into American fashion, farming and fine cuisine.
The Thread of Mull
Hebridean Sheep are returning to the island and the cloth - naturally!
Outfoxing the Fur!
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Alaska’s Beguiling Behemoth
Shahtoosh!
Qiviut - the utimate in luxury fiber!
China’s Chang Tang Reserve is home to the rarest fiber in the world.
Summer 2006 Vol. 3, Issue 3
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Fall 2006 Vol. 3, Issue 4
Going Organic?
Talking with Temple Grandin
Make it naturally with Vermont’s Greenspun.
What does autism teach us about how animals think?
Keeping Sheep Sacred in Chiapas, Mexico.
Bo-Peep Redux Discovering a flock of wayward woolies Down Under.
Stitches at Sea Is the Aran sweater more island mystique than ancient knitting history?
Knitting with ultra-soft, handcombed fox fiber.
The Chant of the Male Spider Summer 2006
Meet the Men Who Weave in the Navajo Nation.
Treading with Alpacas Federal Prosecutor William Schneider offers unusual lessons in life.
Volume 3, Issue 3
2006 to call my bluff, this was it. A few months prior to my visit I had read an article in The Wall Street Journal (mandatory reading for the serious fiber enthusiast) citing a Mr. James Sugden, managing director of Johnston’s Cashmere. The article discussed recent changes in Chinese export regulations and their impact on the cashmere industry, including Scotland’s only vertically integrated cashmere mill. There was just enough fervor in Sugden’s words to make me muster some keyboard courage from my borrowed bingo table and send him an email. Several days later, Sugden’s secretary replied and said that he would be happy to meet with me briefly during my upcoming visit to Scotland. Now armed with the second issue of Wild Fibers (which offered only slightly fewer typos than the first), I met a charming receptionist wearing (so help me God) a light blue sweater set. She ushered my photographer Don Moore and me into the boardroom to wait for Mr. Sugden. I was either too excited (or stupid) to be nervous. I suspect it would take this Mr. Sugden a matter of moments to realize that the middle-aged lady who had contacted him was not an illustrious magazine editor but no more than a goat farmer with clean shoes. Shortly after we were served a cup of tea, Mr. Sugden entered the room wearing a perfectly tailored tweed sports coat, a pale blue cashmere vest, argyle socks, and a stately grin. He possessed a curious blend of professional elegance coupled with country charm, as if at any moment he might suggest we take the afternoon off to go grouse hunting, stealing nips from a flask of single-malt scotch along the way. I slid a copy of the magazine across the board table. Mr. Sugden picked it up and began turning the pages as if they contained baby pictures of his first grandchild, exclaiming “Extraordinary!” “Brilliant!” and “Absolutely splendid!” I had been told that after my meeting with Mr. Sugden, the plant manager would give us a brief tour of the mill. But at the end of our 30-minute interview, Mr. Sugden insisted that he personally show us around. Seven hours later we parted company. For the first time I saw how cashmere was processed 28
from fiber into yarn, and from yarn into sweaters, socks, and beautifully woven cloth that is sold under some of the top haute couture labels. It is what Johnston’s is famous for. But what I really saw that day was how one very busy man gave up his entire day to show a fledgling magazine editor how much he believed in her. Mr. Sugden’s kindness and support has helped propel me for the past 10 years. I will never forget that first meeting and the courage it
A giant vat of scoured cashmere ready to be dyed (which looks surprisingly like a big pot of mashed potatoes.)
gave me. 2. Alaskan Knitters Almost a year to the day from my Scottish sojourn, I boarded a plane bound for Unalakleet, Alaska. A small village 148 miles southeast of Nome on the Bering Sea that is rarely visited by anyone from the Lower 48 unless they are carrying a rifle or a rod. There were six seats on the plane and mine had the most duct tape securing it to the floor. “Meal service” was provided in a small wicker basket, the kind typically used for dinner rolls, and once we reached our cruising altitude the captain turned around and passed the basket aft. “Take as much as you like,” he said, so I grabbed two bags of potato chips and two chocolate bars. It was like flying business class without the flatbed seats. A woman on an ATV met Don and me at the airport.
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The two of us managed to straddle the ATV’s rear shelf (typically used for dead animals or small children), clinging to our luggage as we took off down the gravel road. The cold wind gusting off the sea made my eyeballs ache, the metal bars beneath us were denting my cheeks, and there were some spectacular bumps along the way. I was glad the trip to the motel took less than 20 minutes. Two hours later, three native Alaskan women from the Oomingmak’s Knitting Cooperative arrived at the motel and told me about life in Unalakleet and the importance of knitting qiviut items for Oomingmak. The line I remember most came from one of the women, who told me that she got up at four o’clock every morning to watch her soap operas (she referred to them her “shows”) and knit before getting her children ready for school. I can count on two fingers the number of times I have intentionally watched television in the wee hours of the morning: Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk and Princess Diana’s wedding. And I suspect even the most passionate soap opera enthusiast would eschew a routine 4 a.m. rising. But this woman’s story wasn’t about catching the next episode of All My Children. It was about the importance of earning extra money for her family in a place where the options are few and the hardships are many. John Teal, the late founder of Oomingmak, had an extraordinary vision of utilizing musk ox fiber as a means of supporting Alaska’s indigenous people. Until I met with these three remarkable women I had little understanding of its true impact. As the women took off on their ATVs with a cloud of gravel dust trailing behind, I waved good-bye, realizing that from that moment forward just how much the world of natural fibers could teach me about the lives of others. as The ladies from Oomingmak’s knitting cooperative arriving for an interview in Unalakleet, Alaska.
3. A farming rock star Not long after my first Alaskan trip, I met one of my personal “rock stars.” Every industry has its rock stars, and speaking from a fiber perspective there are countless artisans who knit, weave, and felt spectacular creations that now belong in museum collections. Yet it is never far from my mind that Wild Fibers evolved from my experience as a farmer, and in that realm, there is a rock star of unparalleled stature. Temple Grandin is an autistic college professor whose heightened senses have offered new insights into animal husbandry Six months after meeting Temple at an unrelated venue I decided to Temple Grandin with some of her herd. interview her for the magazine. At that time, she was an esteemed figure in the world of animal behavior (Claire Danes had yet to popularize her in the Hollywood version of Temple’s life.) We talked for more than three hours, not just about animals and what they like and what they don’t, but about her life, her childhood, her views about war, and perhaps the biggest question that faces every
2007 10th Anniversary Issue
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Summer 2008 Vol. 5, Issue 3
Cashmere's Newest Chapter
Nomads are settling down, and trading up, in India's High Himalayas
'Crazy Moments' from the San Juan Islands
A peak at the nuns' pastoral habits
Rare Thoughts
Is 'extinct' a word being uttered in the pasture?
Summer 2008
All That Shines Isn't Silk In China's Shidong Village
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Cherishing Cashmere
Discover the true warmth of cashmere in the mountains of Ladakh
The Lady in Red
Meet a rare herd of guanacos on the coast of Wales $6.95 U.S $8.95 Canada
Hail Caesar!
Embrace a band of notable black sheep
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VICUNA!
Threatened by Poachers and the 'Throat of Fire'
20 Mile Sheep Ranch
The Wooly Side of the Wild West
Chasing Men in Skirts
Guatemala's Rodillera Weavers
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one of us: what does it all mean? People with autism have varying levels of functionality, and Temple’s is exceptionally high. Much of her ability to cope in the “normal” world has come from repetition. For example, she explained that when she first began traveling through airports, one part of her brain saw planes coming and going, another part saw people coming and going, and still another part saw all the baggage coming and going. But in Temple’s mind, it was all a series of disconnected activities. The concept of an airport didn’t exist. “My brain is like a computer with a folder for each subject,” she explained, “but it doesn’t share information in between folders.” It is only after hundreds of airport visits that Temple has now created an airport “folder” where people, planes, and baggage are interconnected. Yet her ability to connect with animals has been flawless from the start, a curious segue into my next memorable moment in India’s high Himalayas, where nomads have been communicating perfectly with their herds of yaks and goats for centuries. 4. An Indian nomad As a child, I remember hearing about the Himalayas, but they sounded so exotic and desperately remote. The notion of ever going there was inconceivable. My first flight from Delhi to Leh alone would qualify as one my most memorable moments, but it is the gentleman who would meet me upon my arrival that has become one of the greatest gifts of my life. Konchok Stobgais is a nomad from Pangong, a village that lies within whistling distance of the Chinese border. I first met Stobgais at a conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and was intrigued not only by his bronze skin and Tibetan eyes, but by his unfailing good humor (think Dalai The author with Konchok Stobgais on her first trip to India. Lama laughter with a shepherd’s crook). Amidst the crowd of international professionals assembled for the conference, Stobgais was by far the youngest. He wore a traditional chupa, a heavy blue robe that fell below his knees and belted at the hip with a pink silk sash. While the other attendees were discussing fashion trends and trade agreements, I was casually interrogating this unique-looking young man. “Are you really a nomad?” I asked, which in hindsight is about the equivalent of someone stopping me outside of Walmart and saying are you really an American? In Stobgais’s world, nearly everyone is a nomad. And in my world, there are none. Unperturbed by my blatant remark, Stobgais smiled and replied, “Yes, I am real nomad; you come to Ladakh and see.” Seven months later I was in seat 2A heading to Ladakh. When I returned to the States two weeks later, something had forever changed inside. I am not the first person from a Western country to be enchanted by the talents of an indigenous culture, but I suspect I am among but a handful of cashmere goat farmers who has actually traveled to the cradle of cashmere and witnessed 10 thousand goats descending from the mountains at sunset, without benefit of herding dogs, horses, or a fence line or two. The nomads of Ladakh communicate with their animals in a way that seems more spiritual than studied. I have often wondered if they would regard Temple’s teachings as everyday common sense. 5. A Roman crisis
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Cashmere goats coming home in Changtang Valley, Ladakh, India.
In 2008, just four years after the start of Wild Fibers, I flew to Rome, Italy, for the launch of the International Year of Natural Fibres (IYNF); a United Nations initiative sponsored by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), dedicated to promoting the importance of natural fibers throughout the world. (Isn’t there already a magazine about that?) I remember fleeing early Sunday morning from the New York Sheep and Wool Fairgrounds for the airport, and stepping off the plane in Rome 20 hours later wearing a black skirt and high heels. Unfortunately, I had suffered a slight wardrobe malfunction in the airplane bathroom, trying to change into my Italian fashion ensemble. This resulted in an impressive run down the front of my pantyhose. Any morsel of ego I dared bring to such an august event was immediately erased by my arrival in a pair of torn stockings. Fortunately, by the time I arrived at the UN building, the meeting was already in session. I quietly took a seat in
2009
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Summer 2009 Vol. 6 Issue 2
Wild Fibers Magazine
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Wild Fibers Magazine
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Winter 2009/2010 Vol. 6 Issue 4
Captured on the Lam in Paradise
Take a wild and woolly chase through New Zealand's Southern Alps
Eviction at Sea
Uncover some unusual lessons behind the veil of four Moroccan weavers
Fifth Anniversary
Tying the Knot
Fifth Anniversary
Why was a 2000 year-old culture extinguished in a single boat trip?
2009
2009
Humps, Herders, and Hard Times in the Gobi Will the ship of the desert survive?
Cotton Warfare!
Transylvania
Sally Fox's struggle in living color
Will shepherds and their sheep survive globalization? Volume 6, Issue 4
Volume 6, Issue 1
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A Pioneer's Success in Swaziland
Roped Into Success
Sisal is making things brighter, greener, and stronger in Tanzania $6.95 U.S $8.95 Canada
Busting Out Of Brooklyn
Coral Stephens Handweaving celebrates sixty years of innovation
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Francis Chester makes a break for the country life and a world of wool
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Looking out on David Whiteman’s sheep station, South Island, New Zealand.
the back, hoping to make my entrance unobtrusive for multiple reasons. During the lunch break, Brian Moir, chairman of the IYNF, asked me if I had received his email over the weekend. I explained I had been knee-deep in ummm…fiber(!), the past few days and unable to check it. “No problem,” he said, in a fine Australian accent. “I would like you to chair this afternoon’s panel discussion. Righto?” And then he just walked away before I could reply. When someone asks you to chair anything at the United Nations, the answer is always yes. But how was I going to make it all the way up to the stage without anyone seeing my tattered legs? Alas, the perils of a short skirt and a high-altitude snag. Many things came out of the IYNF, including the Campaign for Wool sponsored by Prince Charles. But with my feminine vanity fully intact, the memory of the pantyhose incident sadly seems indelible. 6. Lost sheep in New Zealand The start of 2009 marked the magazine’s 5th anniversary, along with one of the most crazy-ass adventures I have ever had. Several days into the New Year I made an impromptu trip to New Zealand, thanks to David Whiteman, a good-natured sheep The author looking mildly displeased by the removal of the helicopter farmer from the South Island whom I had met a few years before. door. A newly rescued ewe suspended beneath the helicopter. David had written to tell me that a helicopter pilot had spotted four of his sheep roaming about the alps. Apparently, they had eluded their annual shearing for several years and if they weren’t captured soon, their fleece would soon become so cumbersome in the deep snow that they would surely die. There were no roads anywhere near the “runaways,” and it would have taken several days 32
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wild Fibers wild Fibers Fall 2010 Vol. 7 Issue 3
Exploring the animals, art and culture of the natural fiber industry
Exploring the animals, art, and culture, of the natural fiber industry
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Exploring the animals, art and culture of the natural fiber industry
If I Were a Rich Man
Taming Tibet
Invasions, plagues, and political upheaval dominate Peru's alpaca history
Will wool and wilderness survive?
Aftershock
How will keep Jade Tree spinning after the earthquake in Tibet?
Saving Incan Textiles
Falling Fortunes
Declining cashmere prices are creating hard times for Mongolia's nomads, but they have survived far worse
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from the Yak Outback
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Conversations with Chris Devaney
Winter 2010/2011
2010
Changing careers from diamonds to goats in "The Mountain Kingdom" of Lesotho
Becca Smith turns a forgotten fleece into an amazing bump
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To Russia With Love
Portland Sheep: Sentenced for life
Made in the U.S.A. Fall
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In the heart of the Peruvian Andes, Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez is preserving ancient weaving traditions that were nearly lost
Zeilinger Wool Co.'s centennial
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2010 by horseback to reach them, and then several days back to herd them home. According to David, the best option was to have a pair of bulldoggers (people who jump out of helicopters for a living, typically to fight forest fires) capture them and bring them back home suspended in a net from beneath the helicopter. “I think it will make a good story for your readers, eh?” David said when we chatted by phone. I couldn’t deny it. “Interesting” was just one of the things that it was guaranteed to be. I left my house in Maine at 4:15 on Friday morning in a horrific snowstorm. My flight was cancelled and I was rebooked through a different airport. Eventually, I landed in Boston, then flew to Philadelphia, then to Salt Lake City and on to Los Angeles, where I waited seven hours to board a plane to Auckland. From Auckland, I flew to Christchurch, where David’s son had been assigned to meet me. The two of us took off for a two-hour drive to his home, where his mother took over the next leg of the journey. We drove almost three hours to their sheep station on 29 thousand hectares that David rents from the Queen. David was anticipating our arrival and met us at the padlocked front gates. From the entrance gate it was another half-hour drive to the cook’s camp. A helicopter soon arrived there and off I went, feeling bleary-eyed and dopey. I buckled myself into the helicopter seat. Just as we were preparing to takeoff, David announced with great enthusiasm that I could get far better photos if he took off the door, and so off it went! There is a fine line between risk and stupidity, and I suspect I had just crossed it. I was too tired to argue with David, and in truth, I really would get much better shots with the door off. But I also had very little faith in my ability to hang on as I leaned out the open door, thousands of feet above the ground snapping magnificent pictures while looking for four lost sheep. Obviously, I survived to tell the tale —and I would do the whole thing all over again, even if the lost sheep ultimately turned out not to be David’s! “Pass the bunny” in China.
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wild F ibers
Vol. 8 Issue 3
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Has Anyone Seen Uzbekistan? You'll Find It And More In Santa Fe Uncovering The Secret World Of Hitler's Hares Did Austria Hijack The English Tweed?
Fall 2011
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2011 7. Angoras in China One of the biggest challenges over the years has been deciding what is appropriate to share with my readers. For all the joys and wonder of international travel there are equal amounts of heartache. It has not been easy to abandon my Western heart, which has the luxury of often treating animals with more care than is afforded to millions of humans. But animal suffering, starvation, and careless death are an undeniable fact of this vast world we all must share. I simply can’t recall the number of times I have been driving in a car, a taxi, a truck, or simply walking along the sidewalk, and encountered an abandoned litter of dead puppies, mutilated donkeys, decapitated goats, and other horrific casualties of both man and nature. When I traveled to China in 2010, I tried to keep my journalist’s eye open and the eye from my heart shut. It is no more just to categorize the behavior of the Chinese in a single sentence as it is to label the French, the English, or 300 million Americans. Unfortunately, some of what I saw there (and I still choose not to share) will never be erased from my mind. But there was a bright side, too. One of my favorite moments ever was on an Angora rabbit farm. I had not arranged for the interview, as I was relying on a contact in Switzerland to set things up for me. I explained that I wanted to see how Angoras were still being raised in traditional country settings and I also wanted to visit a factory farm, which housed up to 30,000 rabbits. The couple at the country farm spoke no English, and I, speak no Mandarin. But from the moment the woman pulled the first rabbit out of its cage (they have 500) and handed me a mass of white fluff the size of a Butterball turkey, I knew we were kindred souls. There is such extraordinary magic that takes place when two people who would seemingly have little in common beyond the air that they breathe suddenly form a lasting bond from the heart. Invariably, in the direst of situations, I have been miraculously blessed with the light of the universe. It is a phenomenon that happens to us Nicolae wearing his traditional bunda in Transylvania. all, but it seems to happen with uncommon fre34
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quency for this magazine editor. I will always remember being particularly grateful for its brilliance on an otherwise dispiriting afternoon in northern China.
wild Fibers
Preserving Traditions - Protecting Our Planet
Looking for Fiber in the Fjords of Norway Meet the King Behind England's Campaign for Wool Spinning Silk in the Land of Sea Serpents and Elephants
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Go Green, Wear Wool!
Wild Fibers Magazine
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Vol. 9 Issue 3
Preserving Traditions - Protecting Our Planet
Khadi Cloth: Gandhi's legacy finds modern roots
From sheep to shawl, Greentree Weaving does it all Decoding the Mapuche With a Smartphone?
Fall 2012 Volume 9, Issue 3 $7.95 U.S. $9.95 Canada
India's Cradle of Cotton
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Vol. 9 Issue 4
Preserving Traditions - Protecting Our Planet
Discovering Bolivia's
Amyra and Alpaca History Meet Linda Ligon: The Earth Mother of Fibers Happiness and Heartache at Flat Top Sheep Ranch
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Gridlock in Sun Valley, Idaho.
2012 10th Anniversary Issue
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Vol. 9 Issue 2
Summer 2012
9. Ladies in Ladakh As I mentioned earlier, my meeting with Stobgais dramatically changed my views, not only about raising cashmere goats, but about my role in life, and how I could begin to “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” A daunting command from Gandhi that few
Wild Fibers Magazine
8. Budapest and beyond Toward the end of winter in 2011 I found myself in Budapest, sitting naked in a sauna next to an Arab. Now, this is not a standard practice of mine. In fact, to date, it’s been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Like the run in my pantyhose it really has nothing to do with publishing a magazine other than giving me more fodder for inane cocktail conversations. I have a vision that someday I will find myself amidst a crowd of well-heeled entrepreneurs nibbling oysters on the half shell and sipping clarets of champagne. Suddenly I’ll blurt out, “Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Budapest sitting naked in the sauna next to an Arab?” And the person beside me will politely chime in, “Yes, Linda, you’ve told us repeatedly.” Just two days after my sauna “date” I traveled to Transylvania and met Nicolae, a Romanian shepherd who had lost more than 30 lambs within days of my arrival. It was one of those bleak days that make everyone wonder if the sun will Nicolae seated on his son’s bed during the interview. ever shine again, and clearly, for Nicolae, one truly doubted it ever would. He invited me into his home, a single room with a kitchen table and a few shelves from where his wife prepared our meal. His three children slept next to a woodstove. We sat down for the interview, Nicolae on the edge of one bed, and I on the other. He began telling me his life story in a manner uncommon among total strangers, much less two people separated by miles of ocean and cultural disparity. He spoke slowly, and thoughtfully, allowing enough time for my translator to find the right words, and within minutes the tears began to fall from Nicolae’s eyes, and soon, from mine as well. The tragic and sudden deaths of so many lambs was by no means the first ache to strike Nicolae’s heart. Starting from childhood, Nicolae suffered abuse and abandonment because of his father’s alcoholism. But unlike in the U.S., where addiction has come out of the closet and support groups and therapists of every description can be found in the most remote outpost, Nicolae has held the shame of his family background for all of his life. He told me that when he was twelve, his father died. As my translator repeated the words to me I looked at Nicolae with compassion. But there would be no sorrow about his father’s passing. Instead, he looked down at the floor and whispered, “I was relieved.” And then he looked back up at me as if his lack of feeling somehow cast a moral blight on him, but I just nodded gently back and said, “I understand,” and we cried together softly. Before I left that day I emptied my wallet and asked my translator to ensure that Nicolae received some compensation for the loss of his livestock. I knew that no amount of money would replace the loss in his heart. Perhaps the fact that he was able to unburden even part of his story served to lighten his load even for just a few hours. I’ve always hoped that it did.
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A few of the women demonstrating their cashmere spinning for the first Wild Fibers Tour to India.
of mortal stature dare to fulfill. But in Stobgais’s presence, and in the spirit of his sweet Buddhist nature, somehow that dictate seemed within reach. In 2012, Stobgais traveled to Delhi to meet with me. We hadn’t seen each other for a few years, and in the interim, he’d had his first child; a beautiful daughter named Yangdol. We rode around Delhi together in the back of a tuk-tuk with me clutching Yangdol on my lap. She seemed completely at peace with the chaos of Delhi traffic as cars and cows passed within inches of our open vehicle. At the end of our visit, Stobgais asked if I would once again consider the idea of leading a tour to Ladakh. Not only to help support him, and now his daughter, but to bring light to the women in his village, with whom I had been working to develop a cashmere handspinning industry for the past several years. The idea of leading a dozen strangers around the Himalayas bordered on the absurd, if not the mildly abhorrent. But I thought about Gandhi’s words and what I had learned through all of my wild and wonderful wanderings, and realized that none of this was about me. How could I turn my back on Stobgais, his daughYangdol wearing traditional dress to welcome the first Wild Fibers tour to Ladakh. ter and the women in his village, whose only option for employment meant working by the side of the road crushing rocks into pebble? 36
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wild Fibers
Vol. 10 Issue 1
Wild Fibers Magazine
Preserving Traditions - Protecting Our Planet
wild Fibers
Vol. 10 Issue 3
Preserving Traditions - Protecting Our Planet
Days of Danger:
A Rancher's Summer Tale Rabia MaryamThe "Silk Queen" of Mazar Sheep to Shop Uncle Sam's Flying Carpet?
Spring 2013
The Rocking Yak: An Act of Love In Shangri-La Fibershed! Slow Clothes Comes to California "Holy Threads" In Burmese Waters
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Oman's King of the Canyon
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Island Knitting: It's the "manly" thing
2013 Six months after Stobgais and I met in Delhi, I arrived in Ladakh with twelve wild fibers enthusiasts in town, and for the next 12 days I shared not only a deeply important part of my world, but also one of my dearest friends. I know that when my group boarded the plane to return home a new place had been forever etched in their hearts. It wasn’t just about the outrageous landscape dotted with millions of sweet goats. It was about discovering another part of humanity that all too few ever see, thanks to one of the most extraordinary people to ever roam the peaks of the Himalayas: Konchok Stobgais. 10. Suzanne 10 years of running around the planet has meant two things: I am rarely home, and someone needs to run the office in my absence. Suzanne Lacasse has not been with me all 10 years, but she did come on board early enough to work in my spare bedroom and “inherit” my bingo table. Suzanne is truly the reason Wild Fibers has survived. I may have some skill at stringing a few fancy words together, but Suzanne is the one who ensures that the business runs flawlessly. She handles the books, the subscribers, the advertisers, the distributors, and of course, me! Although people often assume that Wild Fibers is produced by a staff, my “staff ” is called Suzanne. We both are apt
One of the biggest challenges over the years has been deciding what is appropriate to share with my readers. For all the joys and wonder of international travel there are equal amounts of heartache.
Suzanne Lacasse finally gets upgraded from a spare bedroom to an
to chuckle when someone writes to me and says, “Please have someone on your staff check my subscription,” and I turn to Suzanne and say, “Well, it looks like it’s your turn to check the subscriptions today.” In some ways, we are like a happily married couple who have sorted out our differences and come to accept each other’s idiosyncrasies. I couldn’t ask for a more kind nor competent partner to raise this child I have named “Wild Fibers.” And I couldn’t have known that 10 years back, a broken heart could have one day found so much love in the universe. F
official office.
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Please take a moment to watch our brand new video celebrating 10 years of what makes us wild. http://vimeo.com/79159565
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Ten years of international travel has produced more than 50,000 images. Since I am not a photographer, it is safe to assume that less than 10% of them are actually in focus.
Unlike true photographers who painstakingly wait for the perfect light, the perfect angle, and the perfect subject in order to create the perfect shot, I have relied on luck.
The images selected for this issue represent some of my personal favorites combined with a huge helping of luck.
Tibetan woman in Yushu, China. 38
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Monk looking out from the entrance to Leh Temple,
Reflections on Ten Years
Ladkah, India.
Photos By Linda N. Cortright
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Mother and daughter sharing a laugh on the shores of Taquile Island. Above: Cashmere buck in Changtang region, Ladakh, India. (Photo by Don Moore) Below: Three musk ox babies, undoubtedly up to no good.
Like mother, like daughter, with matching braids down their back. 40
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A youngatgirl on Taquile Island spinning acrylic yarnMexico. into finer thread for weaving. Pakistani woman Santa Fe Folk Art Festival, Santa Fe, New 10th Anniversary Issue
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Kazakh cashmere goat farmer. His expression only hints at the years of suffering that preceded his return from Urumchi, China, to northern Kazakhstan.
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Above: Woman selling flat bread at Baraholka; Central Asia’s largest outdoor market located outside of Almaty, Kazakhstan. Below: My Kazakh farmer proposes marriage offers me 200 cashmere goats. I think about it...
Winter 2012/2013
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Photo courtesy of American Sheep Industry Association.
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America Flocks Together Story by Leslie Petrovski
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NO war - NO wool Among the many factors leading to the decline of the wool industry few things have invigorated America’s pastures like the demand to clothe thousands of soldiers. With no one knitting little green berets for a squadron of drones, American wool is staging a comeback and fully prepared to sock it to you.
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fall on a large bag of roving filled with fat contrails of wool the instant I step inside the offices of the American Sheep Industry Association. Peter Orwick, the organization’s executive director, is ready for me. “Merino?” I ask, stroking the fiber. “Rambouillet,” he corrects, explaining that the represented variant is the “French merino.” Orwick is in a position to know. In addition to his more than 20 years with ASI, Orwick grew up on a cattle and sheep ranch in western South Dakota homesteaded by his great grandfather. There, in addition to beef, they raised Rambouillet mostly for meat. Today, he runs the U.S. wool industry’s oldest and largest trade association, representing more than 82,000 sheep producers. Founded during the Lincoln Administration in 1865 as the National Wool Growers Association (the country’s first livestock association), the organization is poised to celebrate its sesquicentennial in just over a year. The anniversary will mark, if not a time of renaissance for the wool industry, a time of renewed interest. Located in Englewood, Colorado, ASI’s headquarters look for all the world like those of a mortgage lending company, with some notable exceptions: On one wall hang the photographs of former presidents of the National Wool Growers Association and now ASI, representing 150 years of association leadership. In spite of the fact that the sheep and wool industry depends on its ewes, it wouldn’t be until the 1980s that a woman’s photo would join that line-up. Orwick’s office, which looks out onto the northern Front Range peaks and the vast expanse of city and prairie to the east, harbors a mounted mountain lion, a 140-pound tom who made the mistake of taking out about a half dozen yearling ewes on the the Cottonwood Ranch in Utah. “It took me five days to find him,” Orwick says. In the last century and a half, the American wool industry has faced threats even more dire than those posed by preda46
tors. Changing technology, tastes and government policies have done their part to shear the size of the American flock to the point that the United States barely registers on global inventories. Currently, American producers run about 5.34 million sheep, putting the United States behind China, Australia, Iran, the U.K. and even Azerbaijan in the number of sheep raised domestically. We currently produce about 14 million pounds of clean wool (down from 55.1 million pounds in the mid-1970s), more than half of which is exported. Counting sheep: Where have all the ovines gone? But that wasn’t always the case. In 1942, when American sheep were feeding and clothing U.S. servicemen overseas, the inventories of these multi-purpose animals hit an alltime high of 56 million head, putting the U.S. in fifth place in worldwide wool production at the time. Since its heyday, the American flock has dwindled some 90 percent, a figure that begs the question, where have all the ovines gone? The slide of the sheep industry mirrors that of agriculture in general. Young World War II veterans, having been raised on dry rangelands in the West and green pastures in the East, didn’t want to return to the farm after liberating Paris. With the G.I. bill in their back pockets, they poured in to America’s colleges, choosing other occupations and leaving the sheep industry—and agriculture in general—behind. But the assaults on sheep didn’t end there. The postWorld War II era also brought the advent of cheap feed grains, which boosted the popularity of chicken, pork and beef, while mutton fell into disfavor among families whose patriarchs had endured countless tins of the stuff during the war. Add to that the popularization of lower-cost synthetic fibers that were easy to wash and wear, and it appeared as if the industry was headed out to pasture. Enter the National Wool Act of 1954. Despite the robust-
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Border Leicester ewe with triplets, part of Solitude Wool’s yarn program. Photo courtesy of Gretchen Frederick.
ness of mid-century sheep inventories, the United States still imported about half its wool for military uniforms during World War II and the Korean conflict. To limit the country’s dependence on foreign fiber and bolster American wool against international competition, Congress passed the National Wool Act, providing subsidies to wool and mohair growers. Though sheep numbers continued to decline, the Wool Act helped shore up wool prices and encouraged growers to improve their clips. The Wool Act stood for almost 40 years, but under the Clinton Administration in 1993, the Wool Act was repealed. “It was part of an effort to reinvent government,” Orwick explains. “They thought it was too much money to spend on a small agricultural industry and they thought they could win it.” The demise of the Wool Act represented an enormous blow to a sheep and wool industry that had already experienced serious contractions. In a perfect storm of sheep dip for the industry, the 1990s also ushered in the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, reducing barriRomney fleece. Photo courtesy of Melissa Cunningham ers to foreign imports and opening doors for American textile manufacturers to move operations to Mexico, China and India with their lower labor costs. The result: 95 percent of the looms shuttered in the American South, and wool production continued to plummet. “In late 1960s and early 1970s a huge share of garments were American made; maybe three-quarters were made in America,” Orwick observes. But in America today, we’d be hard pressed to find a fraction of that. 10th Anniversary Issue
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Sheep: An endangered American species? Though so many factors have conspired to put a crimp in the industry, Orwick, wearing a tie and wool suit (“business casual,” he says, has taken its own toll on wool apparel), sees bellwethers of change on the horizon that could bode well for the future of American sheep. Increasing immigrant populations of Middle Easterners, Greeks and Hispanics who have a taste for lamb are pushing demand for high-quality products at ethnic markets. The knitting boom, which has proved to be a gateway to spinning and weaving—and even raising animals—is driving interest in American fibers and yarns. The Internet, too, is making it easier for novice growers to learn the ins and outs of raising sheep. “Because of the Internet you don’t have to have sheep farmer down the road for mentoring,” he explains, adding that new growers can reach out to veterans digitally and take advantage of online educational programs, such as webinars offered by ASI. “The difference between now and the 1980s: you don’t have to be in a county where your neighbors raise sheep.” A 2001 controversy over the manufacture of U.S. Army berets in foreign countries and subsequent U.S. incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq has also helped the wool industry, which provides tons of fiber for American military uniforms. (The U.S. military uses about 20 percent of the American clip.). A revisiting of the Berry Amendment of 1941 by Congress in the 2000s requires that all food, clothing, tents, etc., purchased by the Department of Defense be of U.S. origin, including wool uniforms—and berets. Other forces such as the buy (and eat) local movement, the Great Recession and concerns about the environment and food safety are changing the way people are thinking about their livings and the land. Handspinners, weavers, felters, knitters and dyers are taking to the festival circuit to ply their wooly wares and develop alternative income streams. Ranchers find they can command premium prices on grassfed lamb, selling directly to the consumer at farmers’ markets. Young—and not-so-young—entrepreneurs are looking for ways to create their own jobs and bring their livelihoods closer to home. “What is driving this is that people are getting sick from sizing they put in fibers,” observes Vicki Eberhart of Montague Farm, who has started the North American Wool Cooperative to help American growers get more value from their fiber. “Natural fibers are making a comeback, because people have allergies and want to buy locally. And the only way to do that is to pay a fair price to the farm.” In Belgrade, Montana, near the base of the Bridger Mountains, Becky Weed and her husband Dave Tyler decided to create their own experiment in living off the land with sheep. Neither come from farm families. Weed is a geologist by training and knitter by avocation, and Tyler is an engineer. Both had an interest in farming, and after many frustrating attempts to find a spread they could afford, they purchased 48
the John Reese homestead, one of the oldest in southwest Montana’s Gallatin Valley in 1987 and Thirteen Mile Lamb and Wool Co. was born. “Thirteen Mile is an attempt to see if you can manufacture fiber goods without putting people in a factory hell-hole, in a way that respects and values a healthy rural community,” she says. “Can that be real business and mean some jobs? I think it can. We’re not getting rich, but this is not a hobby.” Initially, they kept their off-farm jobs. They started by selling their lamb into the commodity meat market and their wool into one of the Montana wool pools that enable growers to combine their clips and sell them at a central location. “It didn’t take us long to realize that at low and volatile commodity prices for lamb and wool, we weren’t going to be able to make it,” explains Weed. “It also seemed a little bit crazy to put effort into products with such regional identity, and then send them off into a commodity system.”
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Thirteen Mile Lamb and Wool Company, Belgrade, Montana. Photo courtesy of Becky Weed.
So they decided to take the ram by the horns. Weed and Tyler’s decision in the late 1980s to transition to direct sales is one that many small farmers have made in recent years. Their income now is a pastiche of custom fiber processing (in the mill they built on their ranch), the sale of grass-fed, organic lamb, wholesale and retail wool sales in forms ranging from handspinners’ roving to yarn and felt and knitted goods. They also provide jobs for four part-time employees. Thinking differently is how many producers are addressing the challenges of making it in the American wool market. In the case of Thirteen Mile, Weed has gone out of her way to not only raise sheep organically (her products are certified under the National Organic Program by the Montana Department of Agriculture), she has worked to produce yarn that is about as clean as it gets. Solar water heating panels heat much of the water used for scouring wool. Fibers are dyed using natural plant dyes. Weed and Tyler manage their herd using predator-friendly practices, meaning that Thirteen Mile sheep are protected from coyotes, mountain lions and other predators by guard dogs rather than guns, snares and poisons.
A 2001 controversy over the manufacture of U.S. Army berets in foreign countries and subsequent U.S. incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq has also helped the wool industry, which provides tons of fiber for American military uniforms.
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“Three million pounds of wool gets shipped overseas in California and sent back here for retail,” explains Fibershed’s Dustin Kahn. “It makes a lot of sense to us to bring back that industry and use that wool locally, reduce its carbon footprint, create jobs and provide a model for having it done in our fibershed. ...”
Fibershed’s Milk Maid Top designed by Marlie De Swart and made of Shetland Cloud yarn sourced from Mimi Lubberman’s Windrush Farm, West Marin, CA.
“If ranchers want to market themselves and their products as environmentally friendly, that means we have to move toward accountability for the full cycle of what we do,” says Weed. “To me, that means reducing our dependence on feedlots, on chemical farming and feeding practices and on fiber processing methods that are contradictory to the stewardship we seek on our own land. This can’t happen overnight for everybody, but people do seem to respond to the efforts we’re making to work toward products we’re proud of in all their many dimensions.”
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Dress Local In the Bay Area, Rebecca Burgess was worried about her clothes. A textile artist and environmentalist, Burgess recognized the incredible strain clothes put on the environment (Textile World says the textile industry is the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases on Earth). So she set this challenge for herself: wear nothing but clothing that was grown, manufactured and sewn within 150 miles of her house for one year. WildFibersMagazine.com
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Part blog trope and part environmental initiative, Burgess’ challenge was more involved than not spending money for a year or cooking her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In order to locally produce even a small wardrobe, she needed to corral and pay wool and cotton growers, spinners and mills, fashion designers and knitters as well as other makers. It wasn’t something she could neither do alone nor for free. A $10,000 Kickstarter campaign in 2010 funded the project that would come to be known as Fibershed, a term coined by Burgess that’s roughly analogous to the foodsheds or watersheds that supply regional populations. In addition to producing what Burgess calls the “prototype wardrobe,” a tidy closetful of casual, wearable clothes that included naturally dyed sweaters, pants, skirts, leggings, and yes, undergarments, it also slashed the environmental burden of these garments to zero toxic dye effluent and zero pesticides. Fibershed reduced the carbon impact by an estimated six times that of producing equivalent garments. The project caught fire. It brought together about 100 artisans and growers whose interest in contributing to the development of a sustainable textile chain had been kindled, it got healthy coverage in the press on everything from national radio to the blog of The Atlantic magazine. The sheep was out of the gate. So in 2012, Burgess incorporated Fibershed as a nonprofit dedicated to supporting the evolution of local clothing movements. And it’s working. Today, some 17 affiliate fibersheds in the U.S. and abroad are taking steps to create communities similar to that of the original and making use of their local abundance. For example, The Recycled Lamb yarn shop just produced a Mountain and Plains Fibershed product (the fibershed identified as 300 miles from Golden, Colorado). This 30th anniversary yarn combines Sister Sheep’s CVM/ Ramboulliet wool and alpaca from Ancient Treasure Alpaca Ranch with a kiss of Midnight Moonsong’s angora, all processed and spun at Wild West Fiber Mill near Elbert, Colorado. The natural ecru and fawn colors are selling briskly at $18.50 for 150 yards. Back at Fibershed headquarters, the organization has grown to offer a range of programs that include everything from fashion shows and kids’ classes to educational offerings on sheep husbandry. They are also in the final throes of a feasibility study to foster the development of an industrial wool mill in the Golden State. “Three million pounds of wool gets shipped overseas in California and sent back here for retail,” explains Fibershed’s Dustin Kahn. “It makes a lot of sense to us to bring back that industry and use that wool locally, reduce its carbon footprint, create jobs and provide a model for having it done in our fibershed. “Hopefully, then people will see it as a viable source of income and more people will be interested in raising sheep, not just in California but around the country.”
Four Seasons on a New England Fiber Farm Barbara Parry Spend a year with Barbara Parry and the sheep, goats, and llamas she lives with, and you’ll never look at your sweaters or socks the same way again. You’ll see the whole process, from lambing to shearing, from carding to dyeing to spinning. Along the way, you’ll learn the techniques of yarn making for yourself— and you’ll be able to put the yarn to use, using the patterns provided here by top knitwear designers. Hardcover $27.95 | RoostBooks.com
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Heirloom tomatoes and heirloom wool As a member of Virginia’s Loudoun Valley Sheep Producers, shepherd Gretchen Frederick realized that a lot of small sheep producers either had no idea what to do with their wool or saw it as a hassle. As a result, they were throwing fleeces away. “Unless you’re a user of the wool and get plugged into hand spinning markets or figure your way into this fiber world, you don’t know what to do,” she explains. “Or it’s too hard to figure it out and too expensive to have products made—and then how do you sell them?” Recognizing that she was surrounded by a wealth of purebred wool that was going to waste, in 2006 Frederick joined forces with another likeminded shepherd and handspinner, Sue Bundy, to buy up fleeces with the goal of producing breed-specific yarns. “I am very interested in the local food movement and see a real parallel,” Frederick says. “People who care and support local agriculture will buy food direct from farms and it’s got an identity to it. Wool is an agricultural product. It also has terroir, in that different areas send you to raising one sort of breed or another. East Coast shepherding is another language than Western range shepherding. It’s really different.” And so are the yarns. Since starting out, Frederick and Bundy have sent wool to mills all over the country, using their spinners’ sensibility to match their yarn design choices to the wool characteristics of each breed. The yarns are marketed under the historical name of Frederick’s farm, Solitude, a nod to the yarns’ origins, and sold through fiber festivals and a website, solitudewool.com. Understanding that, like heirloom tomatoes, conservation breeds can help boost genetic diversity and create stunning yarns, other companies are producing artisanal singlebreed yarns. Elsawool in Colorado sells yarns and finished garments made from Cormo wool sourced from two ranches in the Rocky Mountain West. And handknitting superstar Jared Flood of Brooklyn Tweed turned to the TargheeColumbia crossbreed grown in Wyoming for his signature yarns, Shelter and Loft. The yarns are as individual as wine varietals, each breed like its own grape. Educating customers who may not recognize the difference between Karakul, a hardwearing, feltslike iron wool, or Tunis, a versatile medium wool, has been part of the process. The publication in recent years of books such as Clara Parkes’ The Knitter’s Book of Wool and The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook by Deb Robson and Carol Ekarius has also helped raise awareness among stitchers of the idiosyncrasies of breed-specific fibers. Solitude Wool currently buys between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of wool annually, paying above-market prices. She estimates that about half that amount might not have found a market if she and Bundy hadn’t found it useful. Flock of Corriedales. Photo courtesy of American Sheep Industry.
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(Clockwise from left.) Solitude Wool’s Romney lamb, assorted yarns, Gretchen Frederick and Sue Bundy skirting fleeces. Photo courtesy of Gretchen Frederick.
“A lot of what aided the local food movement were chefs,” Frederick observes. “It became cool and you had to have local food. They also helped educate people about the flavor and variety of things—that it really makes a difference. I’m hoping fiber artists pick up the idea. “If there isn’t a market for that animal, that breed is going to go out of existence.”
It’s not as if the American Sheep Industry Association has been sitting on its haunches counting sheep while the industry slides. In addition to pushing exports and increased production, ASI has darned an important hole in the U.S. wool manufacturing: superwashing.
Big ag It’s not as if the American Sheep Industry Association has been sitting on its haunches counting sheep while the industry slides. In addition to pushing exports and increased production, ASI has darned an important hole in the U.S. wool manufacturing: superwashing. In the aftermath of off-shoring, U.S. plants could no longer shrink-proof wool. So even if a company—or the U.S. military—wanted to produce washable wool products, they couldn’t. “It was the only piece we were missing,” Orwick explains. “And with socks, they have to be washable.” In 2011, ASI had a wool-top chlorine/polymer shrink-resistant treatment equipment line installed at Chargeurs Wool USA in Jamestown, South Carolina, the last commercial-scale topmaking plant in the U.S. The move not only made it possible to produce washable-wool goods from soil to sock in the United States, it reduced the carbon footprint of many goods and shored up manufacturing schedules for U.S. firms. The new plant makes it possible for companies like Ibex to use U.S. wool in the manufacture of their high-tech products. “The $20 wool sock is a boon to our business,” Orwick explains. “The sock industry maintains a lot bigger share in America. People want performance socks and wool is a key fiber. It’s huge for us. Thank God for $15 to $20 retail socks.”
wF
For more information please visit: American Sheep Industry USA (www.sheepusa.org/), Thirteen Mile Sheep and Wool Co. (www.lambandwool.com), North American Wool Cooperative (www. northamericanwoolcooperative.com/#), Fibershed (www.fibershed.com), Solitude Wool www. solitudewool.com/).
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Did someone say there was a
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Striking Gold In Barren Ground No one, in the history of the world, had attempted to domesticate the musk ox. John Teal, a bold and brilliant World War II bomber pilot thought it was about time someone tried. The magnitude of his escapades are unparalleled, as is the breadth of his heart . Story by Linda N. Cortright
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echnology has seriously mucked with modern-day explorers, replacing dog sleds and whale blubber with GPS and instant oatmeal. The battle of man against nature, once staged on inaccessible terrain, has morphed into a dance of fancy gadgets and high-tech gear, guaranteed to keep all but the most insufferable of fools alive in any corner of Planet Earth. Gone are the days when gnawing the sinewy thigh of a less fortunate compatriot was the only ticket to survival. Now “explorations” are often catered affairs featuring research vessels converted into steely yachts, with an entire film crew on board to document the event in HD. Leif Erickson would be appalled. The world has not entirely expunged its fearless swashbucklers, but it has been a very long time since the likes of John Teal forged a new frontier. Though Teal didn’t stab the American Flag into either Pole or climb in the shadows of Everest, his place in the world of daring exploits is no less heroic. More than 20 tons of four-footed behemoths now grazing in the exurbs of Anchorage, Alaska attest to it. In 1954, John Teal had the dubious distinction of being the only musk ox shepherd in the world. He would, in time, launch the first musk ox domestication program (The Musk Ox Project) and the formation of Alaska’s most successful hand-knitting cooperative: Oomingmak (the Eskimo word for musk ox meaning “bearded one”). Every year, thousands of tourists venture into Oomingmak’s retail store in downtown Anchorage. This unmistakable landmark features a herd of musk ox painted on its exterior. Visitors pull out their credit cards one minute and walk out the next toting luscious hats and scarves made of qiviut (the undercoat of the musk ox) hand-knit by Alaskan natives. It is the near culmination of Teal’s dream. The 60th anniversary of Teal’s first musk ox capture is just a few months away: a remarkable milestone for a project that more than a few regarded as insane. In a world that has often turned a blind eye to indigenous peoples, Teal was at the forefront of creating an economic development program for Alaskan natives based on a natural (and native) resource: qiviut. The project’s cornerstone was the domestication of the musk ox, an animal that is neither an ox, nor possesses a musk gland, but has roamed the planet since the last Ice Age producing a fiber that is softer than cashmere. 10 years ago, when I sat down to write the first The world’s first musk ox shepherd John Teal. article for Wild Fibers about the Musk Ox Project, I was both mesmerized and inspired by Teal’s vision. Without his ever knowing it, he had laid the groundwork for much of how I would ultimately define my editorial mission: a thoughtful blend of anthropological drive and natural resource united for the sake of economic opportunity. He had proven how natural fibers both define and support native communities. With his legacy firmly (and formidably) intact, I have often wondered about this spirited upstart named John Teal: a man raised among the finery and fluff of Greenwich, Connecticut, who chose a life of frozen adventure instead. The story begins at the beginning. Literally. Day one, the day in 1921 at New York City’s Sloane Hospital, where 10th Anniversary Issue
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Musk oxen in defensive formation on Nunivak Island, Alaska.
Teal emerged from the womb weighing 13 pounds. He was bound to do something big in life! Call it good genes, good nutrition, or both. Teal’s impressive stature grew commensurately over the years. Standing six foot three and a solid 230 pounds, Teal played fullback for Harvard. Outfitted with an imposing forehead and a masterful jaw line, Teal’s appearance was rivaled only by the power of his spirit: a necessary trait for the intrepid adventurer. Growing up in Belle Haven, a swanky section of Greenwich, Teal was a stranger to hardship. Rumbling about the 30-room house, Teal and his two sisters undoubtedly had some protracted games of hide-and-go-seek. But from the beginning, Teal was far more enchanted by the forests of Greenwich than the interior trappings of wealth. His passion for animals was evident from the start, as noted in a 1958 New Yorker article stating that the young Teal soon made the family a home “… a repository for every bur-ridden-stray animal that the local dog warden let slip between his legs. Along with these, the boy [Teal] had two thousand tropical fish and a good-sized aviary. The ménage was a bedlam of yapping, meowing, cawing, and clucking…” By the time Teal established his own home in a considerably less expansive and luxurious farmhouse on 600 acres in northern Vermont, the new ménage included nine golden retrievers, three Himalayan goats (acquired from a New York zoo), a stable of horses, an ever-changing assortment of chickens, a pet raccoon noted for biting guests (including one that once hid in a woman’s handbag and then tore into her thumb when she attempted to remove it), and most importantly, seven musk oxen he had captured from Canada’s Barren Grounds. That two-part expedition laid the groundwork for the Alaska project. Trained as an anthropologist at Harvard, Teal believed the musk ox could be domesticated for the purpose of utilizing its qiviut, which had never been used indepen58
dent of the animal’s hide. With far too much compassion for his furry friends, Teal wasn’t interested in something sourced from a carcass. His dream was to see the musk ox once again thrive in its native Alaskan habitat, where less than 70 years before, it had been hunted (in Alaska) to extinction. The only rub in this spectacular dream was making it happen. You don’t just lasso an 800-pound musk ox like a wild horse and lead it all the way home. And, you don’t dash about the frozen tundra with a butterfly net the size of a VW bug hoping to snare one in mid-chase. And, unlike many animals, which are taken from the wild by killing the mother and then removing her young, the musk ox had legal protection. The Canadian government had banned the capture of any musk ox by means of intentional death after a particularly deleterious musk ox raid in Greenland during the 1930s. Teal had his work cut out for him, but he was no stranger to challenge. After graduating from Harvard (where he refused to pay an extra $20 necessary to pick up his diploma), he became a World War II bomber pilot and flew 28 successful sorties. His military career was without incident with the exception of an emergency landing in France due to engine failure. The locals greeted the impromptu visitors with wartime hospitality, and Teal emerged from the plane claiming to be General Eisenhower (not a totally implausible ploy given the lack of television). This prompted even greater hospitality, and Teal eventually returned to the cockpit with a few fictitious stripes added to his sleeve. By the end of the war, Teal was irretrievably committed to improving life in the arctic. He returned home and went to Yale to study the economic ties between primitive man and his environment. Upon completion of his master’s degree (Teal researched,
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wrote, and presented his final thesis in just one week), Teal traveled to Alaska and wound up in Chicken, named after the ptarmigan that flock in abundance there. No one could agree on the spelling of ptarmigan, so the simpler name won out (According to the 2010 U.S Census, the population of Chicken is 10). For the next year, Teal explored Alaska like a modern-day Leif Erickson. He bought a three-dollar canoe from an Indian of dubious integrity. It leaked profusely, was too heavy to paddle upwind and impossible to portage more than a few feet. He calculated the canoe got stuck on every third sandbar, making his daily progress down the Yukon River an ongoing exercise in fortitude and patience. He acquired another used piece of equipment from yet another Indian, even less scrupulous than the first: a muskrat rifle that was even less reliable than his canoe. Teal scientifically calculated that it was capable of successfully ejecting a bullet about every 11th try. One night during his yearlong sojourn, Teal beached the canoe in a small cove abutting a giant outcropping. The rocks proved to be the ideal staircase for a local bear intent on some local hospitality (instead of offering dinner, you are dinner!). The hungry visitor descended the rocky steps into Teal’s boat until he finally got off a single shot with his ridiculous rifle and hit the bear squarely in the chest. There was no visible damage to the bear, so Teal dropped the rifle and began pounding the air with his fists and wailing like a sea lion in heat. Whether the bear was frightened or simply annoyed is unclear. Eventually, the bear walked away and Teal went back to sleep. After a year of putting his icy mettle to the test, Teal received a one-year fellowship from McGill University in Montreal to study arctic geography. After that he got a summer job at the Tower Company installing an airfield on Cornwallis Island, part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Young, bright, and brawny, Teal made the most of his summer employment and routinely stripped off all of his clothes in the evening, walked naked down to the beach, swam a hundred yards offshore to an ice pack…and then swam back. The ritual was an important part of Teal’s daily fitness regime. It also became a popular spectator sport repeatedly captured on film by his coworkers who, undoubtedly, returned home to host civilized cocktail parties featuring movies of the naked John Teal. In spite of his buff antics (or perhaps because of them), Teal received a fellowship from the Arctic Institute of North America to spend 15 months in Scandinavia living among the Lapps. The project didn’t begin until May. In the interim, the Tower Company sent Teal to Washington in an attempt to garner a few contracts for building military bases in Alaska. The Tower Company assumed the combination of Teal’s academic background and his Alaskan sojourn, coupled with his imposing and persuasive demeanor, would 10th Anniversary Issue
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be all the ammunition they would need to bend the Pentagon’s ear. At first, Teal got nowhere. His professionalism and persuasion barely got him past the security guard in the parking lot. To a man who had successfully beaten off a bear with his bare hands, the Pentagon didn’t seem terribly formidable. He spent a few minutes gathering his thoughts, left the premises and headed to a small printer where he had a single business card made: John J. Teal, The American Tower Company, 17 Battery Place, NYC, Specialists in Arctic and Sub-Arctic Engineering and Construction. The document was completely fictitious except for Teal’s name, but it worked. In fact, it worked so well the Tower Company had to refuse some of the contracts because they far exceeded their resources. Victory does strange things to people. When Teal emerged from negotiations within America’s inner sanctum, he rang up Miss Penelope Holden (his younger sister Mary’s classmate from Smith), and asked her to dinner that evening. Teal had met Miss Holden on several occasions and was already quite smitten by this young lady of proper lineage from New Canaan, Connecticut. She accepted the invitation to dinner, and somewhere in between courses Teal proposed marriage. And again, Miss Holden accepted his offer, persuaded, perhaps in part, by the promise of a honeymoon in Scandinavia! No doubt envisioning herself giddily mingling in Copenhagen’s nightclub scene and sailing among the lush land of the Norwegian fjords, the new Mrs. John Teal spent much of the next 15 months on the back of a sled being pulled by a team of reindeer. Traveling from one Lapp village to the next, the Teals earned quite a reputation in the north. For the most part, their newlywed life unfolded brilliantly, barring a memorable incident toward the end of their stay in Spitzenbergen, where after a full day of climbing across a glacier, Mrs. Teal accidentally burned her husband’s only pair of shoes in an effort to dry them out. The following morning, the climb recommenced and they walked in silence (Teal barefoot) along opposite sides of the glacier. By the end of the second day, Teal finally came upon a herd of musk ox, a far more magnificent sight than a pair of custom-made mukluks. Approaching the animals slowly and with great respect, Teal was able to get close enough to the herd to have his picture taken with them. It was all the proof he needed to show that the animals, when not being threatened, could, indeed, become manageable. In August of 1954, Teal gathered a group of friends and professionals including a veterinarian, a filmmaker, and his brother-in-law (an advertising executive in New York City) and mounted the first expedition to Barren Ground to capture some musk oxen to bring back to his farm to “study.” 60
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Instead of a snow machine, they strapped a canoe to one of the plane’s pontoons and off they went, traveling so far into the Canadian Arctic the pilot missed retrieving the team by 11 days! Teal had devised a plan using a (different) plane as a key herding device, skimming close enough to the animals to separate a calf from its mother. The plan failed and was replaced by a rather incongruous method in which man and musk ox ended up in a river, with Teal jumping out of the canoe and looking underwater for the animals with the shortest legs. It is a scientific fact that a musk ox cannot outswim a man paddling a canoe. Once the calf was in Teal’s sights, he would lasso the legs and swiftly remove it from the herd and hoist the baby into the canoe. Less than a month after the trip began, Teal headed back to his farm in Vermont with three baby musk oxen (one female and two males) by his side. Before reaching Montreal he phoned ahead to Colonial Airlines and asked if he could possibly bring the animals on the plane. The airline agent informed him that they had a strict policy against transporting animals, but if there was no one else on board it shouldn’t be a problem since they were so small. Teal found the response rather curious but decided not to inquire further. Instead, he arrived at the airport with three raucous crates bumping and banging like popcorn bags filled with BB pellets. The airline agent turned ashen. Apparently, he thought Teal had said “muskrats” and imagined transporting animals that could fit rather inconspicuously in the hold. Teal’s charges were, in fact, much larger than the odoriferous rodent. They boarded the plane anyway. Life with nine golden retrievers, three goats, a raccoon with attitude, and eventually seven musk oxen and four children, was in the best of circumstances a study in controlled chaos. It didn’t take long for word to spread among Teal’s neighbors, the state of Vermont, and eventually most of New England, that seven fine Arctic specimens could be viewed in Teal’s pasture. (As part of his agreement with the Canadian government, Teal was not allowed to exhibit the animals for profit.) During the next 10 years, Teal built pens of steel to keep the growing calves contained. Eventually, they were (for the most part) as docile as he had discovered that fateful afternoon in Lapland. Like everything else that lived on the farm, the musk oxen had become family, which meant that when one of the cows finally became pregnant and grew increasingly restless, Teal spent weeks sleeping in a corral beside her. Satisfied that his domestication project could be implemented among the Alaskan natives, Teal began collaborating with the University of Alaska’s Large Animal Research Station in Fairbanks to remove 20 animals from the only remaining musk ox herd in Alaska on Nunivak Island: an island dropped into the Bering Sea with only the skies of Siberia blocking its westerly view. Peter Matthiessen, a noted environmental activist, naturalist, and founder of the Paris Review, accompanied Teal (and others) on the musk ox expedition on Nuniviak. To no one’s surprise, it was a journey fraught with challenges. Even in the best of circumstances, the Bering Sea is a maelstrom of angry frigid froth tossing about 10-ton vessels like dumplings in a boiling pot. Fierce wind or blinding fog have been known to ground planes for more than a week, Teal and his crew were lucky. Their wait on the mainland was only extended by three days, forcing them to eat the last ration of pickled pig’s feet. Eventually, the flight took off (with an impressive amount of gear including both a canoe and a variation of an ATV), and the team landed in Merkoryuk,
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the only inhabited settlement on Nunivak. Blessed with relatively calm waters, everyone and everything was taken down to a boat waiting in the harbor. For the next sevenand-a-half hours, they made their way to Nash Harbor, an abandoned settlement destroyed by a flu epidemic more than a half-century ago. Teal had been promised the use of the old school house as a base for his capture mission. But upon arrival, he discovered it had been torn down. There wasn’t much left in the way of shelter. Most of the treeless landscape was marked with crosses and large burial mounds. Based on the methods learned from his two previous captures, Teal was once again going to rely on a combination of human “fencing” and bush plane herding to maneuver the musk oxen into boggy waters where the young “victims” could be successfully apprehended. On paper, the plan made perfect sense. The reality, however, unfolded somewhat differently. Unlike the musk oxen Teal had encountered in both Greenland and Canada, which seemed to yield quite predictably to human threat, the Nunivak sweeties were possessed of a different temperament. The first musk ox Teal spotted on the island was a mature bull with a voluminous hairy skirt dusting the ground beneath him. The bull laid eyes on Teal and in response, Teal went into his Saint Vidas dance. This succeeded in really pissing-off the bull, who decided to charge the squirming white man. With a giant hairy cannonball now bearing down on him at full gallop, Teal was lucky that the bush plane was able to distract the angry beast. In fact, the bull leapt straight into the air in a vain attempt to gore the plane. The only reason this episode warrants even a hint of amusement is that everyone survived to tell the tale. But it was still a long and difficult month on the tundra, ultimately leading to the capture of 20 calves (seven later released as “excess” males) that were transported to the University in Fairbanks At last, the Musk Ox Project had been born (see page 19). John Teal died in August of 1982. Stricken with cancer, he spent his final days on his beloved Vermont farm. He was a man whose passion created one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of both animal domestication and natural fibers. He was a man whose passion, no doubt, made other people wild. To me, John Teal has given an understanding about the importance of natural fibers and their relationship to man and the environment that no one else ever has. His courage and vision have helped shape my own. Earlier this year, I decided I would celebrate the maga-zine’s 10th anniversary by returning to the place where, for me, it all started: the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska. Three months later I returned for a second visit, which included giving a lecture right in Palmer!
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By the close of the lecture, it would seem my world had come full circle. But it hadn’t. I drove back to the Musk Ox Farm, where the most unimaginable of coincidences occurred. John Teal’s son, Lansing, had come to visit the farm with his son for the first time in 13 years. Lansing stood up from the kitchen table when I entered the room, every bit as tall, handsome, and square-jawed as his father, and my professional handshake melted into a long, firm hug. How could I possibly begin to tell this man how much his father had meant to me? For the next hour, or so, we chatted. There were a few childhood stories, a few tales from Lansing’s days managing the farm in Palmer, and the usual exchange of polite banter. Then Mark Austin, director of the Musk Ox Project, along with his family, and Lansing and his son, went The author with Lansing Teal and Eve, at the Musk Ox Farm. outside to play a game of croquet—right next to the musk ox pasture! Unfortunately, I had a plane to catch. But before I left, I made one simple request; could I have just one picture of me taken with Lansing next to a musk ox? Of course, he agreed. We walked into one of the pastures where the soft summer light was just beginning to fade. Soon I was standing beside Eve, the very first musk ox I ever met, holding hands with the man whose father had made it all possible. There were no words to express the depth of the moment, only the sound of Eve’s gentle grunts being diffused into the evening air. Indeed, all is right with the world for now, and forevermore. F
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Herd About You Story and Photos by Chris Devaney
Herd of American Bison in Hayden Valley, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming.
The wonders of nature have inspired mankind long before recorded time. But few ideas ever took hold with as much force or as much insanity, than the one that erupted from the bountiful valleys of Yellowstone National Park.
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“Sit down, l’il buddy,” said Peanut from his perch by the winter hay rolls, “for we have come a long way together. Yes we have. We are where we set out to be.” And then he gazed out over the hill toward the setting sun. He called up another cud and chewed it nonchalantly. “Let us enjoy our time now, for we have finally reached the rim of the universe.” This sounded heavy; my curiosity got to working on me like wine in the bloodstream. So with a cracking sound from my aging knees I collapsed to the ground with a thud and
leaned against the big round hay bale next to Peanut. I sighed. The hay bale sighed. And together we celebrated the accomplishment. It would be an evening to remember. ‘We are where we wanted to be ...The rim of the universe... What could it mean?’ Peanut reflected on a time, embedded somewhere deep in his memory, when there were no fences, just snow-capped mountains and crisp air—and no humans either. In turn, I reflected back on how it all came to be. We were both silent for quite a spell, dangling our feet off 10th Anniversary Issue
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Peanut, the original head of the herd at the Yak Outback.
the imaginary rim of the universe. We were happy, we were content, and we felt privileged to have grown old together. The beginning... It was the summer of 2000—the start of a new century— and I took a sabbatical from life. With mental cobwebs to shake off and a mid-life crisis to deal with, plus the looming reality of my livelihood being extinguished through advancing technology, I needed to make some changes. I traveled to Wyoming and went homeless in Yellowstone for a month. My immediate goal was to hike to Hayden Valley, locate a herd of bison, and just follow them around. I don’t remember why, I don’t know if I ever knew why. But that’s what I did. It took me three days of hiking to get to Hayden Valley and find a herd, or rather, they found me. It was a lonely, starlit night when the herd located me, one of those a lifechanging experiences beyond compare. I had never heard a buffalo bellow before, and close to midnight, under a moonlit sky, it sounded like a grizzly bear . . . No, it sounded like an entire sleuth of grizzly bears. After two days of shadowing the bison I knew that “herd life” would somehow play a prominent role in my future. 70
When I walked out of Yellowstone in late July and crept back into mainstream life, I was armed with a new perspective and an idea of what the rest of my life might be like. And in a relatively short time this crazy idea became slightly less irresponsible and weirdly more substantial. Abruptly, my reflections were cut short as Lonesome Nose, one of the contenders for Peanut’s former role as herd boss, hovered by Peanut and asked, “Didja tell ’em yet? Didja?” Then he collapsed down on the other side of me. Yaks don’t slowly lie down, they just abandon their legs: first rear, and then front, and whomp! Their bodies hit the ground with earth-shaking purpose. Lonesome is a handsome four-year old bull, easygoing, trustworthy, and extremely powerful. He lacks the menace that you would typically think characterizes a bull, but then again, so did a once youthful Peanut. Lonesome is so big that when he breaks into the house (which he does just for the hell of it), he makes the big cast iron woodstove appear fragile. My primary concern about Lonesome at this young age is that his pranks are based on an undeveloped sense of humor, and therefore, perhaps a bit on the dangerous side. I don’t think his pranks are intentionally dangerous, they’re just not well thought out. There’s no purpose to them, just
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We were both silent for quite a spell, dangling our feet off the imaginary rim of the universe. We were happy, we were content, and we felt privileged to have grown old together.
crazy pranks like Peanut’s (and perhaps a few of my own) were in the good ol’ days. I keep a sharp lookout for flying buckets, or an accidental but overpowering, hip-check. Call it karma. Peanut’s response to Lonesome’s questioning was, “Not entirely. I laid the groundwork for Duo-Legs here to figure out,” and he pointed over to me with his horn. Well, thought I, that’s a fine how-do-you-do... Why not just put a Brazil nut in my mouth and give me a hammer so I can smack my jaw to crack the nut open? The beginning plus the Sisters... It wasn’t long before I moved to Maine and had the makings of a small, rather remote ranch stocked with three yaks instead of bison. In the beginning, it was Peanut, Danny-boy, Serena and I, plus a trio of young Australian Shepherd pups, who soon became known world-wide as the Sisters of No Mercy. We shared space, we shared time, and we shared pretty much everything. Over those first several months the new yaks and I spent countless hours staring into each others’ eyes wondering what the heck was going on inside the others’ noggins. A year later Mossy was born, and we all spent countless more hours staring each other in the eyes, revising what we thought we had learned before. It was really Mossy’s arrival that instigated the closeness that we now enjoy, for Mossy had no one to play with except me. Peanut was way too busy learning the finer points of mischief. Danny-boy was all too serious (and big) for her liking, and Serena spent her time worrying that Mossy would get herself into trouble. And rightly so. Mossy followed me around like a silent shadow. She would follow me into the woods, chase the car, escape from the fence, and then wait on the front doorstep for me to come out and play. It was one of the first lessons of my new life. I learned how to laugh and how to enjoy myself with not much more than a hairy stick of dynamite called Mossy asleep in my lap and a warm mug of coffee somewhere within reach. Every year more babies came and there were more things to learn. YoYo came into this life at midnight, right outside my bedroom window during a thunderstorm. That’s when I learned how to carry a baby into the barn and clean it off under the watchful supervision of mom. I recall feeling so blessed to be with them, to hold YoYo up so she could take her first drink of life. I thrilled to the soft sounds of mom and baby bonding, those ever-so-soft grunts and nudges that teach a newborn the things it would need to know. I wondered if YoYo was learning this stuff for the first time or recalling something from a distant past, Spongecakes O’Malley being cleaned up by his mother and a roll of paper urged by her mother’s soothing tone. After repeated towels and one of Chris’s t-shirts. mother/child lessons I was open to a whole new way of thinking about instinctual behavior. In the early years I also received my first lesson about another instinctual behavior, that migratory urge that beckons yaks to crash fences and head out beyond the county limits in the late weeks of autumn. 10th Anniversary Issue
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Now I can recognize that odd but familiar glazing in the eye and sniffing of air, and I can expect the afternoon will be spent fetching the gang back, only to dedicate the next day to fence repair. One time I had to fetch Peanut, Mossy, and Serena off a distant hill in the middle of an uncommonly cold October night. Silhouetted by moonlight at the crest of the hill, Peanut and I argued about the best way to go home, much like Don Quixote and Pancho Sanza had under remarkably similar circumstances. Peanut won, and dragged me back the whole way home. But there was ample time as we headed back over the hill to breathe in the silence of starlit night. No sounds, just tired minds that were glad to finally crawl into bed. Breaking away from my recollections once again, I looked over at Peanut. He was chewing another wad of something with that same far-away blank expression. He was signaling me that if I couldn’t figure out what was on his mind before his cud hit bottom, he might just whomp some sense into me. I swiveled around to Lonesome Nose and he, too, had glazed eyes and synchronized jaw motion. Behind him, space had filled up with Iron Legs, Mossy and Whisper. The new calves were out in front of us, dancing and kicking at make-believe monsters in a futile attempt to tire themselves out before bedtime. Meanwhile, the boys of summer, those delightful threeyear old bulls, were on their way over. It appeared we were going to have a party of sorts. I put a sturdy piece of straw in my mouth and began to chew, and then leaned back against the hay bale as I eased back into reflection mode.
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After the beginning Early on in my yak career, I learned there are no limits to endurance when one (usually more) of the yaks is in trouble. Not going to an animal’s aid day or night is simply not an option. You do whatever it takes, often regardless of your own energy level. The needed energy comes from somewhere— just where, I don’t know. In farming, the words, “I can’t do this,” have no meaning. I am pretty sure every yak rancher, dog owner, chicken raiser, goat herder . . . and mother since time in immemorial has experienced this. It wasn’t very many years into the yak husbandry thing when I realized I was talking to the animals and listening right back to their side of the story. Each yak had their own expression, their own expectation, their own way to handle communication. “Kiss or Headache,” a delightfully mischievous game invented by Whisper, became one of her favored modes of communicating to me just where I stood with her at the moment. Shummmmuck! (kiss) and I knew I was in good grace. Whomp!—with attendant bell-ringing—and I knew I was on the cat’s spit list. I had done her wrong . . . somehow.
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There were other games with other yaks that served the same purpose. It was their language and they knew I could understand, so they invented more. Peanut had mastered the art of communication early on. He would knock down ladders (stranding me on a roof in the process), steal tools or hurl himself over a fourfoot fence to dent my bumper, then jump right back over the fence. It was usually fairly clear where you stood with him, though not crystal clear why. But it was a two-way communication, and I devised means just as devious to inform my friends where they stood. The goal became one-upmanship. It defined our position in the hierarchy. And that, I found out, was as important as air. One day you were king, the next day you may be boiling eggs in hell for devils to devil them. This give-and-take ranked right up there Peanut, the original head of the herd at the Yak Outback. in critical things to learn in order to live with yaks. We have all learned when to sally forth and when to back down. There’s no humiliation in backing down, it is just part of the give-and-take. Yes, it’s good to be king, but a steady diet of kingsmanship would get old quite fast. It is also pretty illuminating to see the other side of the hierarchy, for more often than not, looking at a defeat from a different viewpoint a day or so later becomes quite comical.
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There were other critical lessons to learn, some of which were not natural to me, like patience. You can’t move a yak from one place to another without patience. You just have to wait until they are ready to move. That’s especially true when it comes to moving a yak out the front door of your or (god forbid) someone else’s house. Patience, coupled with professional cussing skill, is the key. The sun had set, the calves had quieted, the entire yak herd had joined us, and Peanut had rolled his massive head over my legs, pinning me down. Together, we listened to the night. Then, out of the stillness of the early night there came an eruption. “Ah-ha!” I cried, startling a few sleeping yaks around me. “It appears that I have become one of the herd.” Peanut unpinned my legs and stood up, as did Lonesome Nose, Pinkston, and a few others. Lonesome looked over at Peanut and said, “Well imagine that, he finally figured it out!” “Yes, l’il buddy, you have,” said Peanut. “And welcome to the fold.” “But I only have two legs.” I replied with concern. “We’ll deal with it,” Peanut said. “You might say we are a ‘loose’ sort of group.” It was an opening I just couldn’t resist, “Yes, Peanut, I have come to believe you are about as loose as a goose.” Whomp! And so Peanut, Lonesome Nose, and I walked back toward the house, reaffirmed in purpose. I practiced my swagger to their delight, and as we stopped momentarily at the barn door, I turned and with moist eyes I smiled warmly at them. Peanut softly tipped his horn in a silent salute and something completely masculine passed silently between the three of us. It was the essence of kinship, the very fabric of belonging. Indeed, I had arrived at the rim of the universe, just where I had set out to be. Such peace I have never known. F
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By Linda N. Cortright
E
ven in the best of circumstances, houseguests can be problematic. Saddled with a smorgasbord of idiosyncrasies ranging from geriatric Pigpens to pre-dawn risers, a man might not be able to preserve his kingdom even if he strictly adheres to the two-night rotten fish rule. The same applies to “queens,” who can be equally riled by an overnight invasion. In my experience they come in two varieties. The first hostess is like a golden retriever: indiscriminate, uncontrollably effusive, and beckoning you to stay. “We love having guests. Our house is always full. It’s no trouble at all,” she says, subtly suggesting that staying in a nearby hotel would be viewed as a personal affront. It may be true that her house is always full, but don’t be surprised to discover that all nine cats prefer sleeping in your bed. And yes, her teenage son is learning to play the drums. And yes, she lives across from the fire station. “But we don’t even hear those sirens anymore,” she adds with a giggle. The other hostess is more like a true queen with strict protocols that become apparent when you notice the sheets, the pillowcases, and the bath mat all have matching monograms. Even the dog has its own linen napkin—monogrammed! “We dine at seven sharp.” she announces. “Don’t worry, it’s casual. We never dress for dinner on a weeknight.” Last February I was bound for the Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska, (an hour north of Anchorage). Mark Austin, the farm’s executive director, insisted I stay at his home. “We love having people stay with us,” he said, and immediately I sensed a 80
OX OX OX large tail thumping on the floor. I was hesitant to impose on a stranger, not least because my flight would land within minutes of midnight. It just so happened that Mark’s birthday was the very next day. It’s bad enough to ask a friend, much less a stranger, to venture out on a cold dark winter’s night—but on their birthday as well? When Mark and I finally met face-to-face, it was puppy love in the best way imaginable. I had no desire to scratch his belly, but we became instant pals. We are both over the moon about musk oxen, and we could have stayed up the entire night talking about them. But we didn’t. The following morning I came padding downstairs (turned up the heat), and in an effort to minimize my imposition—particularly on the celebrant—I offered to make Mark breakfast. (Mark’s wife and daughter were away that week visiting family.) Mark paused for a moment, and before he could object, I quickly added that I love making breakfast for people. That, my friends, is not an entirely true statement, but it seemed wholly forgivable given the situation. “Do you want eggs? I asked. “Fried? Scrambled? Poached? How about one of my signature omelets? (I don’t have a signature omelet.) Mark ordered an omelet, and for the next 20 minutes I did my best not to decimate his kitchen while he sat at the table and alternated between watching the musk ox, who were just waking up in a pasture not fifty feet from the window, and observing me as I fumbled through the drawers for the cheese grater. I don’t dislike cooking; I just don’t have a lot of experience. Even an audience of one gives me performance anxiety.
I cracked the eggs. I whipped the eggs. I added a dribble of water, and I decided the only thing to possibly counteract my lack of culinary talent was the knowledge that at least Mark wasn’t dining on cold pizza in his wife’s absence. Finally, breakfast was served and as I set the plate down in front of Mark I wished him a Happy Birthday (again), and apologized for the presentation’s poor aesthetic. I assumed that a typical male wouldn’t really notice my ineptitude. After all, this was a warm meal and, I trusted, a mite tastier than a crusty cold pepperoni. And then Mark uttered the fatal phrase: “You know, I used to own a restaurant.” “What? A restaurant? You? As in you cook? And you just let me make an idiot of myself for the last 20 minutes?” I said. “Mark, how could you?” He smiled, and he smiled big, and if he had a tail it would have been banging hard. “I didn’t say anything because you’re the guest,” he answered sweetly. “Guests always get whatever they want.” “Really? “ I said, and paused for a moment. “Then how about you make me breakfast tomorrow morning?” He agreed. And for the rest of my stay I felt like a queen in a wild and wonderful kingdom where the musk ox roam, and no one ever has to dress for dinner. F
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