Wild Fibers Magazine - 15th Anniversary

w ild Fibers

Vol. 15 Issue 1 $14.95

Dedicated to the world of wool

Can Madagascar's ancient funeral customs help save the silkworm?

Sir Ernest Shackleton's mystery sweater

15th

Anniversary Issue

Acadian cotton: past and present Shave'em to Save'em

SEAL WOOL! wildfibersmagazine.com 1

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Table of Contents page 6

Famadihana:

"The turning of the bones" Madagascar's ancient funerary ritual is threatened by the loss of the silkworm's habitat.

page 44

Destination Antarctica

Plans for the author's trip of a lifetime are nearly foiled at the eleventh hour. page 58

page 30

The Sweater's Tale

The Livestock Conservancy is launching an innovative program to save endangered sheep breeds.

page 64

Shave'em to Save'em

page 36

Pangong Craft Center, the next step

Entering their fourth year of production, the women of Pangong are ready to expand.

Has anyone ever wondered what kind wool is in Shackleton's sweater?

Madagascar

Madagascar has been in crisis mode far too long. CPALI, is taking small steps to help by using silk cocoons. page 82

South Georgia's Wooly Past

A stunning account of one man's efforts in the late 18th century to handspin beautiful shawls from seal wool. page 94

The Lady of Leh

After a very difficult introduction to the High Himalayas, the author finds love at the local five-and-dime. page 102

Acadian Cotton From seed to salvation

Acadian brown cotton is not only a vestige from the past, it's growing strong roots for the future. page 111

From Field to Fabric

A retired Louisiana high school teacher is all about getting good dirt...for his cotton seeds. page 112

Nippy Dip

Going to Antarctica?

Be sure to pack your swimsuit.

Cover page: Fur seal. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

This page: A young girl in Soatanana, Madagascar. Photo by Linda N. Cortright

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Winning the Wooly Jackpot

fter fifteen years of publishing Wild Fibers, traveling to places no rational person would otherwise venture (lacking modern conven iences more often than not), and drinking more airport coffee than any ten Delta pilots combined, I have only one word to describe my job—blessed. I have seen so many things and met so many people that have dramatically altered my view of both the world and myself that I scarcely recall the mindset of the cashmere goat farmer who hatched the idea for this publication on a quiet summer evening not all that long ago.

Yet despite all the stamps in my passport, there was no place on the planet I had dreamed of going to more than Antarctica. Ever since I read a magazine article in the mid-1980s about Emperor penguins, I had been determined to get there.

Thankfully, a lot has changed in the interim, and Antarctica has become increasingly accessible to those not infused with Shackleton’s tenacity or a scientist’s predilection. But you won’t find a cheapo flight on Jet Blue to take you there, so several years back I began saving for the trip of a lifetime. I decided I would celebrate my sixtieth birthday nestled among a cavalcade of icebergs, and when I would share my plan with friends, they invariably looked at me in mild disbelief.

I would then explain tonguein-cheek that I was quite sure Antarctica was the only place on earth I could go where I wouldn’t be tempted to work—even if I wanted to. A notion that was completely accurate until Bob Burton, the historian on the ship

I traveled on, joined me one evening for dinner.

“I understand you write about wild fibers,” he politely queried, his English accent elevating the importance of my profession beyond the stratosphere.

I nodded and smiled.

“Do you know about qiviut?” he asked.

Qiviut? Did he say qiviut? Qiviut is one of those words that apart from within the fiber community is reserved for the bonus round in Jeopardy. How did Bob know about qiviut?

Following a bit more discussion I learned that Bob had spent time in Greenland and done a little wool-gathering (or qiviut-gathering, to be precise) off the tundra, filling his pockets and bringing home an enviable stash to his wife—an avid knitter. The two of us spent the next ten minutes cooing about qiviut’s softness the way wine connoisseurs get moony over a rare Chardonnay. And then, from seemingly nowhere, Bob popped the question. The question that would not only transform my Antarctic holiday into a professional odyssey, but would also lead to the cover of the fifteenth anniversary issue.

“Do you know about seal wool?” Bob asked.

“Seal wool?” I repeated, arching one eyebrow.

The author wonders if there is a camera setting to counteract "lemur-shake."

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“Well, it’s quite a remarkable story. A gentleman by the name of Lord Somerville developed a method of spinning seal wool [the undercoat of the fur seal] into beautiful shawls. Napoleon reportedly owned thirteen!”

I was hooked like a junkie who had scored a new dealer, my eyes wide with excitement. This was a fiber scoop that would avert everyone’s attention albeit temporarily from the sensationalism of the front-page news. So Bob and I exchanged emails, with the promise that when I got off the ship, I would follow up.

I returned to my cabin that night, shaking my head and muttering “seal wool” over and over again. If logging on to the ship’s internet hadn’t been prohibitively expensive I would have Googled it immediately. But I didn’t doubt Bob’s veracity for even a minute and began envisioning a fur seal on the magazine cover—something this editor could never have believed possible. So I hope that as you read about South Georgia’s Wooly Past, you will envision me, and perhaps even yourself someday, sitting aboard a ship bound for the Last Continent, marveling at the pervasiveness of fibers.

In sharp contrast to polar fibers, I finally made my way to the steamy rainforests of Madagascar, pursuing two stories I had wanted to feature for a very long time. To date, I have never visited a country where the media hype wasn’t an unsettlingly distorted version of the reality and Madagascar was no exception. Pictures of fuzzy, bugeyed lemurs have a way of obscuring the depths of deforestation and destruction that have forever changed 90 percent of Madagascar’s countryside. It also ranks as one of the top twelve poorest countries in the world. So when I learned about two projects dedicated to environmental restoration and poverty alleviation through silk, I was ready to grab my umbrella and go.

There are parts of Madagascar that are obscenely beautiful and there are parts that are not. And yes, lemurs are a big draw even though I don’t believe they have any merit within the fiber community. Ringtail lemurs are particularly engaging, especially when they hop into your canoe, travel up one arm, and pause briefly on top of your head, before continuing. It’s almost as good as hanging out with penguins 24/7. Almost…

However, the stories of survival and dedication, and the difference that something as tiny as a silkworm can make, seem like perfect subjects for a feature, honoring fifteen years of wild fibers and the role they play in changing lives—not just mine, but hopefully some of yours as well.

I am not only blessed, I am deeply grateful to all of you.

wILD FIBERS Publisher

and

Editor

Linda N. Cortright Contributing Editors Robert Burton Leslie Petrovski Copyeditor Sheila Polson Photography Linda N. Cortright John Terry Proofreader Sheila Polson

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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, 2018.

All rights reser ved. 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 by Linda Cortright at 574 Davis Rd., Union, ME 04862 (Issue 15, Volume 1). 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 0484 1.

Linda Cortright Editor and Publisher

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Famadihana "the turning of the bones"

Story and photos by Linda Cortright

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Distinguished by its unique array of spectacular oddities, Madagascar's crushing poverty has transformed its verdant landscape into a battleground for survival. A growing number of villages are relying on an indigenous silkworm, and foreign markets, to improve their future.

H

Above: A panther chameleon found in eastern and northern parts of Madagascar. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

erpetologists, botanists, ornithologists, and primatologists flock to Madagascar with Darwinian zeal, seeking a titillating lineup of species unique to this land shaped like an angry gallbladder. Stocked with screaming lizards, hissing cockroaches, blind snakes, and chameleons with two-footlong tongues, Madagascar harbors unrivaled exotica. Scientists estimate that eight out of ten living things in Madagascar exist no place else in the world, and though there is growing consensus as to the reason for this phenomenon, the deciding vote has yet to be cast.

Originally part of Gondwana (a landmass in the southern hemisphere comprising Madagascar, Africa, South America, Australia, the Indian subcontinent, and Antarctica), Madagascar cut off relations with Africa about 150 million years ago. Another 75 million years passed before Madagascar divorced the Indian subcontinent, securing its honor as the fourth largest—and oldest—island in the world, measuring 1,000 miles long and 340 miles wide.

Yet only 10 percent of this landscape has escaped annihilation.

Forests, once as dense as felt, have been reduced to a few scrappy stands. Severe cyclones annually visit this fabled paradise, felling magnificent arbors with one small breath. But Mother Nature is not

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to blame for Madagascar’s depleted state. Her wreckage is wrought by man.

Deforestation is the result of both need and greed. The export of precious timber has been going on for nearly a century, feeding an international market of high-end consumers (now predominantly Chinese) willing to pay exorbitant prices for rosewood and ebony, even if the ultimate price is incalculable. The timehonored method of slash and burn agriculture is the foundation for its ubiquitous rice paddies, reflecting the traditions of its ancestors who traveled from Indonesia by outrigger canoe. It also provides pasture land for herds of zebu, the cow with a baby camel-like hump. The zebu is Madagascar’s leading type of livestock, raised for its meat and ability to till fields. It is the draft horse of this remote outpost and though large herds of zebus are the exception, farmers keep a working pair if possible.

Families who can’t afford a zebu might own a pig, but in some villages, pork is fady, the Malagasy word for taboo. Fady is serious business. Of the eighteen tribes in Madagascar, each one has its own set of taboos and within them, fady can be unique to a village and different from one family to the next. In some villages, eating pork is fady. Not only is eating it prohibited, but even touching someone who eats pork can be fady.

When a family lacks enough resources for a pair of zebus or a single sow, there is always the chicken. In view of its omnipresence, surprisingly it is not the national bird.

Charcoal is the remaining felon of the forest and by far the most pernicious. It is the preferred form of heat for cooking. Charcoal burns longer and hotter than split wood, and charcoal Below : A young girl selling bags of charcoal by the roadside.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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sellers line the roadsides of Madagascar like blueberry stands on a Maine summer day.

Decades of lucrative timber export, coupled with conservation sanctions that have often been ignored during political upheaval and corruption, have left this ravaged landscape weeping. During the rainy season it is said Madagascar’s clay soil runs like blood into the ocean.

For those who come to Madagascar with an academic predilection toward pardalis, a green chameleon the size of a guinea pig and with swiveling gun-turret eyes, or the chance to see a fossa, a member of the feline family that looks like the lovechild of a mongoose and a mountain lion, the gape and glare factor of the fantastic cannot be overstated. For tourists who lust to explore the island’s blue topaz waters from the comfort of freshly pressed linens and platters of foie gras, the island’s state of emergency is meticulously hidden from view.

Under the best of circumstances, I couldn’t be persuaded to travel thirty hours by plane and an additional six to eight hours by car along a road that would relocate one’s kidneys behind the kneecaps, to see a bug-eyed lizard or a rare breed of snake. In fact, I would travel just as far and farther to avoid seeing the same. But such was not my desire. Instead, I was drawn by the smallest wild fiber on the planet, the silkworm.

Less than half the size of my pinky finger, the Borocera worm is helping to alleviate poverty and preserve forest land. It is also at the epicenter of one of Madagascar’s most sacred rituals— famadihana—"the turning of the bones.”

Approximately every two to seven years, or if the deceased become restless and discontent in the interim, many Malagasy tribes dig up their decomposing ancestors and spend the day together. Family members travel great distances to participate in famadihana. This is a party not to be missed. Featuring lots of booze (the Malagasy have an endless range of fruit flavored rums guaranteed to elicit a hangover in a class of its own) and a slaughtered zebu (possibly two), the turning of the bones invokes a curious blend of ebullience and the eternal.

In some tribes, the body is carefully re12 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

moved from the tomb and a new lambamena (burial shroud), historically made of Borocera silk, is wrapped around the remains. Relatives cradle the bones. Talk to them. And then carefully tuck them back in the tomb. The event is conducted with a modicum of fanfare.

In other tribes, the Merina or Betsileo, for example, the deceased are honored with a blowout that could rival a Bacchanalian frat party complete with a hired band and cattle wrestling. Some families might choose to parade the deceased around the village in order for them to see what’s changed since they’ve been gone.

When the day is over they are placed back in their tomb (typically shared with other family members) and then it’s time to get down and boogey.

As a rule, tears are frowned upon. They are seen as an impediment in the ancestors’ journey to heaven, from where they can then work as intermediaries between God and the living, beseeching the almighty for specific needs. Everything from illness to infertility is reason to seek help from the dead, and famadihana is the ultimate hotline.

Lambamenas have been a part of Malagasy culture for centuries. Exquisitely handwoven and handspun initially from the Borocera silkworm, and later with Bombyx Mori that was imported, the shrouds can sell for hundreds of dollars. An exorbitant sum for a country that ranks as one of the ten or twelve poorest in the world with an average income of $250 per year. Families will drive themselves into poverty, spending a year’s earnings to buy a zebu in order to host a proper famadihana. From one perspective, it is paramount that ancestors be celebrated with royal trappings. After all, to risk going cheap is to risk offense and thereby jeopardize their earthly supplications. Families already steeped in debt frequently plunge deeper to maintain face within the community.

The population of Madagascar is twenty million. Approximately 41 percent are Christian and for many, the turning of the bones is seamlessly incorporated into their belief system.

Famadihana traditionally takes place during the

winter (July and August) and I am told that if I am “lucky” there might be an off-season famadihana for me to witness.

I don’t typically associate my luck with dead people...

After multiple flights, including a sprint through the Nairobi airport that leaves me wheezing for days, I arrive in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. Thankfully it is referred to as just “Tana.” By 4 a.m., I have checked in to a quirky hotel in a quiet neighborhood where I will grab a few hours of sleep before my driver arrives in the morning to take me to the weaving village of Soatanana.

At 9 a.m. a bullhorn ejects me from bed. I can’t imagine where it is coming from. Trip Advisor promised this was a quiet neighborhood. Reluctantly, I spring out of bed, going from window to window, parting the curtains as I go to determine the source of the disturbance. All I can see are the rooftops of a seemingly sleepy city on a Sunday morning. By the time I go downstairs for breakfast the noise hasn’t abated and so I ask.

Approximately every two to seven years, or if the deceased become restless and discontent in the interim, many Malagasy tribes dig up their decomposing ancestors and spend the day together.

Below : Several enshrouded bodies are paraded through the village in celebration of famadihana. Photo courtesy of Almaty.

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Unbeknownst to me, even the best national roads, in this case the N5, are a disquieting blend of Nascar drivers, zebu carts, and families of twelve or more casually walking home from church in their Sunday finest.

“The noise, madam, is from the stadium below,” my waiter explains without apology. “It is where they have the church service.”

Oh. Ms. Eugenie Raharisoa, based in Tana, manages the weaving cooperative. She has overseen my logistics and told me the drive to Ambositra (the closest major city to the cooperative) will take at least six hours, and from there it will be another one and a half hours to get to Soatanana. Today we will drive a bit farther than the city and then tomorrow we will begin the interviews in Soatanana. By 10:30 I am on the road with my driver and translator, traveling at speeds that suggest I will reach Ambositra within the hour.

Unbeknownst to me, even the best national roads, in this case the N5, are a disquieting blend of Nascar drivers, zebu carts, and families of twelve or more casually walking home from church in their Sunday finest. Passing on corners, invariably on the uphill, isn’t foolhardy—it’s mandatory.

Madagascar’s highlands, which run like a spine slightly east of the country’s midline, are inhabited primarily by the Merina tribe. Descended from Indonesian settlers, they are light brown skinned as compared to the tribes of African ancestry. Madagascar’s royalty were Merina, which accounts for their predominance in the region.

Racing down the N5, my first impression of Madagascar—after the bullhorn—is different from the picture I had formed in my head. The near total deforestation of the highlands has resulted in evicting lemurs from their former homeland, driving them to the remaining 10 percent of rainforest where nearly all 100 lemur species are threatened with extinction. The magnitude of destruction is difficult to fathom even if I am boldly confronted with it one treeless kilometer after another. Antananarivo means “city of a thousand” and was named after King Adrianjaka successfully captured the city by deploying 1,000 soldiers.

Before then it was called Anamalanga, meaning “blue forest.” Unfortunately, I know of no Malagasy word that means “land of a billion rice paddies.” The occasional stands of remaining forest are scarce at best and dramatically underscore what has brought me to this island—the remarkable story of how selling scarves woven with wild silk not only aids in poverty alleviation for the local women, but also helps to preserve tapia forests where the Borocera silkworms live.

The power of natural fibers never…ever…fails to interest and enchant me.

Against all odds we safely arrive at Sous Le Soleil, an idyllic encampment nearly an hour outside Ambositra, consisting of seven Zafimaniry wood huts, a traditional style of architecture in the 14 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

once heavily forested area, featuring shuttered windows, a solid door, and tongue and groove joinery. My hut is equipped with a bed, a mosquito net, a toilet, and electricity from a generator that shuts off at nine o’clock. It is blissfully quiet in comparison to the chaos of the city. I am not the least bit inconvenienced reading by the light of my collapsible solar lantern. I soon collapse from fatigue, safe in the knowledge that I will not be rousted by a bullhorn in the morning.

Above: Miles and miles of former forestland have been slashed and burned to create cropland, successfully evicting many of the countr y's native species from their habitat. Right: Traditional Zafimanir y wood huts at Sous Le Soleil.

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After a breakfast of toast and a banana my surroundings. The country air smells both (there are other offerings, but I decline), we are sweet and sweaty as men and women maintain a back in the car en route to Soatanana. As the steady workpace in the fields. Anonymous birds crow flies, the distance to Soatanana is less than sing from every direction, but the only call I thirty kilometers, but we must back track our can readily identify is the universal language of way toward town, crossing over the N5 and then chicken-speak. A growing number of farmers on to a dirt road that is one continuous rollerare beginning to raise ducks as an alternative coaster of bumps, lumps, to chickens due to a high and turns, redesigned incidence of Newcastle disNearly twenty years ago, every year during the ease (aka avian influenza). villagers began noticing a cyclone season.This fact But the transition is slow. becomes undeniably apEven in the face of high decline in the forest underparent as we approach the mortality, chickens are the growth, a valuable source of village and discover the culturally preferred choice. food and medicinal plants. bridge has been washed As a journalist, I am away. Our only choice is Aggressive deforestation was tempted to take a picture to gather our gear and of everything. But I don’t partly to blame. walk the remaining five want to be that foreigner. I kilometers. Aside from don’t want to be that white a burdensome amount of camera equipment, I person who comes only to take. It’s a sentiment am delighted to escape the car and get my feet that is underscored by the widespread belief on the ground. I am not prepared, however, to throughout rural Madagascar in mpakafo, litcross the river over a series of teetering rocks erally translated “heart-stealer.” The white man and through fast-moving water, causing me has come to the island to kill them and feast to spend the remainder of the day in sodden on their internal organs. Mpakafo is a publicsneakers. relations challenge the tourism board has yet to Randrianjatovo Sandra, my translator and conquer. communications director at Ny Tanintsika, the We arrive in the village and there is an imorganization that facilitates many of the co-op’s mediate groundswell of welcome, assuring me external operations, leads the way to the vilthat any concerns about mpakafo are unfoundlage. She is not used to taking the footpath and ed. Soatanana is both a typical and an atypical at several junctions we stop and ask directions. rural village. The homes are predominantly Malagasy is a Malayo-Polynesian language, two-story and made of brick (the forests having closely related to the East Barito language of long since been depleted). They all have balBorneo. Her conversations are a pleasant trillconies, and most have either corn or laundry ing of unfamiliar consonants, punctuated with draped over the edges to dry. Chickens are evrolling high notes. My ability to communicate erywhere and so is the sound of happy children, is confined to salama, meaning “hello,” which I although their presence indicates their parents happily sing out to every person we encounter. cannot afford to send them to school. What Some seem taken aback, but most return my distinguishes Soatanana from many highland greeting and keep on walking. villages is its cooperatives, which help to preSandra offers me a hand when needed alserve both the land and tradition. though she admits to being jealous of my long Nearly twenty years ago, villagers began legs. For most of the trip we travel in silence, noticing a decline in the forest undergrowth, a my senses drunk with delight at the newness of valuable source of food and medicinal plants.

Aggressive deforestation was partly to blame.

But just as insidious was the invasive nature of Left: A villager walking along the footpath to Soatanana. wildfibersmagazine.com 17

Above: The "cocoon impaler" is gradually stacked with five cocoons.

Opposite page: Spinning Borocera silk with a drop spindle.

eucalyptus and white pine trees—both introduced by colonists—that relentlessly consumed the soil. Not only were medicinal plants disappearing, but so were the silkworms. With the help of Ny Tanintsika, Soatanana’s first cooperative, Tambatra was born, charged with helping to replant the forest.

While newly planted tapia trees were reaching maturity, a second village cooperative was formed to help rear cocoons from existing trees, ensuring fresh eggs were safely harvested to perpetuate the next cycle. Ny Tanintsika also helped the villagers learn how to raise bombyx cocoons by planting mulberry trees, a non-native species to Madagascar.

The third and final cooperative, Firaisankina, the village weaving cooperative, was formed in 2007. Its focus is on helping preserve the ancient Malagasy tradition of silk weaving using the Borocera silkworm, but it is directly connected to the preservation efforts of the other two cooperatives and helping to alleviate poverty.

Firaisankina is the outgrowth of one of Madagascar’s most revered Peace Corps volunteers, Kyley Schmidt. Posted in a neighboring village in 2003 as a health volunteer, Kyley had studied textile design at North Carolina State University and soon began to imagine an unprecedented opportunity for the local weavers.

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While newly planted tapia trees were reaching maturity, a second village cooperative was formed to help rear cocoons from existing trees, ensuring fresh eggs were safely harvested to perpetuate the next cycle.

Over the years, the cost of a traditional lambamena had become prohibitive and with it, the silk weaving tradition was beginning to vanish like rosewoods from the hillside. Kyley envisioned and facilitated, creating affordable, locally sourced handwoven and handdyed scarves that could be sold to boutiques in Ambositra and Tana. Remarkably her vision would ultimately manifest in having a booth at the prestigious Santa Fe Folk Art Festival.

I soon sit down on the floor of the cooperative’s one-story building. A simple, brick structure, it serves as both a meeting and a workspace, although most of the work is done in the home. Today it also serves as the demonstration center and I have a front row seat. I have never seen how wild silk is processed and I am mildly alarmed when the first thing I see is a small wooden stand with what can best be described as a ten-inch marshmallow stick driven through the center. If left in the wrong hands, it could poke someone’s eye out—possibly both eyes.

Sitting cross legged in front of the “eye-poker,” one of the women has procured a basket of dried cocoons that on first glance might be mistaken for a virulent strain of wild mushrooms. Approximately two to three inches in diameter, the cocoons are already split open from the birth of the chrysalis.

Step one: Make sure the vacated cocoon is clean—no residual pupa and definitely no residual pupa “poo.” (Who knew?) Once the cocoon is checked and clean, the cocoon is turned inside out and impaled on the stake like a summertime shish kebab minus the marinade. The woman reaches into the basket, seizes another cocoon, opens, inverts, checks, and stabs.

I have been studying natural fibers for fifteen years and have no idea what’s really going on other than I hope we’re not making lunch.

Finally, after five cocoons are neatly impaled one on top of the next, the woman grabs the entire bundle and as she pulls it off the skewer, the last cocoon serves as a jacket to tuck the remaining four inside. The result is a desiccated wad the size of an apricot, the color of cement, and the consistency of tissue paper coated in hairspray.

It has all the potential for being a bastardized vegan meatball. wildfibersmagazine.com 19

I have witnessed a diverse variety of fiber processing techniques and know that what may appear easy as a spectator can be quite challenging in practice. Knowing the cocoons are a precious resource, I ask if I might carefully try my hand at impaling one or two.

After a polite giggle, the woman offers me the basket. I cautiously take my first Borocera cocoon in hand, check for poo, and then slide it over the stick. This is maybe one of the few cases when the skill is just as easy as it looks. I proceed to stack another four cocoons before submitting to the ultimate challenge, pulling the quintuplet off and converting it to a single. With practice, I suspect I could become a master cocoon stabber.

Step two: The “meatballs” are now ready to be thrown into the pot and boiled for four hours, breaking down the sericin, which serves to seal and strengthen the cocoon. I am told I can witness cooking class later. But for demonstration purposes there is another basket of cooked and dried cocoons ready to be spun.

Step three: The neat, nicely stacked cocoons have morphed into a tangle of chunky brown strands and globs. Imagine peeling the crud off the vacuum cleanerbrush and then tossing it into the washing machine where it partially separates

into a mound of dryer lint and cat hair. I peer into the basket and audibly gasp. There must be a mistake.

Step four: It’s time to spin the brown stuff.

Using a drop spindle, a different woman dips her hand into the basket, procuring a handful of silk, the fiber traditionally known for its elegance and unmistakable sheen. These are possibly the last two words I would use to describe the wad before me.

Step five: After the desired amount of silk has been spun, it is reeled onto a skein winder, ready for dyeing. Another woman brings out the most remarkable warping board I have ever seen.

Fitted with several stakes and moving blocks, the warping board easily adjusts along two metal rods to the desired length and then collapses into a long, single unit for ease of storage. I am enchanted by both the versatility and portability of this device and ask the woman if she would mind demonstrating again how it opens and closes. She politely obliges but finds my fascination more than a bit peculiar.

Step six: The weaving is done using horizontal rigid heddle looms, often the very ones that have been in a family for generations. I visit a woman’s house to watch this final step. There are just

Left: A weaver demonstrating on the warping board. Opposite page: The same warping board collapsed and now readily portable.

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two rooms on the first floor, one on either side of the entrance and roughly ten square feet each. The door on the right is shut, the door on the left is open, the room filled with less light than my windowless basement. Along one wall a woman is squatting in front of her loom, which holds the most magnificent moss green scarf one could possibly imagine. How that wad of whatnot has been transformed into something that holds the dye with a richness deeper than the earth itself makes my jaw drop. I can’t possibly fathom it. I suppose I should retract every unkind description of the process but, in fact, it makes my appreciation for the finished product grow that much deeper.

I ask the woman if she enjoys the weaving and she confesses the creative process doesn’t particularly fulfill her. The weaving is painful on her shoulders, particularly after she has already spent a full day working in the fields. The rewards, however, more than make up for the pain. All her children—she has five—go to school. She doesn’t live hand-to-mouth the way so many farmers do. She’s not rich, but she has everything she needs. And…she is happy.

While I have been chatting with the weaver, another member of the cooperative has been busy preparing a fire. She wants me to see the pot of boiling cocoons. How can I refuse?

I begin walking down to the opposite end of the village, a journey of less than five minutes. But I am not alone. A growing cadre of curious children is following me, and they have one thing and one thing only on their minds. They want their pictures taken. Without hesitation, I oblige, and my five-minute commute turns into a twenty-minute photo shoot, making me wish I had a second publication: Wild Children. Girls no more than five are already balancing baskets on their heads as they walk. I stop to take their picture and as I kneel to show them

Above left: Crouched over a rigid heddle loom that occupies one of two rooms on the first floor of her home, a weaver works on a shawl. Above right: The pot of boiling cocoons.

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In the few hours I spend walking around the village, a perambulation that now slows to a crawl as even more children crowd my knees, begging to have their pictures taken, a sense of disquieting nostalgia takes over. There is not a single electronic device to amuse them. the image, I am toppled over by the gang as they crowd around my camera. There are no fewer than ten little heads stuffed between my nose and the shutter, each one squealing louder than the next. For a moment, I reflect on how back in the United States, this scene would translate into a dozen children each armed with their own phone for taking selfies!

At last I arrive at the boiling pot and am not disappointed. As the woman prepares to remove the lid, she glances at me in such a way as to indicate a magic potion is brewing inside. A cloud of smoke escapes, blurring my initial view. But as it dissipates a pot of bubbling brown, slimy goo appears. Someone needs to give the cat some Imodium. Heretofore, I have never witnessed any stage in fiber production akin to “you don’t want to see how the sausage is made.” I have now, and after a few quick photos, I tell her she can cover the pot and then I immediately return to photographing the children.

In the few hours I spend walking around the village, a perambulation that now slows to a crawl as even more children crowd my knees, begging to have their pictures taken, a sense of disquieting nostalgia takes over. There is not a single electronic device to amuse them. No Nintendo.

No Xbox. Not one whimper from Pokémon.

Instead, they find their amusement in the boundless nature that surrounds them, and one boy is even using a stick to roll a tire rim down the lane. We have great privileges as members of the Western world, but our own version of wreck and ruin has penetrated our countrysides as well.

By the time I return to the weaving center more than a dozen women have assembled, displaying an impromptu market just for me. It instantly becomes clear that purchasing from one woman and not the next will create a measure of inequity my heart can’t abide. Alternatively, neither Mastercard nor Visa can save me. It’s all cash and I have a modest amount of ariary (Malagasy currency) on me. I make my way around the market, admiring each selection and praising each weaver’s work. There is no way to undersell the hand of Borocera silk.

Left: A weaver happily keeps track of my growing purchases.

Below : The marketplace unfolds.

How to choose?

Traditional silk, Bombyx mori, has a sheen unlike any other natural fiber. Silk is always cool to the touch. These scarves, however, have the most remarkable “chewy” texture. They are both soft and supple, belying the extraordinary strength of the fibers. Another reason Borocera silk is the fiber of choice for lambamenas is that Bombyx silk doesn’t make for a durable shroud.

Most of the scarves displayed at the market are naturally dyed. The eucalyptus tree, for all its deleterious effects does, in fact, make for beautiful dye. The leaves create a variety of greens that can be enhanced when overdyed on darker colors. The nato plant is perhaps my favorite, yielding a reddish-brown that belongs on the rocks in Sedona. Coreopsis grows wild in Madagascar, producing an abundance of small, yellow flowers, ideal for dyeing. However, my enchantment with the reddish-brown remains unchanged.

I manage to purchase a scarf from nearly every weaver, apologizing profusely when I don’t buy one. I also keep in mind that everything must be carried five kilometers back to the car. In fact, one of the weavers ex-

plains that sales to tourists have virtually dried up this year because the bridge is out. Understandably, internet sales are not in the weavers’ future.

Sandra and I begin walking back to the river.

We have bags in both hands and packs on our backs. It has been a successful day both personally and professionally, but it isn’t over. Given the remote nature of our surroundings, I’m curious where we will spend the night.

Not to worry; Eugenie has arranged for us to stay at the church. Above the sanctuary, to be

wildfibersmagazine.com 23

exact, which I mistakenly open the door to as I wend my way up the stairs, passing the confessional neatly situated on the second-floor landing. I go up one more floor to a small corridor with a handful of rooms on one side and several small windows—no glass, just open shutters—on the other, overlooking a courtyard with a poinsettia bush the size of a minivan.

There are no restaurants in this small town, but my driver has asked one of the local shopkeepers to prepare a takeout order of chicken, rice, and french fries. I opt for the latter and soon after the sun goes down I crawl under my mosquito net, thinking about the day’s events, pondering the trail of priests who have laid their heads down on this very pillow, and then for a moment—maybe two—I wonder how early the local worshippers congregate. I envision being rousted at sunrise by a chorus of Malagasy benedictions.

Breakfast the following morning looks similar to the previous night’s dinner, but with the addition of an omelet served over rice, and bananas. I know there are wine connoisseurs, coffee connoisseurs, but in the last fifteen years I have become a banana connoisseur.

These bananas have a strong bouquet but seem dry to my palate.

Our first stop of the day is to a school that is part of a larger network of villages near Soatanana that also participate in efforts to 24 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

preserve the tapia forests. It is a very special day for this school. Simon Doble, founder and CEO of SolarBuddy, manufacturer of child-friendly solar lamps, is coming to distribute a lamp to every student, allowing them to do their homework long after the sun sets.

The school is a one-story building divided into three rooms with dirt floors. When we arrive none of the children are in class. They are playing soccer (it’s World Cup season, after all), and both boys and girls, many in bare feet, are charging about the dusty field. The air is refreshing, if not bracing. Even in my sweater and jacket I am longing for another layer.

Soon after Simon and his crew arrive the children line up and begin singing in French and Malagasy. Their little voices barely squeak above the howl of the wind. It is difficult not to cry when looking at these children living on the fringe of poverty yet overflowing with happiness. To date, SolarBuddy has donated 40,000 lights around the world to energy impoverished areas. During the past two weeks, Simon has donated thousands around Madagascar.

I am in awe of his work.

Their next stop is Soatanana. I do wonder how they are going to ford the river with all those lights.

I wish them luck—on many levels.

Left: Eugenie Raharisoa, national coordinator for ny Tanintsika, standing with Simon Doble, founder of SolarBuddy.

Below : Students both anxious and curious about their new solar lamp.

Following page: A ver y young student filled with gratitude.

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There is a unanimous nodding of heads as several point to the forest, which starts about a quarter of a mile in on the opposite side of the road. Twenty years ago, the forest extended farther toward the village.

However, acres and acres have been lost, predominantly for charcoal.

28 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

Our last stop is at a small village north of Ambositra. Thankfully, it is right along the N5. There are no weavers in this village, or at least none that are formally organized. It is, however, next to the tapia forest and is one of several communities where people gather cocoons to sell directly to the weavers, or at the local market, bearing in mind the cocoon’s pupa is a valuable food source.

Sandra gets out of the car and approaches the village in advance of me, ensuring my presence won’t inadvertently create any upset. I sit patiently in the car waiting for the signal and within a few minutes, she waves at me to join her. Unlike Soatanana, which opened its doors to tourists in 2013 and can see as many as 200 visitors a year, this village can’t imagine why a journalist wants to have a chat.

For almost an hour I stand outside a home, chatting with a dozen men and women. I show them a copy of Wild Fibers and they are amazed at how extensive the world of natural fibers is. I do notice that once the magazine gets passed around, the village grapevine springs into action and more people begin drifting by.

Sandra’s translating skills are pressed to the extreme.

With every question I ask, ten people answer, and I suspect some pertinent facts slip through the cracks.

Nonetheless, my biggest concern is the condition of the forest. Do they see it changing?

There is a unanimous nodding of heads as several point to the forest, which starts about a quarter of a mile in on the opposite side of the road. Twenty years ago, the forest extended farther toward the village. However, acres and acres have been lost, predominantly for charcoal.

Recently, the trend has shifted, and people are beginning to see the forest boundaries expand. Although this area is nearly an hour from Soatanana, they do sell some of their cocoon harvest to the weavers and I can’t help but wonder as I stare into the woods if some of the scarves stashed in the back of the car originated from this very forest, picked by hands that are before me.

I will never feel all soft and sentimental about a silkworm the way I do about a sheep, a goat, or a thundering muskox, but the sequence of events from wild fiber, to consumer, puts a smile in my heart no matter where I am in the world. And here in this most remote of landscapes, among people whose lives teeter precariously close to the fringes of survival, wild fibers are making a difference: to the environment, to the silkworm, to the families, and to the future.

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Top row : Villagers and cocoon collecters posing in front of the forest that is gradually being restored.

Below : Local villagers anxious to talk about the condition of their forest.

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30 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

• Qiviut is eight times warmer than wool by weight • Finer and softer than cashmere • Does not itch and contains no lanolin • Does not shrink in any temperature of water • Co-op’s mission is to support Indigenous peoples of Alaska • All garments hand knit by 200 Alaska Native members • Traditional based village patterns for scarves and smokerings

The Co-Operative’s mission is to help bring an income into Alaska areas where job opportunities are scarce.

By knitting, Alaska Native members earn a supplemental income. This compliments their mostly subsistence lifestyle.

Living a subsistence lifestyle, you get a majority of your needs by living off of the land.

Hunting and fishing for your food, and gathering wild edibles when they are in season takes time. The Co-Op provides the income to help bridge the gap between traditional subsistence lifestyle and western culture where you need cash for everything.

There are no quotas or time limits for the Co-Operative members. They are free to knit what they want when they want. When garments arrive at the headquarters, the member is paid within a 24 hour period. The headquarters, in Anchorage, provides the members with the yarn and patterns. This means, other than the small annual dues and the cost of their knitting needles, the members have no out of pocket costs.

OOMINGMAK

Downtown Location • Corner of 6th & H Little brown house with musk ox mural 604 H Street, Dept. WFM • Anchorage, AK 99501

N

Toll Free 1-888-360-9665 (907) 272-9225 www.qiviut.com

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v a Sh

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S o t m e 'e

m e ' ave

The Livestock Conservancy's fiber challenge will help make history a part of the future.

ith a gentle whiff, a single swill and a spit, a true wine connoisseur can identify the origins of a fermented grape from nearly anywhere in the world. Ahh… the sweet bouquet of a German Riesling…a fruity glass of Malbec from Argentina…the phenolic notes of a dry Shiraz from France. By comparison, the fiber cognoscente has some catching up to do. When was the last time someone seized hold of a cardigan, discerningly rolled the yarn between their fingers, and remarked with a romantic air, “It’s Tunis, yes?”

32 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

With the launch of the Shave ’em to Save ’em Fiber Challenge, the Livestock Conservancy intends to reshape and preserve the importance of both wool and genetics from a select group of endangered breeds by promoting direct relationships between farmers and fiber artists. Black Welsh Mountain, Hog Island, and Santa Cruz are only a few of the nineteen endangered breeds targeted in the fiber challenge, and with the help of Shave ’em to Save ’em, the critically endangered Florida Cracker sheep may one day enjoy the popularity of a prized Pinot Grigio. Well, a good Zinfandel, anyway.

Above: Tunis lambs on the run.

Opposite page: Hog Island ram.

Photos courtesy of the Livestock Conser vancy.

Founded in the 1970s by a group of farmers, scientists, environmentalists, and historians, the Livestock Conservancy began to address the growing concern that many breeds of both meat and dairy livestock in the United States were in danger of becoming extinct as commercial farming had favored a small number of high production breeds. In particular, sheep breeds selected for their premium wool had suffered a worse fate than most as the bulk of commercial wool production moved to New Zealand and Australia, resulting in the steady decline of the U.S. sheep market since the 1940s.

If there is presently enough wool to satisfy a dwindling global market, some may wonder why it matters if certain breeds become extinct. Contrary to the conventional laws of supply and demand, farming encompasses other variables and genetic diversity is just one.

Heritage breeds have survived throughout the ages because they are inherently hardy. They adapted to a new environment as they were brought to North America from across the ocean, which means there is a high likelihood they will adapt well in our changing climate. Of particular interest to fiber artists are the different types of wool that each breed produces. Some have a softer wool that’s excellent for garments while others have wool that’s more suited to making rugs. Some have white wool that takes well to dyes while others come in a wide variety of natural colors and patterns.

The goal of Shave ’em to Save ’em, which will launch in January 2019, is to put fiber artists in contact with shepherds who raise any one (or more) of the wool breeds on the Livestock Conservancy’s priority list of endangered livestock. It’s a practical delegation of responsibilities. A farmer needs to focus on the day-to-day basics, like food, water, and shelter, followed by fencing, predator control, worming, lambing—the list is endless. At the end of a twenty-five-hour day, the average farmer doesn’t have time to

The Livestock Conservancy has long said that the way to save endangered breeds of livestock is to eat them—in other words, give them a job.

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Below left: Gulf Coast ewes.

Below right: Hog Island flock.

Photos courtesy of the Livestock Conservancy.

focus on design characteristics that will best use the wool. Alternatively, most fiber artists are far more adept at discerning the nuances of gauge and pattern construction than at using their imagination with a burdizzo (castration clamp) and a nervous ram.

The Livestock Conservancy has long said that the way to save endangered breeds of livestock is to eat them—in other words, give them a job. In the case of both wool and dual-purpose sheep (meat and wool), we need to start using their wool again. Due to marketing challenges, some shepherds spend an entire year meticulously minding their flocks only to see their annual shearing get tossed into a compost heap. Simply put, it’s easier to let the wool rot in the ground than to clean and sell it.

And thus, the enormous appeal of Shave ’em to Save ’em.

How It Works Every fiber artist who registers for the challenge will receive a passport that includes a page of information for each breed along with space to put a stamp after they purchase wool from a particular breed. As they work their way through the breeds, they will receive prizes for completing projects and reaching various landmarks. (There will be dedicated groups on Facebook and Ravelry where members can share pictures of their projects.)

In addition to encouraging fiber artists to try using rare wools, the program will also educate shepherds about how to prepare their wool for sale, and how to market to customers and fiber artists. By helping shepherds become profitable, Shave ’em to Save ’em is helping to ensure the survival of the sheep. It would be an agrarian disaster to witness the extinction of those breeds that have already managed to survive the trials of time.

Gulf Coast Gulf Coast sheep have been in the western hemisphere since the earliest explorers arrived in the 1500s. They have enjoyed a variety of monikers including woods sheep, Florida native, Louisiana native, and scrub sheep. They have also been simply known as common sheep. Gulf Coast

34 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

sheep are experts at doing something that few species—particularly ones with wool—are able to do. They can survive in brutal, muggy heat and for several centuries were the predominant sheep to be found in the Southeastern United States.

Today they are on the Livestock Conservancy’s critically endangered list, meaning there are fewer than two hundred annual registrations and less than two thousand of the breed unique to North America.

The introduction of “improved breeds” focusing on wool quality and production signaled the beginning of the end for the Gulf Coast, causing their numbers to plummet. But the Gulf Coast possess qualities far more precious than a gossamer shawl; they are Olympians at resisting parasites and foot rot, which in wine-speak is akin to a vineyard free from the ravages of gray mold and black rot.

Current research has shown that their adaptability to various climates makes them especially important as the planet’s climate begins to change more quickly. They have thrived in temperatures above 100 degrees and well below zero.

Although most Gulf Coast sheep have white wool, there are some browns and blacks, and even a few with spotted faces. Their fleece is particularly easy to wash owing to a low level of grease, and as a result, it dyes evenly. Unwashed fleeces average four to six pounds with two-and-a-half to four-inch staple and fiber diameter of twenty-six to thirty-two microns. The wool can be inconsistent—some wavy, some crimpy. It is excellent wool for blankets, sweaters, and felting.

Top: Jacob sheep flock. Below: Clun Forest ewe.

Clun Forest Photos courtesy of the Livestock Conservancy.

The Clun Forest, a white sheep with brown legs and face, hails from the land of fairytales. Located in the southwest country of Shropshire, Clun Forest is the setting for the English fairytale of Eadric the Wild and his sylph-like wife. The plot follows the time-honored storyline: man falls in love (with a fairy). They enjoy unremitting bliss until one day the fairy vanishes and the man dies of a broken heart. The end.

Sadly, it may soon be the end for the sheep as well.

The Clun Forest was originally brought to the United States from England in 1970. Then in 1974 the North American Clun Forest Association was established, and it prohibits showing, a policy unlike those for most breeds. And it only allows rams to be registered if they were born a twin. The association does this to emphasize prolificacy of the breed. Historically, this was a triple purpose breed used for milk, meat, and wool and the sheep were particularly noted for their mothering wildfibersmagazine.com 35

Due to the U.S. government’s sheep improvement programs that used Navajo-Churro for cross-breeding with other breeds, purebreds almost became extinct in the 1860s. abilities and milk production. They are a polled breed, meaning that they are naturally hornless, and are now found across the United States and Canada.

The Clun Forest is on the conservancy’s threatened list, with less than one thousand annual registrations and a global population of less than five thousand. Although typically regarded as a meat breed, the Clun Forest has a fleece that is a must-try, particularly for beginning spinners.

The fleece is six to eight pounds with an average staple length of about four inches and a micron count of twenty-five to thirty-three.

“With distinctive crimped topknots on their heads and dark brown faces, Clun Forest sheep produce creamy white fleece that is fine and uniform in texture,” says Margaret B. Russell of Antrim Handweaving in Byfield, Massachusetts.

“Their high-quality wool is soft and springy, providing versatility for fiber artists.”

Navajo-Churro The Navajo-Churro, which is unique to the United States, is also on the threatened list. This is particularly shocking because in the early 1800s there were flocks with as many as twenty thousand sheep in the Southwestern United States. Like the Gulf Coast sheep, they arrived in the New World from Spain in the 1500s.

Although they were used for meat, their wool became famous because it was used in creating Navajo blankets and rugs.

Due to the U.S. government’s sheep improvement programs that used Navajo-Churro for cross-breeding with other breeds, purebreds almost became extinct in the 1860s. According to the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association, the only survivors were in remote villages or canyons.

Conservation efforts began in the 1970s when there were less than five hundred sheep left.

The Navajo-Churro thrives in extreme climates, from the sizzling hot desert to below-zero 36 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

temperatures.

“The Navajo-Churro is a breed that is very strongly influenced by its environment, developed in the harsh desert landscape of the Southwest,” says Carol Ekarius, author of Storey’s Guide to Raising Sheep and The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook. “Churro wool is fascinating to work with: the breed shows an array of colors, and is known for a double coated fleece (there are both a soft fine fiber, and a more coarse fiber in the same fleece). The Churro’s fiber can vary significantly from year to year, and animal to animal. It is durable enough to be the basis of the famous Navajo rugs, yet many fleeces are soft enough for next-to-skin items such as hats and gloves.”

The sheep can be polled or have two or four horns. Rams weigh 160 to 200 pounds with ewes at 100 to 120. Like most heritage breeds, they are excellent mothers. Fleeces are double coated and average four to six pounds. They don’t produce much lanolin, making it easier to clean their fleeces. Their wool comes in a variety of colors, from black to white and silver, blue, brown, and red. They can also be spotted. This provides variety for shepherds and fiber artists alike.

Tunis Ten Tunis sheep originally came to this country from Tunisia as a gift from the Bey of Tunis to George Washington in the 1700s. They quickly became the most popular sheep breed in the mid-Atlantic region, owing to their ability to survive in hot climates and possessing a tasty, fat carcass. And then came the Civil War, signaling the loss of many things including the Tunis, which would have collapsed into extinction were it not for the tireless efforts of Col. Maynard Spigener. Tucked away in the bottomlands of South Carolina’s Congaree River, Spigener managed to retain the only purebred flock of Tunis

left in America until 1892 when he sold ten sheep to J. A. Guilliams and had them shipped to Putnam County, Indiana.

Tunis are born red, with fleece gradually lightening to ivory as the lambs mature, while the legs, head, and ears remain red. Lop ears are a unique characteristic of the Tunis, which have very little wool on their heads. They are considered dualpurpose although historically more emphasis has been placed on breeding for meat. An old article from Wool Markets and Sheep states, “Butchers say they don’t have to feel a [Tunis] lamb to know if it’s fat; they’re all fat.”

The fleece, which averages seven to twelve pounds, is considered medium-grade wool with a staple length of three to five inches.

“The American Tunis is very much the result of human selection for its unique color. It’s a midrange wool with nice luster and crimp, making it suitable for producing a worsted-weight yarn,” says Ekarius.

Toia Rivera-Strohm, textile designer at VonStrohm Woolen Mill, says, “The Tunis wool is a great all-purpose wool which wears well. For most items I prefer it over Merino, hands down.”

Shave ’em to Save ’em isn’t complicated. It doesn’t need to be. It does, however, provide a clever platform to solve the growing distance between producers and consumers, while educating people on the importance of these endangered breeds in a changing world.

“Every breed has unique fiber, developed over centuries to meet a specific environmental niche—climate, soil, landscapes—or to meet a particular human need, or to meet a combo of environmental and human needs,” says Ekarius.

“This means that each breed offers something different, and the more breeds you work with, the more you find the ability to experiment on different kinds of projects.”

Perhaps someone will even start suggesting which wines “pair well” with certain sheep.

A glass of Chablis to go with your Florida Cracker, perhaps?

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Threatened Conservancy Breeds Critical: Fewer than 200 annual registrations in the United States and estimated global population less than 2,000.

Florida Cracker Gulf Coast or Gulf Coast Native Hog Island Santa Cruz Threatened: Fewer than 1,000 annual registrations in the United States and estimated global population less than 5,000.

Black Welsh Mountain Clun Forest Cotswold Dorset Horn Jacob—American Karakul—American Leicester Longwool Lincoln Navajo-Churro Romeldale/CVM Watch: Fewer than 2,500 annual registrations in the United States and estimated global population less than 10,000.

Oxford Shropshire Tunis Recovering: Breeds that were listed in another category and now exceed watch list numbers but are still in need of monitoring.

Shetland Southdown Sources: https://livestockconservancy.org/images/uploads/ docs/PriorityLivestock_2018.pdf

For more information, please visit:www.livestockconservancy.org

wildfibersmagazine.com 37

Pangong Craft Center, the next step...

Story and Photos by Linda N. Cortright

T

here is only one way to reach the Pangong Craft Center in eastern India and that’s by car. It takes five to six hours, serpentining through the High Himalayas along mostly dirt roads, which in some places are actually wide enough for two cars. But drivers typically keep one hand next to the horn, offering a quick toot-toot alert as they approach one of the gazillion blind curves along the route. Huge army convoys are inevitable.

Perilously perched in the outside lane with a 200foot drop just inches from the door, ginormous army trucks squeeze by as drivers instantly fold in their sideview mirrors to keep from hitting another vehicle. During the summer months, there is a steady stream of vehicles ferrying Indian tourists to Pangong Lake, now made famous by the Bolly-

Right: One of the spinners walking to the center; at 14,500 feet, it is a jaunt that would leave most Westerners gasping for air and ready for a nap.

38 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

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wood-style film The 3 Idiots. This avalanche of movie star devotees flock to Pangong, sometimes just for the day, taking selfies by the turquoise waters, enjoying a chai, and then returning to Leh. There isn’t much else to do at 14,500 feet, unless, of course, you are headed to the Pangong Craft Center.

From Pangong Lake, the craft center is another thirty-minute drive.

Because of its proximity to the Chinese border, entry to this area requires a special permit, generating mountains of paperwork (carbon paper still flourishes in India) and a raft of government signatures.

Although I am the center’s co-founder along with Konchok Stobgais, I cannot drop in. Every time I want to visit, Stobgais must apply for a permit months in advance, stating my purpose, providing all my documentation, and, of course, paying a fee. When I went four years ago to Phobrang—the actual village where the center is located—I was the first American to ever set foot there. Now, there have been dozens in the name of Wild Fibers.

This past May I decided to spend a week at the center, working directly with the women. It was the first time since the center opened that I had spent an extended length of time with the ladies without the accompaniment of either a tour group or volunteer instructors. Predominantly because it is impossible to get a group permit for more than just a few days. Stobgais was hopeful that if only my name was on the applicaTop: Konchok Stobgais helping Tashi Dolkar figure out the pattern repeat.

Middle: Tashi Palzom selects an intricate pattern for her neck warmer.

Bottom: Nawang Dolma enjoying the sunshine.

40 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

tion, we would get the green light for the week’s training. Fortunately, he was right.

From the beginning, the center has always felt like a sweet blend of international efforts, consisting of hundreds of donors from the United States and beyond, tireless work by so very many locals, the gracious assistance of government officials, and a huge serving of goodwill juju.

Since its doors opened in August 2015, the center has garnered additional support not only from Wild Fibers visitors, but also from Tundup Wangail and Stanzin Dorjai, two of Stobgais’s former classmates who have made numerous visits to volunteer at the center. Wangail, a policeman by profession who works at the airport in Leh and often welcomes my tour group the moment we step onto the tarmac, has been invaluable, working as a translator and helping to teach the women new knitting stitches. Stanzin, the award-winning film director most noted for The Shepherdess of the Glaciers, a spellbinding documentary about his sister, one of the few remaining shepherdesses in the High Himalayas, assists with translation at the center. He also produced Perfectly Twisted, a brief film about the center’s evolution and mission. Stanzin plans to return for his second visit to the United States this fall* and has kindly requested that many venues show both films so that audiences will understand the interdependence between his sister’s work and the center’s.

At the end of my first day of teaching, I crawl into my sleeping bag on the center’s kitchen floor. Stobgais and Stanzin are in sleeping bags in the next room and I can hear them laughing so hard, it makes me laugh just listening. For them, it is as if the clock has been turned back twenty years to when they would stay up late at boarding school. Sadly, these moments are not captured on Stanzin’s film. The next morning— before 6 a.m.—Shankar, the army officer, walks into my bedroom/kitchen. The temperature outside is seventeen degrees and he is wearing multiple layers under his army jacket. At least that’s what I assume until he flashes a huge toothy smile and begins handing me packets of cookies and chocolate he has stuffed under his coat—I

suspect items squandered from the officers’ mess. I sit up in “bed,” pulling the sleeping bag up under my chin while he proceeds to make us tea. I no longer feel self-conscious, entertaining from my sleeping bag. In fact, a few years back, before the center was built, I needed to meet with several local officials one evening to go over some paperwork. I had fallen asleep in my room waiting for them and when they finally arrived around 10:30 p.m., they all pulled up chairs around my bed, where I stayed wrapped and warm. The meeting commenced.

At least Shankar is bringing me chocolate.

Minutes later, Stobgais and Stanzin emerge and now the four of us are drinking tea and laughing—Shankar is always laughing, and I am still in bed. Before 7 a.m., the first woman arrives.

She has walked nearly thirty minutes in the cold morning sun, her knitting project carefully tucked inside a cotton blanket cum handbag.

She has a question about her knitting gauge and wants me to check it before she goes out to work in the fields for the day. May is planting season and the women already have busy schedules.

Ideally, I should be conducting this teaching in January, but my schedule thus far hasn’t permitted it. And frankly, I’m not sure my bones would either.

When the center was created, the first goal was to teach the women to spin cashmere with consistency compatible to Western standards. As seminomadic people, their spinning had always been for personal use and minor, so-called flaws of inconsistencies were of no regard. Spinning cashmere for the Western market, however, required greater attention to detail, which became a learning curve in and of itself. The next step involved taking the very best spinners and teaching them to use a spinning wheel as opposed to their traditional support spindle. Although the production rate is almost the same for both, plying on a wheel goes infinitely faster than on a spindle. After three years of rigorous practice, the overwhelming majority of the women at the center—which now totals 131 members—spin with daunting perfection. It is only the beginners, or those with aging eyes, wildfibersmagazine.com 41

who fall short of the mark. But I assure you, most Western spinners would still ache to spin half as well as they do.

Now that the women have established consistency within the yarn, which we will begin wholesaling in 2019, the next step is to begin developing a modest line of handknit items and thus, the reason for my weeklong visit. As with spinning, most women learn how to knit at a young age, typically from their mothers or aunties. They make vests for their husbands, and assorted sweaters, hats, and mittens for their children, but never out of cashmere. They use the wool from their sheep, occasionally blending it with yak, and the finished product is decidedly warm if not, well…a bit itchy. Knitting with cashmere, however, is utterly sublime.

Because knitting has always been on the center’s long-term agenda, we began teaching the women how to read patterns from knitting books several years back, hoping that when it was time, they would easily transition to knitting with cashmere. This training, however, was

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the first test and part of me feared it might be akin to letting a teenager learn how to drive in a Cadillac. But these women were already experienced “drivers,” having practiced with wool, and I believed they were ready for the test. The one thing they needed to understand—like knitters everywhere—was the importance of making a knitted swatch to evaluate their gauge. Although we were starting with neck warmers, which are far more forgiving in terms of size than a sweater or even mittens, it was still important to get the appropriate number of stitches according to the pattern, and that was where the challenge of this teaching began.

The center has developed an impressive library of knitting books, including a very generous donation by Myrna Stahman of her book Stahman’s Shawls and Scarves, featuring intricate patterns used in the uniquely designed seamen’s scarves from the Faroe Islands. Rather than dictate what pattern the women should use for the neck warmers, I told them to go through the books, choose a pattern they liked, and from there, we

When the women work on the road crews, they are always transported in an open truck—sometimes as far as twenty miles. During the spring training session, women had already committed to doing road work for the month would get dropped off at the center after a long day of crushing rocks. It was a welcome respite to enjoy the comfort of the center and knit with cashmere.

would create a swatch and determine the gauge.

Hence, my early morning student, anxious to ensure she had correctly calculated her gauge.

Aside from the obvious economic benefits the center provides for the women, I have always believed that their work should include an element of pleasure. For the vast majority of Westerners engaged in fiber crafts, the motive is decidedly just that; a creative outlet, the ability to both learn and do something fun without pressure or judgment. In short, a break from what is likely a stress-filled, competitive world, which many of us inhabit. I wanted the women to enjoy selecting a pattern. I wanted them to enjoy the process of watching their creations unfold from their fingertips. In short, I wanted them to share the same benefits that propel so many of my fellow fiber enthusiasts. The fact that this also provided them with much needed income merely

enhanced the overall process.

For those who have ever taken a knitting class, or, truthfully, any class, do not make the mistake I once did and assume that the same rules of teaching apply to a room full of seminomadic women. Nearly all the women at the center are illiterate and hence, they have no formal classroom training. They learn everything from each other, so that is also how they learn to read knitting patterns and make a gauge. With Stanzin never far from my side, I sit on the floor amid a huddle of ladies, showing them how to measure four inches next to their knitted swatch, enabling them to figure out how many pattern repeats will be required to make the neck warmer. I think I am explaining it with step-by-step simplicity, but all the women really need is to examine the swatch and look at the measuring tape a few times, and they have the whole thing wildfibersmagazine.com 43

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figured out. Really, they do. Westerners are taught by books; nomads are taught by watching. There are a few women who always seem to catch on first. They are the ones who then provide help to the others.

Honestly, by the end of the second day my role is rather superfluous, with one exception. I have decided that in looking toward the future, I want to expand our product line.

Although cashmere is, and always will be, the center’s primary focus, it also limits our customer base to those who can afford this luxury fiber. In keeping with our mission to create value-added products from the animals the nomads raise, Stobgais and I believe that in a few years, we will be able to process yak wool, thus opening new opportunities for both yarn and garments. Consequently, I have brought several pairs of brightly colored woolen leg warmers with me, along with a duffel bag stuffed with vivid yarns so the women can start experimenting. For the moment, I am asking them to duplicate the pattern from the sample, but they can use any color combination of yarns they want, causing everyone to descend on my duffel as if it were a ruptured piñata. Furthermore, the leg warmers include a bit of embroidered adornment coupled with small sequins. Oh yes, a bit of Bollywood finally comes to Phobrang!

I give the ladies a choice; they can work with brightly colored wool or with cashmere. Either decision allows them an element of creativity, something that is desperately lacking when they are working by the side of the road, smashing rocks into small stones for the Army’s road crew. Stobgais and I hope that in time the demand for products will keep the women employed on a nearly year-round basis (they will always need time off during the warmer months for planting and harvesting). For now, it is keeping them both employed and warm during the most brutal parts of winter, and just as important, it is providing a safe place for them to bring their children. In the short time since the center opened, I have watched tiny babies become toddlers. It is a sight that confirms a feeling deep in my heart that these women, their children—along with my three Himalayan “boys”—are my family.

No wonder I don’t mind the long, perilous drive to Pangong. It is the F road to home.

w

For more information, including on the film Perfectly Twisted, please visit: www.pangongcraftcenter.

Nawang Dolma entertains a young toddler (note the handknit hat) with a drop spindle.

DESTINATION ANTARCTICA Story by Linda N. Cortright

After nearly three decades of dreaming, and saving, the author's trip to Antarctica comes perilously close to sinking in a stream of chaos and human error.

O

n New Year’s Day my alarm went off at 5:45 a.m., allowing just enough time for me to enjoy my tea in bed before embarking on a thirty-eight-hour journey to Fin del Mundo, the “bottom of the world” as Ushuaia is called, and then on to Antarctica where I would officially celebrate my sixtieth birthday.

Approximately fifteen minutes later my bedroom lights flickered and then everything went dark—darker than the inside of a cow. There wasn’t a storm whipping outside my window, toppling power lines like a fallen house of cards. In fact, the forecast was surprisingly mild despite temperatures that had refused to tread much above zero for the past week.

I sat in bed, holding my mug of tea, and waited. Five minutes later I was still waiting. The mug was empty. Typically, when the lights flicker one of two things happens:

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A chinstrap penguin overlooking Fournier Bay. Photo courtesy of John Terr y.

either the team of electrical elves that work for Central Maine Power (CMP) seize upon the cause of the failure and correct it within minutes, or my world becomes a finite black hole.

I was beginning to sense the latter.

I live deep in the woods. I can’t see my neighbors and they can’t see me. It’s better for everyone that way. But the benefits of remoteness come at a price. During power failures, CMP prioritizes its fix-it elves to the areas with high population densities. My little hamlet is way down the list, possibly at the bottom. I know this because a storm blew through most of Maine last November and the CMP outage report for my county alone was eleven pages. My street stood proudly at the bottom of page eleven. For six days I lived by the woodstove and candlelight, venturing out as needed to my local coffeeshop, laptop in one hand, phone charger in the other. Six days is the longest outage I have ever experienced, but losing power is not uncommon in these parts, and bringing my business wildfibersmagazine.com 47

to a grinding halt for even one day is problematic.

Admittedly, I am not well versed in making mature decisions but that was exactly what I did after that fall outage. Rather than take some of my precious savings and flee to a remote destination, the island of Tristan de Cunha (they raise sheep there), I decided to invest in a backup generator for my house. In the event the lights flickered, the generator would automatically start up with a roar. Gone would be the days of standing outside in my bathrobe, yanking the life out of the jiggle string on my portable generator, which powers only a few items while making more noise than a stampede of leaf blowers.

Nay, life would carry on as usual with my new generator.

On this particular morning, the first morning of the new year, which I suspected might be eerily prophetic, my brand-new generator did not automatically turn on and begin happily humming because the gas company had yet to complete the final phase of the hookup. So there it sat outside my window silent as the dead.

There would be no shower before departing on my five-flight sojourn south. No washing of hair. No blow drying of same. Teeth brushing

took place with the remaining water in my electric kettle, before I remembered that I still had to take my pills, which I choked down with a hasty cache of spit. The temperature outside was minus seventeen degrees Fahrenheit. Inside, it was rapidly dropping below fifty degrees. I dressed in the dark and searched about my bedroom with my phone/flashlight in hand, looking for those few last-minute items I had intentionally waited to pack. I called the dog sitter and explained the situation, and because she does not live in a remote setting, of course she had power. For the first time in many years, I was traveling with more than just a backpack and a carry-on. I was going to Antarctica after all, and with my tour to the The Falklands afterward, I wouldn’t be home for a month.

I wended my way down the stairs, my obese duffel thumping behind me, stuffed it and my backpack and carry-on into the car, and then, without thinking, hit the button for the electric garage door opener. My door spans the length of a two-car garage and lifting it manually requires so much exertion it’s a wonder I didn’t rupture something or lose bladder control.

I started the car, turned the heat to roast, and began my journey, wondering, if only for a moment, if this was a sign of things to come. I’m not superstitious but sometimes the universe sends you these signs and you do your utmost to ignore them. Then again, sometimes the universe—like all of us—gets moody and little glitches are no more than just that. This inexplicable outage was possibly the result of a global hangover.

I arrived in Boston a few hours later and was relieved to see my flight to Miami was on time. Upon landing Looking out over the Beagle Channel in Ushuaia, "fin del mundo" indicates you're standing at the end of the world, unless one is bound for Antarctica.

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in Miami, I checked the departure board and thankfully, the fight to Santiago, Chile, was also on time. In the meantime, my dog sitter informed me that the power had been restored.

It appeared the morning’s hiccup was not an omen after all.

I should mention there’s a reason I don’t travel with checked luggage. Optimistic by nature, I have limited faith that I will arrive at my destination at the same time as my bags. I once checked a bag in Namibia and didn’t see it again for two months. Since my travels have yet to include anything that even remotely requires formal attire, I need only a couple of shirts, a few pairs of pants, and a change of socks and I’m good to go almost anywhere. (In hindsight, I was way overpacked for Antarctica.)

So it was not without a certain measure of anxiety that I posted myself like a sentry beside the baggage carousel in Santiago, watching the misshapen phalanx of suitcases go round and round, and seeing them decrease in number with each rotation. I began to reflect on the curious fact that although the power company did not think I was a priority, the airline did, offering me priority boarding, giving the occasional upgrade, and slapping a bright yellow tag marked “priority” on my sole piece of checked luggage. After ten minutes of hypnotically watching the carousel spin, I saw the belt stop completely (reminiscent of the morning’s power failure). The power wasn’t off. It merely signaled all of the bags had been offloaded and mine was not among them.

This was why I didn’t check luggage. I hated this feeling. I knew it wasn’t personal. But some part of my insecure psyche felt like it was my karma to lose luggage. I stood quietly for a moment, gearing myself up for the inevitable paperwork that would ensue for me to eventually be reunited with the missing bag. (Did I mention it was brand new?)

My connecting flight to Punta Arenas, a sweet little town at the tippy-tip end of southern Chile, didn’t leave for another hour, but I still had to check in and clear security. I was walking toward the American Airlines baggage

desk when I noticed my new blue and tan L.L. Bean duffel bag sitting off to the side in a row with no less than a dozen yellow tagged bags. I grabbed it with all the relief of a mother grabbing her child who has gone missing at the carnival, and as I continued to the door, I noticed two baggage handlers hovering around the carousel for the flight that had just arrived from Houston. They were snatching all the yellow tagged bags and lining them up in their own separate row. Apparently, the baggage grabbers are a “perk” of priority tags.

Now, if I had spent more time traveling with a checked bag I might have known about this courtesy valet service of sorts for priority travelers. But I didn’t. And if I had not traveled with a readily distinguishable blue and tan duffel, I suspect I would have walked right past that line of yellow tagged lost children.

My own ignorance aside, the trip was actually unfolding without issue.

The check-in counters for Sky Airlines, Chile’s version of low budget travel, had enough people standing in line to form a small country. Fortunately, I had paid the extra $15 in advance for an economy plus seat, which also meant—you guessed it—I was now priority check-in. You know things are bad when agents start canvassing the check-in line, calling out flights that are due to take off momentarily. I still had thirty minutes, but the line wasn’t moving, and I was silently wishing I didn’t have a bag to check. I had done this route for the past four years without any checked luggage, and typically zinged through customs, flashed my e-boarding pass at security, and arrived at the gate before the agent, if not the flight crew.

This time I finally reached the counter and handed my passport and paper ticket to the agent. I hoisted my bag up on the scale and as I was pawing through my backpack looking for a mint, the woman looked up at me and speaking in a heavy accent asked, “What time eez your flight?”

I thought the question rather odd. I had just handed her my ticket with the flight time on it.

“Eight forty-five,” I replied. wildfibersmagazine.com 49

She smiled and nodded in agreement.

“Plane eez late—twelve hours.”

My eyes popped.

“Twelve hours? Can I change to a different flight?” I asked, knowing the airline had several daily flights to Punta Arenas.

“Twelve hours.” She smiled.

“Yes, yes, I know. Twelve hours. I get it. But can I change to a different flight?”

She smiled again. “No speak English. Only little.”

Now, if you want to know what separates seasoned travelers from non, it is this particular junction when you seriously contemplate leaping over the ticket counter with a demonic look in your eye and demanding to be put on a different flight. Thus guaranteeing that not only will you be put on the last available flight, you might not be allowed to fly at all.

Instead, I calmly and so very, very sweetly asked if I could speak with someone who spoke English since the issue, I suspected, was one of communication and not flight availability. And, to be blunt, the fault was mine, not hers. English is not Chile’s primary language.

She seemed to motion for one of the supervisors, but they were still canvassing the masses and calling out flights, and now the line of people behind me in priority check-in extended nearly to the curb. I looked back at the line and asked if anyone spoke English. No luck.

I waited nearly fifteen minutes. The agent did not help anyone behind me. No one moved.

Then again, no one seemed to be moving anywhere. When the supervisor arrived she asked, in perfect English, “How may I help you?”

I explained that my flight was delayed twelve hours and I wondered if I might be able to switch to a different one. The supervisor consulted with the agent. Even when agents are speaking English, I always think they’re looking down at the computer, deciding if they should make me wait or not. Now the supervisor looked back up at me. “Your flight is delayed until twelve o’clock—not twelve hours,” she said.

Lord have mercy; never had I been so excited about a three-hour delay. I thanked her pro50 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

fusely, stopping just short of bounding over the counter to hug her, while the agent proceeded to check me in and tag my duffel. Then off I went.

On the chance you might find yourself going through the security line in the domestic terminal in Santiago, I want to tell you, you will love it! They don’t care about your computer, your cell phone, or any type of small electronic device. They don’t care if you are wearing a parka that could take you to the South Pole and boots to match. If you have just grabbed a venti latte from Starbucks—fear not. I once saw a man walk through with a sixty-four-ounce bottle of Fanta!

All you do is show them your ticket, plunk your stuff on the screening belt, walk though the x-ray machine, and collect your stuff on the other side. Admittedly, the international side of the terminal is a bit more stringent. But I wasn’t going to be running that gauntlet until the end of the month.

For the next three hours, I alternated between slumping in a chair like a mental patient doped on Thorazine (because that’s what most people look like after thirty hours of travel and no sleep), and running back and forth like a drug sniffing dog as the airline kept changing the gate. I dashed down to gate thirty-four, and then scurried over to gate seventeen, back to gate thirty-four, before finally boarding at gate twenty-six.

At twelve o’clock, or twelve hours, depending on your command of the English language, we took off. The flight to Punta Arenas, including a brief stop in Puerto Montt, was to take four hours and by dinner time, I would be in my hotel room, overlooking the Strait of Magellan with just one flight left before reaching Fin del Mundo.

Puerto Montt is one of the gateway cities for visiting Torres del Paine, the hiking mecca of South America. The flight had a generous complement of uber fit tourists, including tribes of young trekkers who had already forsaken bathing in anticipation of their wilderness adventures, along with the not so young trekkers,

still mindful of personal hygiene. Upon landing in Puerto Montt, they grabbed their gear from the overhead compartments and jostled their way single file toward the exit, while I alternated between chicken-necking from fatigue and gazing out the window at the luggage being offloaded onto the trolleys. My seat mates, who were nice but clearly of the non-bathing variety, disembarked and I wondered who would replace them.

I looked out the window again and suddenly recognized my blue and tan duffel. It had been offloaded from the plane and was sitting on the trolley bound for the abhorred carousel.

“That’s my bag!” I yelled, forgetting that no one on the tarmac could hear me.

I studied hard for a moment longer to be sure it really was my distinctive blue and tan duffel. By now, the old passengers were gone and the new ones were beginning to board. It would not be long before I heard the familiar phrase, “The cabin door has been closed. Please power down your portable electronic devices…”

I had to act fast.

I went over to the flight attendant and hastily described my problem, realizing her command of the English lan-

On the chance you might find yourself going through the security line in the domestic terminal in Santiago, I want to tell you, you will love it! They don’t care about your computer, your cell phone, or any type of small electronic device.

wildfibersmagazine.com 51

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guage was only marginally better than that of the woman back at the check-in counter.

Note to self: When traveling abroad on el-cheapo airlines, don’t expect bilingual personnel.

Because this was a matter of some urgency, I naturally started speaking faster, which only exacerbated the situation. So I modified my plea to several succinct sentences accompanied by the appropriate hand and body gestures.

“My bag is off the plane,” I began, pointing to the window where she could see they were offloading the luggage. Then I mimicked carrying a suitcase three steps down the aisle with my arms outstretched at either side, holding imaginary luggage.

“This is bad.” I extended my index finger and made a slicing motion across my throat—the universal gesture for death. “This is not my destination.”

“Please, get my bag. I am going to Antarctica!”

For a brief moment I entertained the idea of waddling like a penguin down the aisle, but I stopped short, realizing that “Antarctica” sounds the same in almost any language.

The flight attendant asked for my baggage claim ticket and then disappeared off the plane. Any semblance of inner serenity was shattered. On the outside, however, I remained calm albeit looking slightly stoned from fatigue. I returned to my seat by the window and anxiously waited to see my bag returned to the plane. A few minutes later a different flight attendant came and told me I needed to change my seat to eleven C for the flight to Punta Arenas.

“Nooooooo,” I cried. “I can’t change to an aisle seat halfway down the plane. I need to stay right here in one F and watch for my bag.” But there was no use arguing and a man was hovering above me with a ticket for my seat.

What airline changes your seat midway through the trip?

Answer: an el-cheapo one!

I grabbed my backpack and reluctantly trundled down to eleven C. I couldn’t see anything beyond the stream of new passengers bumping and thwacking their way past me.

A commanding herd of guanacos in Torres del Paine, Chile.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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On the positive side, if the crew failed to return my luggage to the plane, at least I knew where it was, and there was still another flight that day, stopping off at Puerto Montt and then in Punta Arenas. On the other hand, it might not get on that flight, and I was flying to Ushuaia the following day on a flight that only went twice a week. The next flight wouldn’t leave until after my ship had sailed. Literally.

The flight attendant came down the aisle and handed me my baggage claim ticket. She said my bag had been returned to the plane. Apparently, it had the wrong ticket on it.

The wrong ticket?

I gushed with relief at the good news. Once again, I would be reunited with my “lost child.”

But a part of me, the part that inherently doesn’t trust checked baggage, wondered if she was telling the truth. Of course she was going to tell me my bag was back on the plane. There isn’t a flight attendant in the world that wants a post-menopausal, jet-lagged woman going mental on a flight.

Just as the announcement came on saying the

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“cabin door has now been closed, blah-blahblah,” I flashed back to my dark—very dark— bedroom from the day before and thought, it was an omen after all!

Ordinarily, I am delighted to see the Strait of Magellan as we approach the airport in Punta, as we frequent visitors call it so we can sound hip. But my thrill was tinged with dread.

Though there really wasn’t a single thing in my bag that I couldn’t live without. The ship to Antarctica would give us a jacket. It would loan us a pair of boots. I was already wearing a heavy sweater, and my sixty pounds of camera equipment and small electronic devices I had with me.

Why had I talked myself into bringing a bunch of crap I didn’t need?

Okay, so in part, because I didn’t want to smell like the young unwashed hikers who had just departed.

I didn’t rush to the baggage carousel in Punta.

I sauntered casually down the stairs in the hope that maybe—just maybe—the bag would actually be there when I arrived.

Idiot.

In fact, none of the bags had been offloaded.

The carousel was empty. After twenty minutes or so, the motor kicked on and I could hear the brakes of the luggage trolley squeal behind the plastic curtain as the bags thudded onto the belt.

No duffel.

I got ready to walk away and head to the Sky Airlines counter. (And this is where I should mention that Sky Airlines lost my bag the first time I flew to Punta five years ago. Recidivists!)

But then the other carousel geared up and out popped a dozen more bags, including my duffel. By all rights, it should have been a teary reunion, but I just wanted to get to my hotel. I did, however, look down at the tag and as I had been told, there was another person’s name on my bag. This led me to believe that my tag was on her bag, which was probably circling here in Punta Arenas, going unclaimed while the owner was no doubt staring at an empty carousel back at Puerto Montt.

Relieved to be four flights into a five-flight journey and still have my bags, I checked in to my room at the hotel with its humongous window overlooking the Strait of Magellan and did the one thing I shouldn’t have. I crawled into bed.

I woke up at midnight, feeling perfectly rested and hungry. My flight to Ushuaia, however, was not for another eleven hours.

Most people don’t travel to Ushuaia by way of Chile, but I was leading a tour to The Falklands directly after my trip to Antarctica and the only way to reach The Falklands (by air) is to fly from Punta Arenas. The Argentines are still holding a grudge from the Falkland War in 1982 and as such, limit the commercial use of their airspace for flights bound for The Falklands to one flight a week. This restriction effectively caps the island’s tourism industry to a single plane load, which sells out months in advance during the summer season. There is a military flight from England that services The Falklands twice a week, but typically there aren’t more than thirty seats available for civilians and a

seat costs upward of $2,000.

After a few hours of reading and musing about my upcoming adventure to Antarctica, I finally fell back asleep. The alarm went off at 7 a.m.

This time, tea in bed and lights on.

Apparently, I had shaken the travel curse.

Polar Latitudes, the cruise ship company I had chosen, uses the only five-star hotel in Ushuaia for its pre-departure overnight. Effectively, all the ship’s passengers stay at the hotel since arriving the day of departure is even crazier than traveling with a checked bag. There was another cruise ship company that had chosen the same hotel and its passengers were departing the same day as we were, making for more than 200 guests, on two different ships, sailing for Antarctica almost simultaneously.

I don’t spend much time in five-star hotels. In fact, I haven’t spent any. It’s dangerous to pollute your psyche with unobtainable luxuries. In this instance, it couldn’t be helped, and I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t get used to the heated swim-in/swim-out pool that overlooked the mountains of Tierra del Fuego and the Beagle Channel while frost formed on my eyelashes. (In hindsight, I was subconsciously preparing for my swim in Antarctica.)

The day I was to board the ship, I was filled with more excitement than I could readily recall feeling in my adult life. I had wanted to go to Antarctica for the past thirty years but never imagined that someday I would actually have a ticket to take me there. When I was growing up the only people who went to Antarctica were fabled explorers, and later on an elite band of researchers. I was neither. It had taken me years of saving to make this dream come true.

Without question, I have had more than any one person deserves of exotic travel around the world in the name of Wild Fibers, but Antarctica was a trip without any professional urgings or requirements.

As per the hotel’s instructions, we placed all of our baggage in the lobby by 9 a.m. Every bag was marked with a Polar Latitudes tag, including name and cabin number. On the opposite side of the lobby, the other ship’s bags were wildfibersmagazine.com 55

similarly marked. We were given the option to take a four-hour bus tour through the national park while the ship was readied for our arrival, but I had already visited the park the day before and chose instead to explore the town for a few hours.

“Don’t check your camera equipment with the luggage in the lobby” we were instructed before leaving. Apparently, it would be thrown onto the luggage truck with little regard for its safety. Instead, our camera bags and other personal items could be kept secure in the hotel’s luggage room, where we could fetch them before departing for the ship.

Got it. I was perfectly happy not dragging around sixty pounds of camera equipment while I shopped for cheap souvenirs. I dropped my bag with the valet and took the little shuttle into town.

Had Argentina not begun more than a century ago muscling with Chile for a land grab that now comprises Tierra del Fuego, Ushuaia would never have made it on the map. Fin del Mundo

Shepherding for the fiber artist.

Shepherding for the future.

National Romeldale CVM Conservancy www.nationalcvmconservancy.org

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is every bit as remote as it sounds, and in order to keep the Chileans from encroaching on their land, the Argentines decided to establish a permanent population base. It would take some serious public relations to coax people away from their chic city digs and tango clubs in Buenos Aires to relocate to Ushuaia.

Not surprisingly, the government didn’t find many volunteers. So, if people weren’t willing to move there, the government decided to force them—it built a prison. And in so doing, the government not only created a permanent population base in Ushuaia, it also recruited the necessary staff to run the prison.

My cheap souvenir mission to town unexpectedly morphed into a visit to the prison, forever changing my view of Ushuaia as an exotic, remote outpost. It closed its doors as a correctional facility in 1947, but its reincarnation as a museum enjoys a measure of popularity (Trip Advisor gives it 4.5 stars) that is inconceivable in view of its ostracized beginnings.

I returned to the hotel on the shuttle at exactly 2 p.m. The bus down to the ship left at 3:15 p.m. After years of anticipation, I found myself grinning at pretty much everyone. If I wrote romance novels, which I don’t, or if I read romance novels, which I don’t, I would have said I felt like the bride of Antarctica on her wedding day.

I dashed over to the valet to grab my bag of camera equipment and he motioned me to the door of the storage room so I could fetch it myself.

I walked in and saw a handful of bags. Not one of them was mine. I quickly inspected each one, frantically running my hands along the sides to see if somehow my bag had changed both shape and color in the past four hours.

“My bag isn’t here!” And this time, there was nothing patient or polite about my cry because inside my bag was my passport.

No passport. No Antarctica.

My panic meter went from zero to a thousand in less than a second.

I looked over at the valet, the same one who had checked in my bag that morning, insisting

I didn’t need a ticket, writing my hotel room number on a piece of masking tape and affixing it to the side. (How does a five-star hotel not spring for a $3 roll of tickets?)

“Where is my bag?” I asked again, and the man looked at me and shrugged.

I went out to the front desk, hoping someone there could help me but during the few minutes that I had disappeared into the empty luggage room, a bus load of new guests had disgorged at the entrance and were now queued six deep to check in.

I hate line jumpers, really I do. But I had a ship to catch in less than an hour. I was the bride!

As graciously as I could, with a chorus of “excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me” I maneuvered to the front of the line and told the clerk what had happened.

“My bag was not tagged for the ship, because you told us not to. It was not out in the lobby with the others, because you told us not to. And now it’s gone…” I sensed I was on the verge of slumping over the counter and starting to speak in one protracted wail. “And I’m not going to Antarctica and it’s my wedding day…”

All those years women are trained not to cry because they should always retain a sense of decorum are nothing but a bunch of hooey. If you want a man to do something for you and do it fast—cry! There isn’t a man on this planet who can tolerate a crying woman for more than twenty seconds and I sensed I was going to start bawling momentarily.

The desk clerk disappeared for a moment—he went to get backup. The general manager appeared and together we inspected the luggage room. Satisfied that my bag really wasn’t there, he got on his walkie-talkie and even though he was speaking in Spanish, put out an all points bulletin to the hotel staff for my bag.

They called the agent down at the ship, but it was pointless. There wasn’t a Polar Latitudes tag on the bag, nor had it been in the lobby.

Someone had taken it, or, even worse, it was on the other ship!

The manager told me to sit down in the lobby while half of Ushuaia began looking for my bag,

Outside the museum entrance in Ushuaia, visitors are greeted equally by an explorer and a prisoner.

and as they did, that other voice inside of me began to speak. Not the one that believes it’s my karma to lose luggage, but an even darker voice.

The voice that said somehow I didn’t deserve to go to Antarctica. The voice that comes from the darkest demons of your soul and that no amount of therapy (or medication) can silence. I looked at my watch; it was 2:50 p.m. Less than half an hour before the bus to the ship left.

I sat there, taking one deep breath after another.

A few minutes later, the front desk clerk called out and motioned me to take the phone. It was the ship’s agent.

“We found your bag!” she sang out, sounding singularly triumphant.

“Really? Are you sure? Where was it?”

“It was in your cabin,” she replied.

But my heart began to sink.

“How many bags were there?” wildfibersmagazine.com 57

Marching along the crest of the Antarctic peninsula. Photo by Linda N. Cortright.

“Two: a small black one and a blue and tan duffel.”

“Nooo…there should be three in total. Those are the two that have the tags on that I left in the lobby. This is a small red backpack with all my camera gear and passport.”

Silence.

“Okay,” she answered, the voice of victory having been wrenched from her throat. “We’ll keep looking.”

I hung up the phone and shuffled back to my chair. It had been such a big buildup and such a big letdown. I was too distraught to weep.

Ten minutes later the bus pulled up out front and everyone began to gather their things. I continued to sit. Amid the mounting chaos and excitement, there was a place in my heart that ached with dread.

The general manager appeared and caught my eye as he began walking toward me. He was smiling.

“They have found your other bag, Mrs. Cort right.”

“Are you sure? Really?” I gasped.

58 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

“Yes, it has all of your camera equipment and your passport in the inside compartment.”

Now I was sensing I would cry from relief, but I had to ask, “Where did they find it?”

It was in cabin 333, the exact same number as the hotel room I had stayed in.

“I’m very sorry,” he continued. “This should never have happened. Your bag should never have been removed from the luggage room.” The remorse was genuine.

I looked back and smiled. “It’s okay; mistakes happen.”

I took my seat on the bus and as we drove down the long hill toward the ship, I looked out at the Beagle Channel and the tears finally began to fall.

I was going to Antarctica after all. In spite of a power failure, a flight delay, a mislabeled bag, and a missing one. In hindsight, my travel karma was exemplary to have survived all that. And after twelve days in Antarctica, it was worth every moment of angst and agony leading up to it—call it pre-wedding jitters.

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60 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

THE SWEATER'S TALE Story by Leslie Petrovski

T

Nearly every moment of Shackleton's ill-fated voyage to Antarctica has been documented. And yet, why does no one seem to know about his signature sweater?

here is something about a man in a gansey sweater. Even a dead one like Sir Ernest Shackleton, who looks handsome and rugged enough in his turtleneck that you could almost imagine waiting for him on Elephant Island, months after your ship has been abducted by Antarctic ice, taking all hopes of survival with it.

For those not up on your polar expedition history: Ernest Shackleton was a polar explorer who led the ill-fated Trans Antarctic Expedition to traverse the southernmost continent coast to coast. Two days after having left the last port of call, the ship—the famous Endurance—ran afoul of pack ice and eventually became ice bound, trapping the crew for months, until the force of breaking ice in the Southern spring crushed the ship and sent it to its watery grave. The crew survived by living on floes of melting ice, finally decamping in lifeboats to the uninhabited Elephant Island. After months of surviving on penguins, seals, and porridge augmented with blubber, Shackleton and a few men set out in treacherous seas to South Georgia Island to seek help. Ultimately all twenty-eight men returned home after having been marooned for almost two years. Though the expedition did not

achieve its stated goals, Shackleton was hailed a hero for bringing his entire crew home alive.

Could it be that Shackleton and his crew were able to overcome impossible adversity because of their sweaters? While that’s probably an overstatement, textiles can be a window into almost anything, the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration included. Shackleton’s sweater—any garment, really—is imbued with personal history, customs, agricultural practices, knitting traditions, technical apparel knowledge, and the manufacturing conventions of the time. Shackleton’s sweater, then, is more than a sweater; it’s something we can read for insights into the early twentieth century, the man’s personal life and the type of expedition-quality clothing available at that time. His sweater begs countless questions: Who knit it? Was it fashioned by machine?

Was it part of a kit he cajoled from a corporate sponsor? What kind of wool was it made from?

Does the sweater or its remnants still exist in a maritime museum somewhere or family collection? And where to start?

Though I held little hope of finding Shackleton’s turtleneck from the vantage of my office chair in Denver, I thought some intrepid Left: Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Photo courtesy of Royal Geographic Society.

wildfibersmagazine.com 61

Knitted as they are on tiny needles and requiring the circumnavigation of a man’s chest, ganseys are hard-wearing acts of love.

Below : The crew of the Endurance on Elephant Island. Photo courtesy of the Royal Geographic Society.

62 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

Googling might yield a few threads. I knew the sweater was a gansey; most passionate knitters recognize a gansey when they see one. Knitted in the round on impossibly small needles (U.S. size 0-1.5s), ganseys are typically single-color, boxy pullovers with ribbed welts, a plain body knit in the round, fancy knit-and-purl stitch work around the chest, and underarm gussets.

Knitted as they are on tiny needles and requiring the circumnavigation of a man’s chest, ganseys are hard-wearing acts of love.

Ganseys were traditionally knit tightly using a five-ply wool yarn, presumably sourced from British sheep. Ganseys proliferated during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as work wear for British and Dutch fishermen, because they allowed a comfortable range of motion and their tight wool stitches resisted wind and spray. (It’s tempting to call wool nature’s Gore-Tex, because it’s breathable, water resistant, and warm. And for men living in close quarters aboard ship, it staves off odors, too.)

One of the first things to surface in my search was a different sweater, a natural white turtleneck in gorgeous condition listed for auction at Christie’s under the title “Shackleton’s white polo neck Jersey.” Its provenance read: “A gift from Rosalind Chetwynd to Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874–1922), by whom given to Dr. Alexander Hepburne Macklin, 4-5 January, 1922, and thence

Upon Shackleton’s death at the age of forty-seven, the sweater was given to Dr. Macklin, the ship surgeon who attended Shackleton when he had his fatal heart attack on South Georgia ... by descent.” It sold in 2012 for 9,375 pounds or about $15,000.

I wondered whether Rosalind Chetwynd was a family friend who had presented the great explorer with a thoughtful gift. Shackleton had married Emily Dorman in 1904 and they had three children together. But as I dug deeper, it turns out that our hero, when he was onshore, not only found a way to be a family man but also had several lovers; there are numerous glaciers and mountains dotting Antarctica named for his paramours, and all indications are that he and Rosalind, an American-born actress whose stage name was Rosa Lind, carried on an affair of some years.

George Plimpton writes in his biography of Shackleton, “By an odd coincidence Shackleton’s landing on South Georgia Island after his open-boat voyage in 1916 was in the lee of a promontory that had already been named Mount Rosa. Perhaps wanting to make sure that his own Rosa got billing, he named the small beach Cape Rosa.”

Upon Shackleton’s death at the age of forty -seven, the sweater was given to Dr. Macklin, the ship surgeon who attended Shackleton when he had his fatal heart attack on South Georgia in 1922, not long after embarking on what ultimately became his last Antarctic voyage. A sad side note: Later that same year, the New York Times reported Rosalind’s sudden passing, with no cause of death given.

I continued to stare at Shackleton, that frank, handsome face, that rugged, perfect sweater, almost as iconic an image as Yousuf Karsh’s 1957 portrait of another Ernest in a sweater—Hemingway. The Shackleton portrait was shot by Australian Frank Hurley, who served as the official photographer of the Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition. Taking dramatic shots of the Endurance as it foundered and sank in the glacial waters, Hurley also documented quotidian life

aboard ship and on the ice as the crew waited for rescue. He shot Shackleton’s portrait circa 1915.

Shackleton was wearing the sweater in question as well as a pair of fur mitts affixed to a biblike harness, also pictured, which explorers used to prevent the loss of their hand gear.

In addition to the extensive collection of photographs Hurley took documenting the voyage, he also maintained a diary, which includes a list of clothing provisions. Hurley wrote that each man on the Endurance received one sweater (Jaeger), one pair Amundsen pattern Burberry boots, one woolen helmet, two pairs mittens, one pair Finnesko (most probably reindeer boots), one Shetland wool jersey, two Jaeger shirts, two Jaeger combinations, one pair Shetland wool mitts, one pair felt mitts, one pair fur mitts, two pairs soft wool bed socks, and two pairs Shetland wool socks.

Though Jaeger didn’t return my emails, Carol Christiansen, the textile curator at the Shetland Museum and Archives, offered insight into Shackleton’s knitwear, saying that the main suppliers of Antarctic expeditions were the companies, Jaeger and Wolsey, but that those garments tended to be plain in style. Shackleton’s sweater was fancier, featuring an attractive basket-weave pattern around the chest. She confirmed, too, that Shackleton’s expedition also used garments produced by a Shetland woman.

“In researching her small company, I’ve determined she probably sold them knitted woollen undershirts and possibly stockings and drawers,” Christiansen wrote. “These were much more woollen in quality so they pilled and were not as strong but very, very warm and lightweight (all hand spun). We have similar garments in our collection made for local fishermen and they are ideal for insulation against cold, wet conditions. The Shetland Archives has a letter from Frank Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command and the leader of the wildfibersmagazine.com 63

crew left on Elephant Island, thanking her for the knitwear she supplied them as it wore and washed well. This suggests undergarments, because these are the main clothes they bothered to wash, given that doing laundry was very difficult for them!”

Christiansen speculates that it’s possible Shackleton’s sweater could be from Jaeger, Wolsey, or another supplier. “I have not seen this style in Jaeger’s catalogues of the period but that does not rule them out,” she said.

Out of desperation, I contacted the Shackleton Company, which sells high-end outerwear along with reproductions of the iconic sweater, and a staff member agreed to forward my email about the sweater to the Hon. Alexandra Shackleton, Shackleton’s granddaughter who is involved with the company. I swooned. “This is it!” I thought.

At this writing, still no word from Shackleton’s granddaughter.

The more I read about Shackleton and the more experts I consulted, it became clear that the

real way to find the sweater would be to find the sweater—that is to embark on my own voyage of discovery, cross the Pond, and rummage around in maritime museum archives and their ilk, a task better left to a patient Ph.D. candidate than to deadline-pressed me.

There really is no way of knowing exactly where that sweater came from unless someone can put their hands on it along with proper documentation. I’m inclined to think it was Jaeger issue. In the reading I’ve done about "The Boss," as he was called, Shackleton doesn’t strike me as a leader who would want to separate himself from his men in any way. He ate what they ate.

He wore what they wore. And when the worst thing possible happened—the sinking of their ship—he set out on what was a most audacious mission to cross a lashing sea and seek help.

“By endurance we conquer,” Shackleton said.

Words to remember for many an occasion.

Particularly if I should ever find myself casting on the 350 stitches necessary to knit a proper gansey!

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Madagascar unimaginable beauty crippled by unimaginable poverty Story and Photos by Linda N. Cortright

66 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

CPALI

an uncommon search for a solution wildfibersmagazine.com 67

Lustrous silk threads have dominated commerce and defined cultures for thousands of years.

However, entomologist Catherine Craig believed the silk cocoon could be equally enticing.

M

achetes, money, and murder: the un-holy trinity of commerce that dominates Masoala National Forest, a protected area on Madagascar’s northeast peninsula. Amid staggering statistics of deforestation and flagrant corruption, the rosewood trade has made millionaires of a few and rendered death to many. Chinese ships filled with millions of ariary (Malagasy currency) anxiously wait at anchor while local villagers risk life and limb, transporting precious timber over granite precipices, spongy rice fields, and raging waterfalls. It is a journey that can take several days for a single log traveling to the coast. Men die during this perilous transport; drowning and falling trees are some of the risks, but vigilante justice can be equally fatal to those trying to interfere with this lucrative trade. The retail value of a container ship full of rosewood is upward of $12 million. The cutter’s pay—about seven bucks.

It’s a high stakes game of Survivor that’s been playing out for decades. The situation in Masoala is so dire that even the most audacious angels are apt to shrug their wings.

Catherine Craig is an entomologist—she knows a thing or two about wings. Known as Cay, she was originally drawn to Madagascar on a Fulbright Scholarship as an outgrowth of her studies on spider silk. Cay became enchanted, if not academically obsessed, with Antherina suraka, a wild moth indigenous to Madagascar. Over the course of fifteen years, Craig’s intellectual interests ultimately evolved into establishing the nongovernmental organization Conservation Through Poverty Alleviation International (CPALI), a tree-saving—and potentially lifesaving—project using silk cocoons.

Convinced this is a story I want to pursue, I spend two hours on the phone with Kerry O’Neill, CPALI’s assistant director. I ask Kerry the best way to get to Maroantsetra where she worked with CPALI as a Peace Corps volunteer. Maroantsetra is the largest city near the protected areas of the Makira Forest and Masoala National Park, and the surrounding villages where the cocoons are harvested.

“You want to see the farmers?” she asks, sounding a bit surprised.

“Yes. Of course.” I always want to see the farmers. “They are at the heart of all my stories.”

Silence.

Left: Ceranchia lar vae.

Opposite page: Ceranchia moth.

Photos courtesy of Kerr y O'Neill.

I can hear Kerry take a deep breath before answering.

“First, you have to get to Maroantsetra. But I wouldn’t recommend taking Air Madagascar—they call it ‘Air Mad,’ you know. They cancel their flights all the time, sometimes for weeks!”

I let that information digest for a moment.

“What’s my next option?”

“You could go hire a driver in Antananarivo. There is only one road that goes directly to Maroantsetra from Tana [the preferred abbreviation for Antananarivo]. As roads go, it enjoyed its fifteen minutes of fame as a feature story on the BBC’s Most Dangerous Road series, with more than twenty-five river crossings and multiple drives both along the beach and through the ocean. It’s possible the road could be flooded or a bridge could be washed away. But if everything goes right, it takes about five days.”

I can tell by Kerry’s tone that despite the challenges, she much prefers this option to Air Mad’s dubious scheduling. However, five days traveling up means five days traveling back. Ten days of travel coupled with two days of flights coming and going from the United States are turning an exciting story into a cumbersome expedition.

“Is there another option?” I ask, trying not to sound disheartened.

“Of course! You can take a combination of taxi-brousses to the port in Ile Sainte Marie, and then take a commercial fishing boat. It’s about thirteen hours on the boat, but you must be careful in case the seas are rough. The boats have been known to capsize.”

I draw in another deep breath and repeat, “Is there another option?”

Kerry pauses and finally suggests a five-star resort adjacent to the national park.

The guests arrive from Tana via a charter flight. “Perhaps you can arrange something with them.”

The term “five-star resort” sounds daunting to my budget. To put things in perspective, however, it is infinitely more doable than getting stranded (indefinitely) due to a canceled flight or drowning (permanently) in a fishing boat. I write down the name of the resort, determined to at least investigate the possibility. Before I hang up, I ask one last question.

“Once I’m in Maroantsetra, how long will it take to reach the farmers?”

“Oh, that’s just a two-day walk, and you can stay in any village along the way.

They will provide you with a sleeping mat and some rice.” She seems happy to finally give me some “good” news.

At this point, I suspect some editors might be tempted to look elsewhere, and for more than a minute, I consider doing just that. But never in all my fiber-ly travels have I seen silk cocoons sewn together into fabric, much less in the name of both poverty alleviation and conservation.

Less than five minutes pass before I am Googling the five-star resort, Masoala Forest Lodge, and composing an email, Opening page: The bay at Masoala Forest Lodge.

Inset: CPALI worker hanging cocoon fabric.

wildfibersmagazine.com 69

Rice fields near Masoala Peninsula. Photo courtesy of Kerr y O'Neill.

pleading “fiber desperation.” Not only will a brief stay at the lodge ensure reliable transport to and from Maroantsetra, but once there, I will be picked up by the lodge’s boat—much safer than a commercial fishing vessel—and make the remaining one-and-a-half-hour trip to the lodge versus a two- or three-day walk. I can visit with farmers, and yes, enjoy a night or two in an idyllic tent by the sea.

I hit send and wait. In the meantime, I begin reading endless warnings online about flying on Air Mad and doing the epic drive from Tana to Maroantsetra. One post cautions against using an unseasoned driver, advising that just because a bridge is standing does not mean it can withstand the weight of a vehicle! Other posts discuss taxi-brousses breaking down. Taxi-brousses are Madagascar’s public transit system, consisting of minivans that traverse the country.

If you’re lucky, you might get a seat for part of the ride, but more likely you’ll stand in the back with people jammed closer than in a New York subway. For those who recommend attempting this insane adventure, I am quite sure not a one is older than thirty. Masoala Forest Lodge 70 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

is looking like a more affordable option all the time.

The following morning an email from the lodge arrives. The angels have begun to flap their wings and I make my reservation for the middle of June, just before the rainy season, which starts in July.

My first week in Madagascar (see Famadihana, page 6) convinces me that choosing not to go to Maroantsetra by hired car or taxi-brousse was a brilliant decision. At 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 17 (exactly on schedule), I step onto the tarmac at Maroantsetra’s airport. The runway is a disquieting scene of potholes and rifts as wide as my thigh. A group of four women, two children, and a large chicken stand in the airport doorway, hoping to sell me a raffia basket or two. We exit through a different doorway, quashing their only sales opportunity for the day.

I will stay in Maroantsetra for several days before traveling to the lodge, visiting the workshop where they make the cocoon fabric, and talking to Mamy Ratsimbazafy, director of Sehatry ny Mpamokatra Landy Ifotony (SEPALI) or the Organization of Wild Silk Producers, and his wife,

A group of four women, two children, and a large chicken stand in the airport doorway, hoping to sell me a raffia basket or two. We exit through a different doorway, quashing their only sales opportunity for the day.

Lalaina Raharindimby, the assistant director. SEPALI is the Malagasy farming branch of CPALI. Everything about my first day in Maroantsetra extinguishes any shred of angst it took to get here. Ensconced in a thatched hut within earshot of the ocean and definitely within smelling distance, I am greeted with a freshly picked coconut, impaled with a straw, and by Docey Lewis, CPALI’s design director. Docey is completing a two-week training seminar at the workshop, which she has done for the past three years. It soon becomes apparent that Docey has wings that beat as well.

“You’ve brought the sunshine!” Docey says as I sit down, firmly gripping my coconut vessel with both hands. Originally from the East Coast, Docey fled the college scene and moved to Palo Alto, California. It was the peak of the 1960s.

The era of all things tie-dyed and hippy hangouts. Docey returned to school studying everything from psychodrama to poetry. But after one class in weaving, she was hooked.

I have come to this corner of the world to learn about silk cocoons and reforestation, and suddenly I am in the bygone era of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. But as Docey and I sit chatting under the proverbial sway of the palm trees, her international trajectory into the world of fiber-based design is both fascinating and uniquely serendipitous.

Her initial weaving success in California morphed into contracts with major department stores, including I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue, eventually mandating that she expand production. By the early 1980s, Docey was running a weaving factory in the Philippines to fulfill orders in the United States, necessitating that she move there full time with her two young children. Docey not only possesses impressive artistic talents, but she is well versed in the challenges of working in de-

veloping countries, having spearheaded projects for Aid for Artisans and other organizations in Russia, Morocco, Nepal, Jordan, and Bangladesh, totaling thirty-five in all.

For most of the current training, Docey has been teaching shibori dyeing to the CPALI workers. “We have been fighting the rains almost every day,” Docey says, sounding neither frustrated nor defeated, just stating a fact.

“What can you do?”

The workshop is closed on Sundays, but Mamy and Lalaina kindly agree to talk with me anyway.

By midafternoon Docey and I head over to meet them (the workshop is also their home), walking first along the beach where both men and women are working the fishing nets, and then down a dirt road with small wood homes on stilts lining either side, most not more than fifteen-byfifteen-foot squares.

“This road was completely flooded the past few days,” Docey tells me. “The water nearly came to my knees.” I no longer wonder about the stilts.

Beautifully fluent in English, Mamy and Lalaina are easily able to answer my questions.

The story of CPALI unfolds, revealing a tale of

The welcoming/retail committee at Maroantsetra airport.

wildfibersmagazine.com 71

send Mamy on a mission to Maroantsetra. Armed with nothing more than his backpack and a notebook, Mamy spent the next six months roaming the area adjacent to the Makira Forest, looking for larvae. If he could identify where the suraka laid their eggs, then the next step was easy; CPALI would teach farmers how to plant the proper host tree, and once it had matured, they would be paid to collect the cocoons, which would subsequently be developed into a range of silk products.

But first, Mamy had to find the tiny white eggs among thousands of hectares of forestland. On more than one occasion, Mamy confessed, he sat Mamy Ratsimbazafy, director of SEPALI. Photo courtesy of Kerr y O'Neill. down in the forest and cried, fearing both commitment and occasional comedy. he would never find the eggs and even Mamy was attending the university in Tana worse, feeling desperately homesick for his famwhen he met Cay. He was studying to be an ily back in Tana. But his eureka moment finally entomologist. He had been fascinated by butter- happened. Mamy discovered suraka larvae living flies since childhood. Asking Mamy the reason on the talandoha tree and one day later, he was for this particular fascination was tantamount to on a plane back home. What Mamy didn’t realize asking someone why they prefer red over blue, was that he would soon return to Maroantsetra, or green beans over baked beans. They simply responsible for setting up farming groups in do. Mamy loves them. So much so, in fact, he fifteen communities. He would teach them not was approached by Perry Ross, a Frenchman liv- only how to properly plant talandoha seedlings, ing in Tana, who collected butterflies to put in but also the delicate art of sericulture. art display boxes, which were then exported and Silkworms are surprisingly fragile, vulnerasold back in France. Perry hired Mamy to collect ble to predation and disease. They get stung by butterflies and moths, paying him one dollar for mosquitoes and die. Geckos eat them. Rats eat every ten pristine bodies he delivered. them. Even stink bugs think they’re tasty, piercEnter Cay Craig, gripped with Antherina sura- ing the larvae with their mouths and sucking out ka fever and, in particular, their silk cocoons. the insides. Silkworms that reach full maturity, Cay met Mamy and they bonded instantly over morphing into spectacular moths, still aren’t out bug love. But the relationship took a new turn of the woods—so to speak. Suraka moths can when Cay discovered that Mamy had a stash—a suffer from lethal sexually transmitted diseases, huge stash—of suraka cocoons, which he had rendering the mating process a complete failure. amassed for ease of gathering the mature moth Mamy eventually grabs his computer and leads to satisfy Perry’s demand, and help pay for his me though a PowerPoint presentation on the education. suraka life cycle, along with impressive statistics As Mamy explains, Cay could barely contain on SEPALI’s impact. I am transfixed. Since its her enthusiasm when she learned he had bags inception in 2009, SEPALI has provided reforand bags of the very cocoon she was interested estation by planting more than 30,000 trees. One in. Within hours, Cay made arrangements to moth needs five trees to survive. However, it can 72 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

produce 250 eggs. Once the cocoon is spun, the farmers cut the cocoon in half and remove the larvae, which are raised in a protective basket.

CPALI is officially Certified Wildlife Friendly®.

However, larvae are an important source of protein in Madagascar and some farmers prefer to eat Ceranchia larvae and/or sell them, increasing the value of their crops.

What does rearing silkworms mean to the farmers living on the fringes of the Makira Protected Area and the Masoala National Forest?

Simply put—everything.

Living in one of the poorest countries in the world, most Malagasy exist on two dollars a day.

In Maroantsetra, it’s closer to one dollar a day.

The sanctions placed on most of the peninsula’s forestland displaced 300,000 people from major resouces and potential income. Saving trees and

saving lives are often seen as mutually exclusive.

CPALI is trying to change that.

In 2010, CPALI paid farmers 60,000 ariary (U.S. $17) per kilo of cocoons. As CPALI began developing a line of silk products and securing a stable market, the price was raised to 90,000, and then 120,000 ariary. The cost of sending a child to a public school for one year is 100,000 ariary (U.S. $34). The price of a private school is 40–50,000 ariary per month.

Lalaina explains that cash in hand is still a relatively new phenomenon for subsistence farmers. Rice is a common currency in the marketplace, its value fluctuating according to the season. Typically worth about 700 ariary per cup (U.S. $0.20), rice increases in value to 2,000 ariary (U.S. $0.60) during the hot season.

One chicken might cost fourteen cups of rice, or

Docey Lewis (pink blouse) and Lalaina Raharindimby (white shirt) remove a piece of shibori fabric from the dyepot. Photo courtesy of Kerry O'Neill.

wildfibersmagazine.com 73

grow long. Don’t play a game similar to kick-the-can near a tomb. And please…please… don’t defecate in the same place twice! For both social and professional reasons, it is imperative Mamy observe the taboos particular to each community and family. Originally from Tana with its own set of taboos, Mamy has found working in Maroantsetra with his fellow countrymen to have a steep learning curve.

CPALI initially worked with a jeweler creating a range of colorfully dyed silk earrings and pendants. However, since the cocoons needed to be cut in half to obtain the larvae, they weren’t suitable for spinning. But that wasn’t the only challenge. Suraka moths preSEPALI's tree nurser y. Photo courtesy of Kerr y O'Neill. fer to spin their cocoons on the ground, typically in a pile three times that depending on the time of year.

Beyond the educational and conservation ben- of leaves, making for really dirty cocoons. The farmers had to be extra vigilant when it was efits, rearing silkworms doesn’t possess the inherent dangers endemic to harvesting rosewood. nearing time to spin the cocoons, fetching the Farmers don’t have to leave their homes for days larvae from the trunk the moment they began crawling toward the ground. And even when at a time, traveling deep into the forest with the cocoons weren’t covered in dirt, they were the possibility of never returning. In fact, in an naturally a shade of dark brown, which meant effort to provide maximal ease of access, CPALI mandated that farmers not travel more than one hour from home to tend to their trees.

It took CPALI several years to establish and stabilize its farming sector. During that time Mamy was on the road more often than not, visiting each community and meeting with the farmers, some of whom had likely been involved in the rosewood trade, and justifiably so. Beyond the challenges of teaching farmers how to properly plant the trees and harvest the cocoons, Mamy explained the need to understand what’s fady for each community. Fady means taboo and the rules are anything but universal.

Eating eels or goats is generally considered fady.

And if you sing while eating, your teeth will Protective shelter for larvae to hatch. Photo courtesy of Kerry O'Neill.

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a limited palate for over-dyeing. And thus, a new moth, Ceranchia apollina, was brought into the CPALI fold.

Like suraka, Ceranchia (sir-an-CHEE-ah) is a wild moth native to the Makira Protected Area and Masoala Forest. It does not burrow into the leaves to spin its cocoon. It’s quite content to stay easily accessible (and clean) on the tree, which means farmers don’t need to be standing on guard twenty-four/seven as the larva matures. The cocoon itself is so loosely spun, there’s a natural opening to remove the larva without cutting it in half. And fiSewing cocoons at the workshop. nally, there’s the Ceranchia’s luminosity, which makes for dazzling silk products—a fact that invigorates Docey’s imagination.

The following morning Docey and I return to the workshop. A dozen women, plus a few men, are gathered around the various work stations creating small squares of cocoons that will eventually be connected like a patchwork quilt to create a spectacular piece of fabric.

Along one wall, half a dozen women are ironing cocoons. Using charcoal-fed irons, they dip the cocoons into a bucket of water and then press them open. Next, they separate them into three grades, depending on size and quality. The optimal Ceranchia cocoon is a four-inch square with no visible stains or residue. wildfibersmagazine.com 75

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At the center of the workshop, a giant breezeway open on three sides, is a large table with six sewing machines, chattering away. The cocoons are sewn together along the perimeter to create a square with eight cocoons, which are then sewn in patchwork fashion to create the finished cloth. Even without dyeing, the play of texture and translucency makes for stunning material. I have never seen silk’s luminescence showcased so strikingly. In the front yard, some of Docey’s shibori fabric is drying slowly— very slowly. Drawing from both her innate talent and vast experience all over the world, the range of products that could be produced from the cloth is endless, from lamp shades, to couture clothing, to wide-brimmed hats. And that is just the beginning, except for one issue. Shipping.

Madagascar does not have favorable shipping rates. To mail practically anything larger than a letter out of the country for less than $100, the item must be flat enough to fit in a large envelope. “We could do so much if it weren’t for the shipping constrictions,” Docey says, as she leads me back to the storage room where some of her

potential.”

At last year’s New York Gift Show, Donna Karan walked by the booth. Stopped. Looked.

And bought—everything! She wanted the fabric for accent pieces in her boutiques—not clothing. Docey is busy putting the final touches on this year’s product line, hoping it will be equally productive.

In a room adjacent to the “cocoon steamers,” a woman sits on the floor weaving strips of raffia that have been treated with Cushing dyes.

Drawing on her experiences in Southeast Asia, Docey knows there is great potential with raffia, and the local women are already accustomed to working with it, making baskets of every description. For months prior to leading the workshop, Docey has been feverishly working in her studio, creating new patterns with woven raffia that she can teach to the women. She stands in front of a row of eye-catching woven bands, grabs a few in her hands, and says, “Wouldn’t these look wonderful as sandal straps?” And in that moment, I can see the boundless nature of her creativity. And yes, they would make gor-

creations sit neatly stacked on the shelves.

My fiber fever is now fully engaged as I look at the different styles of dyed fabric. “The unique style and price make it more appropriate for the art market than mainstream consumers. Our goal is to find the right designers who can see its

geous sandal straps—I’ll take two!

Approximately a dozen people are employed at the workshop. They work year-round, six days a week, and receive one month’s paid vacation.

They are not from Maroantsetra. They are from the farming communities where CPALI planted the talandoha trees. Back home, employment op-

Opposite page: Woven raffia bands.

Above: Shibori dyed cocoon fabric.

wildfibersmagazine.com 77

portunities are scarce, bolstering the rosewood trade that much more.

In just a few hours, it becomes clear to me that Mamy and Lalaina are the heart and soul of CPALI. And when Docey arrives for her annual visit, the beating of their collective wings is deafeningly glorious.

The following morning Docey heads to the airport with mild trepidation. Air Mad has canceled its flights for the past five days. However, the hotel manager seems optimistic the plane will come today. Meanwhile, I am off to the Masoala Forest Lodge with farmers (and lemurs) in my sights.

At 9 a.m. on the nose, the boat is waiting for me at a private jetty. Ursula, my enthusiastic (and indispensable) guide, has just made the one-and-a-half-hour trip from the lodge to both greet and escort me. We are going to hike around Nosy Mangabe, an island two kilometers offshore in Antongil Bay. Part of Masoala National Forest, the island is protected, and among other things (like lemurs) it is known for its soaring canarium trees, whose cavernous roots are used to build canoes.

In the short trip between the jetty and Nosy Mangabe the sun has disappeared—possibly forever. Fiendish clouds have subsumed the skies, unleashing enough rain to sink the planet.

Ursula and I are standing at the base of a steep trail. “You might want to put your hood up,” she suggests. Actually, I’m thinking I might want to get back in the boat and take cover. For the next two hours, we hike around the rainforest, looking at exotic geckos, chameleons, and a plethora of flora, the names of which I will never remember. I am building up so much sweat under my raingear, I will certainly be growing mold by dinner. Only special kinds of people enjoy hiking in a rainforest and I am not one of them.

The boat ride from Nosy Mangabe to the lodge is about two hours. The rain has stopped but the seas have picked up. I am glad to be in a solidly built motorboat as I watch the fishermen in their dugout canoes rise and fall behind the ocean swells. Suddenly, the captain calls back to Ursula. She goes to stand beside him at the 78 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

wheel along with the first mate. They are pointing at something on the horizon. The captain pushes hard on the throttle as we change course.

Ursula calls back to me, “We think there’s a boat in distress.” My heart drops.

Within a few moments, we pull up alongside a fishing canoe bobbing aimlessly in the water. The boat is empty. We look at one another in unspoken horror. I start scanning the water along with the others. We can neither see nor hear any sign of hope. There is complete silence outside of the gurgling thick, black sea. All the guide books warn that the Gulf of Antongil is notorious for sharks.

Far off in the distance the captain spots another fishing canoe. We leave the empty canoe behind and speed over with the waves smacking our boat broadside. As we get closer, we can see there are two men in the canoe; fishermen typically go out solo. My hopes rise as we finally get close enough for the captain to call out. There is a brief exchange, and no one seems alarmed.

Within minutes we are back on course for the lodge, although it takes much longer for the alarm in my heart to fade.

Masoala Forest Lodge is the perfect blend of Gilligan’s Island meets haute cuisine. My bungalow, a stilted tent with a thatched roof, running water, and a hammock, is less than one hundred feet from the shore. I would like to spend the remainder of the afternoon in the hammock, but I am here to work. I tell Ursula I need to go to the village. After all, it is the farming community that has brought me here. Ursula explains we won’t go to the village until Friday when people there will be prepared for my visit. For a moment, I worry I am being viewed as that guest who incites a flurry of scrubbing and dusting in preparation for my arrival. In reality, it means they will leave their fieldwork early so I can enjoy some traditional song and dance. “We can go walking in the forest now,” Ursula suggests. And before I agree, I look up at the sky. It has taken the past two hours in a speedboat to dry out from my last “walk in the forest.”

For the next two days, I get a crash course in the flora and fauna endemic to the Masoala Pen-

Red-ruffed lemur.

insula. I inform Ursula that in the event she sees a snake, she should avoid pointing it out to me, unless I’m about to step on it. “I don’t like them either,” she confesses.

Approximately one hundred different species of lemurs live in Madagascar, but less than a dozen can be spotted (with luck) in Masoala, including the red-ruffed lemur, the white-fronted brown lemur, and the aye-aye. And even fewer can be properly photographed by me, lacking a telephoto lens the size of a canon. Despite the seeming paucity of lemur species, the Masoala Peninsula is one of the most biodiverse places on earth, offering ecosystems ranging from coral reefs to midaltitude rainforests. It is estimated that the forests of the Antongil Bay watershed contain 50 percent of Madagascar’s biodiversity, yet it comprises less than 2 percent of its land

mass. During the endless hours I spend sloshing and slipping through the rainforest, we meet only one other person, a scientist from Peru who has taken a few days off from his research to visit the peninsula. Thirty years my junior, he has chosen the three-day walk from Maroantsetra to get here, sleeping in villages and dining on bowls of rice. I decide not to recite what was on the menu the previous night at the lodge. But I am certain that for the rest of my life I will never enjoy a tastier meal of fresh fish accompanied by a mango salad.

The morning of my visit to Ambodiforaha, the village, the skies are dark, the sea is raging, and the rain shows no sign of abating. Purportedly, the rainy season is still a few weeks away but weather patterns in today’s world hold as much certainty as a crystal ball. Still, I am hopeful for wildfibersmagazine.com 79

a patch of sun.

At 2 p.m., Ursula and I set out on foot for Ambodiforaha, tucking my camera equipment into a dry pack. We are both carrying umbrellas, which offer much needed protection but are a bit unwieldy for ducking under branches. More than once I misjudge the distance and smack head-on into a sagging limb ushering forth a torrent of water over everything, dry pack included. We have to cross several rivers to reach the village, a feat that can ordinarily be accomplished by delicately navigating a series of well-placed rocks or walking to the outlet by the sea. Today, we roll up our pants, and what I initially assume will involve a brief soaking to my shins results in a wading up to my thighs. I pause to wonder why I am still carrying an umbrella.

There is one last river to navigate before reaching the village and as we approach, I see the lodge’s captain waiting for us with a small inflatable. In anticipation of our journey, he has

come down in advance to ferry Ursula and me across the deep water. It takes more time getting in and out of the boat than the actual ride, but I am grateful for the assistance.

Although Ambodiforaha is not part of the SEPALI program, it does offer valuable insight into rural life on the Masoala Peninsula, underscoring the importance of providing additional income to subsistence farmers who, for years, have relied exclusively on resources from the now protected forestland. Employment opportunities are all but nonexistent in this soggy Eden.

Luckily, for this village, the lodge is close-by and for those fortunate enough to work there, they are not likely to leave.

My welcome begins at the preschool, which was donated by the lodge’s owners, Pierre and Marie, and which their two children attend. It’s Friday afternoon, and like children of any age, the students are ready to start the weekend. But first, they sing for me in Malagasy, French, and

School children enjoying a festive Friday afternoon.

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then English, successfully shattering the cute meter. I have been saving a stash of chocolate coins I brought from home to give the children, hoping in the previous weeks the treats wouldn’t succumb to the heat, but they are still round and shiny. The teacher explains they’re chocolate and with that, many of the children begin plopping the coins in their mouths foil and all. They soon realize chocolate tastes better without the wrapping. After an hour of the children serenading and snacking we begin walking to the center of the village. “We” now includes me plus Ursula, Dash (the lodge’s manager and activities director), both teachers, and all the preschool children. It is still raining, and we are all carrying umbrellas!

Like the houses back in Maroantsetra, these houses are built on stilts and consist of one room, cordoned off by curtains. Cooking is conducted over an open fire and takes place outside the wooden house in a sheltered area, frequently a smaller hut. Everyone farms, but most of their farmland lies outside the village in predetermined areas that have often been in the family for generations. The very same areas that have destroyed precious forestland in the name of survival. Rice is the main crop, but the farmers also grow cloves, vanilla, and coffee. I walk through a coffee grove of about two dozen trees.

The canopy is rich and dense, offering temporary shelter from the rain, but it is also low, and at times I must crouch in half to get through.

Farming is hard work. It is year-round. It is unpredictable. And a single bout of bad weather can wipe out an entire crop. At least that’s what I thought until I learned about farming cloves. Originally introduced in the nineteenth century from Indonesia’s Maluku Islands (aka the Spice Islands), clove trees produce enough that a farmer can survive on the income from just three of them. Once a tree reaches maturity, which takes upward of eight to ten years, the actual harvest takes about a week. The farmers sell the cloves to the local clove kingpin, collect their cash, and go back home. One week on, and fifty-one weeks off. It is an idyllic schedule for a farmer or anyone, unless a cyclone hits and

not only destroys the annual harvest, but also uproots the trees. Suddenly, the fifty-one-week holiday has eight years of no income added to it.

Vanilla is the other cash crop among subsistence farmers, but the harvest is not the same passive process as it is in clove farming. Madagascar produces 80 percent of the vanilla on the global market. Originally introduced from Mexico, vanilla bean pods come from an orchid, Vanilla planifolia, the only orchid that produces an edible fruit. Farming vanilla is not a casual vocation. It requires three years before the vine is mature enough to bear fruit, during which time the farmer must ensure the plants are properly fertilized and protected. When the orchid finally blooms, it lasts only twenty-four hours, during which time the flower must be meticulously hand-pollinated twelve hours within opening. Each flower must be hand-pollinated because the Melipona bee (the orchid’s natural pollinator) never made it across the Mexican border. Vanilla farmers are put to the test during the three- to four-week blooming season, rushing from one flower to the next to guarantee successful pollination. For some, vanilla has been as lucrative as the silver trade. According to The Financial Times, vanilla was trading at $20 per kilo five years ago. Currently it is selling for $518 per kilo, down from a recent high of $600. The price of silver? About $528 per kilo.

The bulk of the profit goes to middlemen and exporters. For a year’s worth of work, a farmer might receive one tenth of the market value, bearing in mind that not only does it take about 250 pods per kilo, but there is the very real possibility of having one’s pods stolen. Thieves come during the night, chopping down unripe vines or sometimes making off with the entire plant. As a result, some farmers have now taken to stamping the beans, like a cattle brand, as a deterrent. Conversely, the vanilla boom time can be followed by a bust. Farmers are known to add nails to large sacks and/or dip them in oil. Madagascar’s vanilla market is volatile at best.

As I walk through the village with my cadre of preschoolers now running in front of me, stomping through puddles and chasing chickens, wildfibersmagazine.com 81

An afternoon of traditional song and dance in Ambodiforaha village.

there is nothing but joy in the air. A bore hole was recently drilled, and the village finally has a supply of safe drinking water. There is a small shop selling everything from candy to tampons, and on the front porch, a teenage girl is competently wielding a machete over a freshly caught fish, causing guts and eyeballs to go zinging across the surface like skipping stones. Finally, I reach the hut where the women are waiting to perform for me. Due to the rain, they can’t dance outside and so thirty of us, including all the school children, perch on the floor as the drumming begins and the singing starts—and so do my tears.

It is in this moment, when “all” that I have seems so very little indeed. It is in watching these women of all CPALI staff in Maroantsetra. ages come together in a way that even the bonds of the most intimate sorority can’t embrace that I reflect on the chasm between the haves and the have nots. There is no beauty in poverty. No beauty in illiteracy or in children unable to grow because of malnourishment.

And there is definitely no beauty in seeing miles of earth ravaged beyond recognition in the name of survival. It is nothing short of miraculous to think that something as small as a silkworm could play a small part in beginning to reshape that picture.

F

w

For more information, please visit: www.cpali.org or www.wildsilkmarkets.com

82 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

FROM OUR CASHMERE CENTER IN INDIA’S HIGH HIMALAYAS

During the past year, the women at the

PANGONG CRAFT CENTER

have improved their spinning skills virtually to the point of perfection!

From its simple beginning just four years ago, with fewer than a dozen women initially showing interest, more than 100 women are now spinning, knitting and weaving cashmere at the center.

Their yarn can be purchased online at

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The center would not exist without the tremendous support of Wild Fibers’s dedicated subscribers.

Thank you

wildfibersmagazine.com 83 89 wildfibersmagazine.com

Whaling station, South Georgia. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

South Georgia's Wooly Past Story and Photos by Robert Burton

84 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

After the end of the seal-tagging program my clothes are filthy and my boots have been ripped by the pups' teeth as I carried them.

More than 50 years ago, Robert Wellesley Burton, an English naturalist, stepped on to the shores of South Georgia, a British Overseas Territory.

Charged with an abundance of youth and curiosity, Burton eventually found himself on the path of a little known chapter in fiber history: seal wool!

wildfibersmagazine.com 85

The author is carr ying a fur seal pup by its hind flippers to a companion for tagging.

O

n January 14, 1972, the weather was awful. It was blowing a gale and the rain and sleet were coming at us sideways. My feet were painfully cold as I slipped and tripped over rocks and splashed through puddles.

I was living on Bird Island, a small island off the main island of South Georgia, a U.K. Overseas Territory (rump of empire!) deep in the South Atlantic and on the edge of Antarctica. With two companions I was catching fur seal pups and marking them with numbered cattle ear tags clipped through their flippers.

The pups found it easier to run over the rocky beaches on four flippers than I did on two feet. I was trying to grab them by the hind flippers, but their wet fur made it easy for them to slip from my grasping hands, clad in soggy, wet gloves. When I did manage to grab a pup, I swung it up and wrapped my free arm round its body, holding it tight against my side so that it 86 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

Over the course of two weeks we tagged 10,000 pups and by the end we were worn out, our clothes ripped, covered in bites, and mightily relieved. could be tagged. Sometimes it would grab my rubber boots as it swung past, or it would bite me, usually where dozens of pups had already bitten me—on either the kidneys or funny bone.

Over the course of two weeks we tagged 10,000 pups and by the end we were worn out, our clothes ripped, covered in bites, and mightily relieved.

This masochistic activity was part of a detailed study of the Antarctic fur seal, a relative of the familiar California sealion, the "performing seal" of zoo and circus.

When Captain James Cook visited the Isle of Georgia in 1775 and claimed it for King George III (better known for losing a larger and more significant possession on the other side of the Atlantic), he commented on the large number of "sea bears" as fur seals were then known. This attracted the attention of British and American sealers who were working their way through seal colonies around the coasts of South America. The first sealer arrived in 1786 and was followed by scores more. By 1820 the beaches had been cleared of fur seals. The slaughter had been horrendous. The seals were bludgeoned to death, their pelts stripped off, dried or salted, and loaded on board for transport to ports in England, New England, and Canton, China.

The reason for our study was to determine how well the fur seals were bouncing back. At the turn of the twentieth century one naturalist visiting South Georgia had declared them extinct. Then an occasional individual was seen, and a small breeding colony was discovered on Bird Island. It grew apace, and more colonies were popping up around the coast of the main island. From all our observations in 1972 we estimated that some 60,000 fur seal

pups had been born on South Georgia. Numbers continued to explode in succeeding years and the population is now over three million. It is an amazing recovery from near extinction.

South Georgia was not the only island group in the South Seas to be visited and stripped of fur seals. In 1820 the South Shetland Islands were discovered, and a swarm of sealing vessels descended in the following year.

Within two years the seals had almost disappeared. Sealers also visited Macquarie, Heard, South Orkney, Kerguelen, and other sub-Antarctic islands. In every place the fur seals were almost wiped out. And everywhere they are returning to their old haunts.

Nearly half a century after tagging all those pups I became interested in the history of the fur sealing industry and, in particular, what the pelts were used for. There are some contemporary accounts by sealers that shed light on their lives and practices on the sealing grounds, but they end when the vessel gets back to its homeport. The writers lost interest once they had been paid and wrote nothing about how the pelts were used. Their accounts were full of shipwrecks and drownings, and life in appalling conditions. So there had to be a good market to make the dangerous voyages to South Georgia and other islands in the South Seas worthwhile.

I began looking into the trade in fur seal pelts in London, which was the world center of the fur trade. My wildfibersmagazine.com 87

Entering a fur seal breeding beach. The bamboo poles are for fending off aggressive bulls.

main source of information has been the British Newspaper Archive. I had no need to actually visit the archive and spend days sitting in a reading room turning the musty pages of old newspapers because the pages have been scanned and are available online.

Newspapers were only beginning to appear at the end of the eighteenth century, which was just too late to catch the start of the fur seal trade. But I was able to find notices a few years later for the sale of cargoes of fur seal pelts and advertisements for fur seal products. I had to be careful because seals from the North Atlantic, like the harbor seal, were often used for shoes, hats, and other garments. So I assumed that "seal" referred to these animals and I concentrated instead on unequivocal references to "fur seal" or "seal of the South Seas."

The result is an imperfect account of two branches of the clothing industry that have never before been chronicled.

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When fur seal pelts first arrived in London there was very little call for them. They were sold to make thin leather for gloves and shoes.

The fur was shorn off and sold for manure before the skin was tanned. Yet it was the fur that later became the basis of the industry.

Since the fourteenth century beaver fur had been prized for hats because it made a stiff, glossy felt. Chaucer's Merchant wore a "flaundryssh bever hat." However, European beavers were becoming rare by the late eighteenth century and the trade in North American beavers was only developing. Most hats were made of a base of sheep's wool, or the fur of rabbits, hares, camels, and other animals, covered with a thin nap of beaver fur.

In 1795 Thomas Chapman, a London trunk maker, found a consignment of 500 fur seal pelts lying unsold in a warehouse and bought them very cheaply for three half-pence (.01 pounds) each. In those days trunks were waterproofed

with a covering of leather or the skins of large animals—usually horses or seals—still with the hair. Chapman very observantly noticed that the underfur on these fur seal pelts was finer than the beaver fur on his new hat and the thought struck him that cheap fur seal fur would make a good substitute for expensive beaver.

Chapman plied his trade in Southwark, in those days a village outside London on the south bank of the River Thames, opposite the Tower of London. It was the center for leather trades, and Leathermarket and Tanner Streets still serve as reminders.

He knew nothing about hat making so he sought advice from a friend in the business who told him that the guard hairs, the natural grease, and the salt used as a preservative had to be completely removed. Others had already tried to prepare fur seal underfur for felting but had failed, so Chapman spent a year experimenting.

Eventually he perfected a procedure that started with the blubber being scraped off and the pelt thoroughly washed in scalding, soapy water in which pearl ash (potassium carbonate— an alkali) had been dissolved. The fat-free pelt was then thoroughly dried in the sun or in a heated room. Next, the pelt was "beamed," or laid on a wooden beam and the coarse guard hairs scraped out with a two-handed blunt knife. After another soaking for twelve hours in warm, soapy water in which barilla (sodium carbonate—another alkali) had been dissolved, the clean, degreased underfur was cut off and thoroughly dried.

The final stage was the skilled operation of "bowing." The dried fur was spread on a table with slots in the surface in a draft-free room and the workman passed a hatter's bow, like an outsize violin bow, over while plucking the catgut. The vibrations agitated the fur so that it mixed evenly, and any impurities fell through the slots. It was now called seal wool or seal down and "assumed a most beautiful gloss."

Chapman was sufficiently convinced of the commercial potential of his seal wool that he bought an additional consignment of 6,000 fur seal pelts also lying unsold in a warehouse. He traveled the country trying to persuade hat makers to buy the new raw material, with little success at first, but as sales picked up he looked for more pelts. He managed to persuade a merchant to send the Joseph, a 130-ton whaling ship, to go sealing near South Georgia by promising to pay the high price of up to six shillings (.30 pounds) per pelt. The Joseph returned to London fifteen months later on June 4, 1799, with 21,000 pelts.

Chapman now suffered the first of his setbacks. Established furriers and hatters regarded him as an interloper and Borra-

Most hats were made of a base of sheep's wool, or the fur of rabbits, hares, camels, and other animals, covered with a thin nap of beaver fur.

Top: Traditional beaver fur top hat.

Below : Sealskin covered chest.

wildfibersmagazine.com 89

daile’s (Beaver Merchants, Furriers, and Hat Makers) conspired to have the pelts impounded by customs on the pretext that the Joseph had avoided paying duty. They also offered the owner and the captain of the Joseph an extra 1,000 pounds for the cargo. Chapman took his problem to Sir Joseph Banks, the very influential botanist who had accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage of exploration and was interested in promoting sealing as a means of improving the economy of the new colony of New South Wales. He immediately arranged for the pelts to be released to Chapman.

One result of this shipment and the high price paid by Chapman was that other skin merchants and furriers started to send ships to the South Seas in search of fur seal pelts. The value of pelts rose from two shillings and six pence (.125 pounds) to thirty-two shillings (1.6 pounds) each, a thirteen-fold increase. Because they had ready capital while Chapman had to borrow money, the large companies were able to squeeze him out by buying cargoes as soon as they arrived at the docks. They also enticed Chapman's workmen who had knowledge of the fur preparation process.

It was now too late to protect the original process with a patent, so Chapman modified it and patented the new process. (At that time taking out a patent was very expensive and involved visiting seven different offices and obtaining two signatures of the reigning monarch.) Originally the fur had been cut from the skin.

In the new process the underfur hairs were stripped out with their roots intact. This had two advantages.

The skin was not damaged, so it could be tanned for leather, and each hair was a little longer, so the yield of seal wool Fur seal section.

90 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

was greater. The disadvantage was that the blunt bulb at the root of the hair prevented felting, so the seal wool was no use to the hatters but, as we shall see, it was better for spinning.

Chapman persevered with manufacturing and selling seal wool, but he was feeling the pinch.

To try to revitalize his fortunes, he applied to Parliament for compensation. Sir Joseph Banks came to his rescue again and arranged for a committee of members of Parliament to hear evidence of Chapman's claim that he was the first person to prepare fur seal fur to be usable for felting and had created an industry that gave employment to many people yet had not benefited from it. The committee decided in favor of Chapman, but it had to report its findings to the House of Commons, which would take a vote on it. Unfortunately, for various reasons, this never happened. Chapman did not get a government payout and in 1811, his financial situation so deteriorated that he was thrown into prison for debt, where he languished for eleven months before being freed.

I have found it impossible to gauge the impact of seal fur on the hatting industry. Hat making was an important industry in England and millions of felt hats were exported every year.

To protect the industry, the Colonial Hat Act of 1732 prevented American hatters from exporting their wares to Britain. This created understandable resentment to add to that of taxation without representation and it might have led to a Boston Hat Party! Yet historians who have studied the felt-making and hat industries in England have told me that they were not even aware of the use of fur seal fur in hats. I have not found any advertisements in newspapers for hats made of seal wool. This is perhaps not surprising as it was a second-class material compared with beaver. In any case, by the last years of the eighteenth century, hats were increasingly being finished with more durable, cheaper, and even more glossy silk, and fur—of beaver, fur seal, and other animals—was going out of favor.

But this was not the end of Thomas Chapman's fur seal process. At one point he wrote, "Shawls are manufactured from it [seal wool], nearly

Chapman was sufficiently convinced of the commercial potential of his seal wool that he bought an additional consignment of 6,000 fur seal pelts also lying unsold in a warehouse. equal in value and appearance to those imported from India."

And Sir Joseph Banks wrote, "At present, the makers of shawls and other fancy draperies purchase a part of the stock [of seal wool] and convert it into various elegant and expensive articles—one of which is a cloth not a little resembling drap de vigogne [vicuña] and sold almost as dear."

No one writing about fur seals had noticed these references to shawls, but a Google search for "seal shawl" led me to a five-centimeter-square piece of fur seal pelt in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design. The accompanying description is "seal down sample for a shawl" and "used in England by Robert and Samuel Fryer of Huddersfield for making cloth and shawls." It is wrapped in a piece of paper inscribed "Turkey down—or seal down—such the Fryers make shawls of." The date is given as 1800–1815.

The Quaker family Fryer was engaged in various branches of the wool industry. They were based in Rastrick, a village near Huddersfield in the north of England where the all-important woolen industry was centered. I found some of the Fryers' business records in the Durham County Record Office and there are references to seal wool dated 1800, some of it obtained from Thomas Chapman. The brothers Robert and Samuel Fryer must then have enlarged their business by building a "seal wool manufactory." There is a stock-take dated December 31, 1802, which includes items of seal wool, seal wool cloth, and shawls. The seal wool came from several London furriers and seal wool dealers: John Harris, Thomas Wontner and Sons, our own Thomas Chapman—and Messrs. Borradaile, his nemesis.

In 1800 the Fryers had taken out a patent for mixing seal wool with sheep or lamb's wool and other fibers. They must have taken up manufacturing seal wool cloth not long after Chapman started processing seal wool in 1796. It is a puzzle how the Fryer brothers became involved with seal wool. The only possible link I can find is that another brother, William, was based in London and in partnership with Joseph in Rastrick. He might have met Chapman and learned about seal wool.

I have since found two more samples of seal wool in local archives. I could easily reach the Sheffield City Archives by train

Lord Somer ville, "Lord of the Bed Chamber to his Majesty King George III"

from my home near Cambridge.

I arranged a visit and the sample was brought out and laid on the table. History was coming alive in front of me! The sample consists of three items: a square of pelt with the guard hairs intact, a square with the guard hairs removed, and a hank of seal wool (see images on page 90). I didn't like to handle the wool more than necessary, but it was beautifully silky-soft and gave me the impression of the feel of ivory: smooth and cool. I could understand how it made such an impression on nineteenth century manufacturers and wearers.

The sample is wrapped in stiff paper with descriptive annotations (see page 90). The second sample is similar and both samples are accompanied by begging letters to wildfibersmagazine.com 91

Seal wool samples from Sheffield City Archives.

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rich aristocrats— Earl Fitzwilliam and Lord Yarborough (see below left). The letters refer to a pamphlet written by Chapman and a copy is included with the Sheffield sample. It is an absolute boon to the historian because Chapman sets out the whole sad story of his invention and his financial troubles. It ends with a request for a donation to ease his penury.

He had sent these samples and copies of the pamphlet to a number of wealthy men, especially those like Earl Fitzwilliam who were known philanthropists. He also appealed to the public in newspaper advertisements. His begging had some success. Sir Joseph Banks gave forty-five pounds, the president of the Board of Trade fifty pounds, the bishop of Durham thirty-three pounds, and William Huskisson two pounds. (Huskisson is better known as the first man to be reported as killed by a railway locomotive. He was run over and fatally wounded by George Stephenson's Rocket.)

I have also searched newspaper archives and found numerous advertisements for shawls made of "patent seal wool." Claims were made that they rivaled the best cashmere and silk shawls imported from India but were much cheaper, warmer, and more durable, and that they were worn by royalty and the nobility: An entire new article has been introduced by our most fashionable Ladies, in shawls made from the fur of the seal of the South Seas: they are ornamented with gold cord, India or Grecian borders and tassels, and have a very elegant and novel effect, as well as defending the fair wearer from the cold, being warmer, softer, and equally light as the India shawl. Pelisses and dresses made of the Georgian cloth, in its natural colour, which is very beautiful, will also be much worn in the first circles.

A NEW MANUFACTURE – The PATENT GEORGIAN SATIN CLOTH, made from the Fur of the Seal or Sea Bear of the South Seas, calculated for Shawls, Pelisses, Dresses, Habits, Spencers*, &c. softer and more delicate than the India Shawl. The Nobility

and Ladies of Fashion are respectfully informed, that an entire new article made from the Fur of the Ursine [Bear i.e. Fur] Seal, is submitted to their inspection and approbation. It has already been patronised and approved by Ladies of the first rank and fashion in this country, being lighter and warmer than the India Shawl. It is manufactured of various thicknesses, and all widths, to suit every purpose of dress; the natural colour (without being dyed) is beautiful. – Shawls of all sizes made of the Georgian Cloth, ornamented with gold, India borders, &c. from three guineas to ten. To be had in London only of Beamon and Abbott, No 61, New Bond-street; and of the principal Drapers in Bath, Edinburgh, &c.

Another advertisement proclaimed that seal wool shawls were "patronised by Her Majesty and the Princesses" but it must be remembered that there were no checks on advertising in those days. Advertisers could say what they liked, and it is possible, even likely, that Her Majesty and her daughters would never condescend to wear a shawl inferior to the best India shawls of cashmere or silk.

Seal wool cloth, recorded separately from shawls and used for dresses and other clothes, was advertised as "superfine" and was woven as a satin (a smooth, lustrous fabric that may be less lustrous on the reverse side). I have found only a single description of seal wool clothes and these were worn by a man. The Morning Post for January 19, 1804, described a coach parade on the occasion of Queen Charlotte's birthday (marred by heavy rain). The account ends with a description of the individual costumes worn by the ladies and gentlemen who had taken part—this was before gentlemen retreated into uniform, monochrome suits. Lord Somerville wore "a beautiful snuff-coloured Georgian satin cloth coat and breeches, manufactured from the fur of the seal, with elegant stone buttons, and rich embroidered satin waistcoat" which was "of the most delicate texture imaginable, being far softer and pleasant to the touch than the finest velvet."

Lord Somerville was no idle aristocrat. He was a busy agricultural reformer who owned one of the first flocks of merino sheep in England. So it is no surprise that he should be interested in the new

wool-based fabric that was offering so much in appearance and feel at an affordable price.

Perhaps his clothes were made from a mixture of seal wool and merino. However, it seems that the new textile did not catch on in the fashionable world.

There is one other mention of a man owning fur seal garments. In 1807 the Emperor Napoleon received "six real seal-wool shawls of English manufacture" from his brother the emperor of Morocco. What on earth did a man do with six shawls except give them to lady friends? And wasn't giving the emperor of France garments manufactured in "perfidious Albion" less than tactful? Perhaps it was his brother's little joke.

Despite seal wool shawls being advertised in glowing terms, I have found only one reference to them in two contemporary fashion magazines: Ackermann's Repository of Arts and La Belle Assemblée. Every month these magazines described the latest fashions for women and men. The single reference described the "Roxburgh mantle," which could be of seal wool or merino. The failure to feature seal wool garments was likely because they were not at the forefront of fashion, compared with silks and cashmeres.

The records of the Fryers' business in the Durham archives show that they were still working with seal wool until at least 1853 and seal wool shawls were advertised until at least 1861, but increasingly they were making much cheaper imitation seal shawls. Thomas wildfibersmagazine.com 93

Fryer had obtained a patent in 1802 for manufacturing imitation seal cloth from cotton, mohair, silk, or other fibers. Imitation seal was a pile fabric in which the warp threads were woven into cut or uncut loops, as in velvet or plush, to give the appearance of natural fur. It has nothing to do with fur seals.

Historians of the sealing industry record that fur seal fur was felted and used for making hats, but I am the first one to investigate the process by which the underfur was prepared for felting and its role in the hatting business. It was frustrating that I could find so little about the extent of the trade. I can also claim to be the first historian to investigate the combination of seal wool and sheep's wool for spinning and weaving into cloth. I have had more luck with uncovering the marketing of shawls and other garments. As with hats, it appears that the use of fur seal in woven textiles was insignificant. And as with hats, the textile historians I have contacted have been unaware of it.

My hope, no doubt forlorn, is to find a genuine seal wool hat or shawl. But how can it be identified if there is no documentation except by very long and expensive microscopic examination of the fabric of the nineteenth century hats and shawls that survive in museums?

When I was braving the elements to catch fur seal pups on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, I would have been astounded to think that it would lead me, over forty years later, to take F an interest in Regency gentlemen's hats and ladies' fashions.

w

*Georgian cloth was a lightweight broadcloth fashionable in the first decade of the nineteenth century. A pelisse was a long jacket and a spencer was a short jacket worn by Regency women.

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The la d y o f le h Story and Photos by Linda N. Cortright

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Engulfed by the towering peaks of India's High Himalayas, who could imagine falling in love at the five-and-dime?

T

he day after I was released from the hospital in India’s High Himalayas after being treated for altitude sickness I was still feeling fatigued and, in truth, a bit nervous. I had been mightily knocked off my perch in a way that felt perilously close to death. It was my first time in Ladakh and despite its towering beauty, I was feeling disconnected in both mind and body. The fabled snow-capped mountains surrounding me, the very ones I had seen in the pages of National Geographic, were too overwhelming to embrace in my reticent state.

The rhythmic bustle of round-faced, rosycheeked locals, carrying large willow baskets on their backs, conveyed nothing but kindness in their countenance. But their benign presence did nothing to soften my protective shell.

In hindsight, I realize I was the one unable to open my heart. I was tiptoeing around a land that had violently betrayed me just hours before and was worried I might relapse into a state of breathless, retching delirium.

I slowly walked up the hill toward my homestay, passing through a crowded alley of Muslim bread makers working in small, smoke-filled shops, turning out hard rolls by the hundreds that were wrapped in newspaper as customers stopped by for their daily orders.

Children in blue school uniforms, and young girls in neckties, traipsed by me, smacking

their gum and squealing with after-school gossip. And then, up a little way on the right, I saw a sheep calmly standing outside a storefront that sold detergent, warm Coca-Cola, and little bags of moong dal for snacks. She reminded me of a dog standing sentry outside a house, except the house was more like an old-fashioned five-and-dime.

In that moment when I saw this unkempt, dirty, snagged, unshorn sheep, all signs of my feeling displaced and distant vanished.

I walked over, kneeled on the ground beside her, and began chatting, telling her how beautiful she was. Intrigued by the foreigner or, perhaps, looking for a handout, she came over for a closer look and the two of us spent the next minute gazing at each other. I felt as if I were back home, talking to my goats. At last, all was now right with my world.

There was a woman sitting on a plastic chair outside the store watching the encounter. Perhaps not many tourists stopped to talk to this sheep? After a few moments, I stood up and explained to my new wooly friend that I would be right back. I was going to go buy her some greens, and so I did, marching myself back past the Muslim bread makers and down two more alleys to a vegetable stand where I bought a big bunch of green leafy stuff for fifty rupees.

Forgetting I was supposed to take things slowly, I rushed back up the hill to present my new friend with a special treat. wildfibersmagazine.com 97

She accepted and munched away with gratitude, her hazy yellow eyes closing softly as she chewed.

By the time I reached my homestay, the previous day’s trauma bordered on trivial. I was fully ready to ascend into the mountains and explore the lives of nomads in the High Himalayas as they tended their herds of yaks and cashmere goats.

I was in the mountains for nearly a week and the night before I flew back to Delhi, I checked to see if, by chance, my wooly friend was still around. Past the Muslim bread makers and up the winding alley I went, excited at the possibility of seeing her again, but prepared to accept she had moved on.

There she was, almost in the same spot as before.

But now she was lying on the ground cheek-to-jowl in the lineup of sleeping street dogs. I went over and told her how beautiful she was and once again, I quickly left to buy her some leafy greens, returning with 100 rupees worth this time. It was a small way to show my gratitude for all that she had done to help me.

I left Ladakh with a single thought on my mind: I had to come back. Professionally, there was no reason to return, but my motives were personal. And so one year later, almost to the day, I stepped off the plane in Leh. The air was still thin and cold. (I was now taking Diamox, the high-altitude preventative medicine.) The streets were still filled with cheery women and their big willow baskets, monks in their maroon and saffron robes, and an unending parade of street dogs. My dear friend Stobgais met me at the airport and took me to my homestay. After I checked in, he instructed me to take a rest so I could safely acclimatize.

Resting could wait; I had a friend to see.

Once again, I headed for the alley with the Muslim bread makers and sure enough, there she was. I all but broke into a sprint upon seeing her. She had gained another year’s worth of dirt and crud. Her hooves desperately needed trimming. But she looked at me in such a way that I felt certain she knew I was the one hundred-rupee vegetable lady. And so, without delay, I went and got her a bundle of the tastiest greens I could find. The same woman was sitting outside the shop, once again watching our reunion, Right: The Lady of Leh outside the five-and-dime.

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and between short phrases in English combined with hand gestures, I tried to describe how happy I was to see her sheep, which I now realized had her own food bowl outside the shop, consisting of wilted greens and discarded rolls.

She feasted on my offering, while I chattered away and stroked her head, something I had been hesitant to do the year before. Two days later, I left for the mountains, and then the night before I flew back to Delhi, I went to visit “my” sheep.

I didn’t return to Leh for four years. I kept in touch with Stobgais, but there were countless wild fibers all over the globe for me to explore and it wasn’t until 2012 when I decided to do a story about cotton farming in Kutch that Stobgais and I rendezvoused in Delhi. It had been far too long between visits. He now had a sixteen-month-old little girl, Yangdol, and was no longer working at the cashmere mill in Leh. He was earning his living solely as a trekking guide and asked if I would bring a group of my subscribers to Ladakh. He had been asking me

this question since our first meeting and I had categorically refused. I am a magazine editor, not a tour leader, or so I thought.

Eight months later I returned to Ladakh with fifteen subscribers in tow—all fueled with Diamox. We checked into a hotel, opting for certain conveniences typically not offered by a homestay, and Stobgais instructed everyone to take a rest to help acclimatize.

I waited until everyone was safely tucked in their rooms before I flew out the back door of the hotel. I had to see if, by chance, my friend was still there.

Leh isn’t terribly big. But it’s not laid out on a grid, and even though I have a fairly good nose for direction, the hotel was not in the center of town and one back alley rather looked like the next. I knew I had to keep walking downhill toward town, and eventually I found my bread makers, then went up the alley—and there was my sheep. Someone had shorn her fleece, but her feet looked worse than ever. It didn’t matter. My heart filled to the point of

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tears at seeing her. I couldn’t believe that four years on, she was still alive.

There was a mound of limp greens in her bowl and it looked as if she had gnawed on a few rolls and then spit them out, so I went and bought her a week’s worth of groceries, asking the woman in front of the store to dispense them as needed.

I suspect, although I can’t be sure, that she must have thought I was a foolish American, wasting her money on a sheep. But I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend it.

Ten months later I returned to Ladakh with yet another group. In fact, I led two tour groups to Ladakh that year. This time, we stayed in a different hotel. It was less than 300 yards from my friend and so I asked several people on the tour, who had decided not to take a rest, if they wanted to come with me and briefly meet my friend. I didn’t provide any details, such as my friend had four legs and hadn’t bathed in years. I simply asked if they wanted to meet a friend.

It had been almost a year since I had seen her, and I wasn’t sure if my luck would hold. I explained to the group that there was a chance my friend might not be around, but they didn’t seem to mind. As we began walking down the alley I could feel my heartbeat quicken the way it does before you step off a plane to reunite with an old friend. I was also secretly enjoying the small ruse I was playing on my fellow travelers, assuming my friend would not disappoint their expectations. I had not been deceitful in inviting them. She was my friend, and when one person asked where I met her, I said we met on the street a few years back and just got to talking.

We finally reached the point in the alley where I could get a good view of

The Lady of Leh sporting a summer cut.

the five-and-dime. I didn’t see her. Perhaps she had gone for a walk? To be honest, I didn’t want to think about the alternative. We kept walking along and again, I cautioned the group that my friend might not be home. Again, they didn’t seem to mind. This was their first walkabout in Leh and they were already so enchanted by its unfamiliarity that my friend’s possible absence was of no concern. We continued walking, my eyes searching the entire time. We weren’t coming from the direction of the Muslim bread makers, where I could get a good view of what lay ahead. We were coming from the top of the alley, which jigged and jagged.

I was still hopeful but was beginning to prepare myself for the worst. Now on my fourth visit to Leh, I had almost forgotten how strange this town once seemed. I no longer noticed the heavy layer of dirt wildfibersmagazine.com 101

that is endemic to living in a high mountain desert. The sound of the muezzin’s call no longer caught me by surprise. And I was beginning to appreciate the practicality of those big wicker baskets and eyed them with envy.

We were practically on top of the five-anddime before I spotted her. She was lying down next to the woman in the chair, the dirt on her fleece blending perfectly with the color of the building. “There she is!” I shouted, and before I could run over to her, she was already getting up on her feet. My tour group was every bit as surprised and seemed nearly as delighted as I had been the first time I saw a sheep in the middle of downtown. After a proper petting I went and got her one hundred-rupee treat.

Given that the people in the group were followers of Wild Fibers, I shouldn’t have been surprised at their appreciation of this wild fiber, but this was the first time I had shared my friend with anyone, including the remarkable story of how she had helped me. After six years I decided she needed a name, and henceforth she was known as Serena, the Lady of Leh, not only because of the great serenity she had imparted on me, but despite her unruly appearance, she deserved a title that conveyed stature 102 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

within the community.

Serena became a fixture on my tour schedule. I never queried anyone directly with, “Would you like to come and meet my sheep?”

I merely asked, as I had before, if they wanted to meet my friend and then I let the rest of the story unfold naturally.

A few years back, I was in Leh during December. Once again Stobgais picked me up at the airport and we had several errands to run before leaving the following day for the Craft Center in Pangong. We shopped for supplies we would need while staying in an unheated room at 14,500 feet and grabbed an oxygen tank to be safe. Stobgais had started heading for my hotel when I asked, “Where are you going?”

“I’m taking you to the hotel. Why?” he replied in that tone married people use when they’re politely frustrated. I stared back and said nothing. My eyeballs now reached my hairline.

Stobgais looked another moment harder and then the penny dropped.

“Of course, I forgot to take you to Serena.”

And he drove down the back alley much farther than I thought a car could go, assuring me the entire time that he had seen her just a few

weeks previous.

The sun had already dropped behind the mountains and with it, the temperature. I scooted down the alley and there she was standing by the storefront.

“Serena!” I called out, and my precious Lady of Leh looked up and began walking toward me. Did she really know who I was?

For the past ten years I have posted pictures of Serena on Facebook. Everyone who has been on the tour with me to Ladakh has met her— sometimes repeatedly. There is even a video of her on YouTube posted by a German tourist.

This past May I made my fourteenth trip to Ladakh—it may be more; I’ve honestly lost track. The night before I left Delhi, I sent a message to a friend who knew Serena well. I had a bad feeling about her and didn’t know why. On the flight up to Leh, everyone on the plane had their noses pressed against the window, snapping pictures of the Himalayas with their cell phones (something that did not happen on my first flight in 2007). But I wasn’t feeling much excitement. In fact, from my aisle seat I leaned back to look out the window just once, and then tried to distract myself with a magazine. The bad feeling hadn’t gone away.

Stobgais picked me up at the airport and after dropping my bags off at the hotel, we went to our favorite restaurant for lunch. I asked if he had seen Serena and he assured me he had. She was just fine.

Once again, we were leaving the next day for Pangong and Stobgais and I needed to conquer and divide to complete our list of errands. He went one direction and I grabbed my friend Wangail and went the other. We needed to stop at a shop along Main Street, but I explained I needed to go and see Serena first.

Wangail understood. All my friends knew about Serena.

We walked down to the elbow on Main Street and then took a short-

cut, coming out at the Muslim bread makers. I looked up the alley.

I didn’t see her.

I began walking quickly toward the shop, but there was no sign of her anywhere. I could feel she was gone. For ten years I had walked up this alley and every time she had been there.

But not this time.

I stopped in front of the shop. The owner was perched outside. I took one last look for Serena’s bowl of wilted greens and half-chewed rolls. The bowl was gone.

The woman looked at me and neither one of us needed to say a word.

I asked Wangail to find out what happened.

Old age, came the reply. She was about sixteen. A respectable life for a sheep, especially one living in such a harsh environment.

I asked Wangail to please tell the woman how much her sheep had meant to me over the years. She nodded her head as Wangail spoke, and then while looking at me she said to Wangail that she knew the sheep had been special.

In fact, she noticed that every time I came to visit, as soon as Serena heard my voice, she would run to see me.

The Lady of Leh remembered me after all, and this small tribute is my way of remembering her.

F

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Serena, the Lady of Leh, and the author, when they were both a bit younger...

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Acadian brown cotton bolls.

T

here’s more to Acadiana than red beans and Cajun music.

For the past thirty years, Elaine Larcade Bourque has carved out a corner of her garden and planted a small batch of Acadian brown cotton. Her gardening regimen is inspired by her love of the soil, her love of weaving, and a deep commitment to preserving a Cajun textile tradition. For years, Bourque suspected she was likely the last in a long line of southwest Louisiana spinners and weavers to cultivate this Cajun varietal, so she carefully harvested the seeds each fall.

Just five years ago, Bourque, seventy-seven, was one of the only people left in the world 104 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

Acadian Cotton from seed to salvation

Story by Leslie Petrovski Photos by Sharon Gordon Donnan and Elaine Bourque

wildfibersmagazine.com 105

Field of Acadian brown cotton bolls.

with the skills—and seeds—to keep Acadian brown cotton alive. If it hadn’t been for the chance discovery of an old brown-and-white blanket, Acadian brown cotton might have gone with the wind.

Acadian brown cotton is a Cajun textile tradition. It is the quiet member of a holy trinity of culture that encompasses the toe-tapping music and spicy cuisine that insinuated blackened redfish onto menus from Hawaii to Maine. Bourque has documented more than Opposite page: Vintage Acadian cotton blankets.

one hundred Acadian blankets throughout the Acadian parishes, collecting memories and oral histories about the weavers long dead, who spent winter nights in the attic throwing their shuttles back and forth like their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers before them.

“I hate to say it,” Bourque said. “But I honestly think it would have died. I guess the cotton seed would have been lost.”

The Yarn Behind the Blanket Sharon Gordon Donnan and Suzanne Chaillot Breaux were

poking around the textile racks at the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall in Washington, Louisiana, when they pulled out a blanket woven from natural, undyed, brown and white striped cotton. “I had never seen a blanket of natural brown cotton in the U.S.,” said Donnan, a trained textile conservator familiar with naturally colored cotton textiles from Peru and Mexico.

“Suzanne said, ‘Those are old Cajun blankets I grew up with.’”

But Donnan, an Acadianophile, wanted to know more.

She learned that these humble brown blankets were the last wildfibersmagazine.com 107

Just five years ago, Bourque, 77, was one of the only people left in the world with the skills—and seeds—to keep Acadian brown cotton alive.

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vestiges of a spinning and weaving tradition harkening back to the settlements in Louisiana that emerged after Le Grand Dérangement (the Great Deportation) from 1755 to 1764.

Also known as the Great Upheaval, it was a time when Britain successfully deported more than 11,500 Acadians from a community of 14,000 living in Nova Scotia during the French and Indian War. The newly evicted Acadians, many of whom were first deported to France, were fiercely independent and brought their spinning and weaving skills with them to Louisiana. With wool being too warm for their new climate, the Acadians began spinning and weaving with cotton, especially the short-stapled, brown variety with its smooth, naked seeds that were easier to hand gin than the fuzzy ones of most Upland cotton (known also as Mexican cotton, the most common variety of cotton grown in the United States).

Exactly how this brown cotton found its way to southwestern Louisiana is something of a mystery. Ray Brassieur, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said it’s likely that Mesoamerican people, who domesticated New World cotton, bred this brown, naked-seed cotton intentionally, carefully selecting for the recessive genetic traits that made it unique. Brassieur speculates that the Spanish, who administered the colony at the time of the Acadian resettlement in the 1760s, provided the Acadians with cotton seeds to help them gain a toehold in their new home.

“We have not found evidence so far that this amount of seed was provided of this sort and that sort. We don’t have that,” Brassieur said. “What we do have evidence for is a fully blown textile industry in brown cotton that happened in the first generation of Acadians being here because they were already skilled at textile work.”

From the 1760s and into the twentieth century, Cajuns planted both white and brown cotton—separating the plots to avoid cross-pollination.

“So, you come to Louisiana, and you have no house,” said Bourque, whose people came from France and Nova Scotia. “The Spanish give you a land grant and you build a house that prob-

ably has dirt floors and you move in. Are you going to make clothing out of white cotton? You couldn’t buy cloth. There are no stores, nothing is available. Brown cotton, you could wear that in the field and it gave you a color.”

As mass produced fabrics began to replace homemade goods, much of spinning and weaving in Acadiana fell by the wayside, except for the making of dowry textiles by mothers for their daughters. Started years in advance, these trousseaus were huge labors of love (l’amour de maman) that involved the weaving of bedspreads, blankets, sheets, towels, feather mattress coverings, and mattresses, all handspun and woven in sun-kissed gold, white, and dyed indigo cotton. Eventually that tradition gave way to modernity, as well. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, the last completed trousseau—a stack of a dozen blankets—was bestowed on a bride in the late 1950s.

“The question as to why Acadian brown cotton textile traditions died out is simple,” Brassieur said. “These traditions were too expensive for poor people trying to adapt to modernizing, industrializing, capitalistic realities.”

Donnan and Breaux recognized that both the Acadian brown cotton plant and the textiles were in a tenuous place. There were still enough storytellers alive who remembered how their mothers and grandmothers planted their cotton, sharing their looms, wheels, and skills, and over the course of many winters, created their pretty blankets. Equipped with enough blankets residing in curated collections and long forgotten closets, Donnan and Breaux decided to capture this slice of Acadiana, and produced the documentary Coton Jaune, Acadian Brown Cotton: A Cajun Love Story, which explored the history and tradition of Acadian brown cotton. The film struck a nerve.

Screenings in the Bayou State attracted standing-room-only crowds. “There hasn’t been much published on it ever,” Donnan said. “This is a part of Cajun culture that hasn’t been portrayed. It’s all been blackened redfish and zydeco.

They’re known for their music and food and not weaving.”

Bringing Back Heritage Cotton At one point in his life, Jerry Hale would have stood on the plantation he grew up on and sworn that he would never willingly grow cotton. But the past has a way of sneaking into the

Below : Elaine Bourque Opposite page: Vintage Acadian cotton blankets, cotton punis, and spinning tools.

wildfibersmagazine.com 109

present—like hot sauce into the gumbo. Last summer he planted two test plots—one in the garden near his house and the other in a plot he has outside of town. He broke his vow as a favor to Emolyn Liden, a young weaver and spinner, who has opened a shop in Hale’s hometown, Breaux Bridge, Louisiana.

The cotton he’s cultivating, however, isn’t the white commodity cotton his daddy grew. Hale is growing good ol’ Acadian brown cotton.

“I hoed and picked enough cotton as a kid,” Hale said. “I didn’t think I’d ever want to have anything to do with cotton. That’s why I got an education, so I wouldn’t have to work in the fields all the time.”

Hale isn’t the only grower to add a few rows of brown Gossypium hirsutum to his 2018 spring plantings. Zach McMath of the nonprofit Acadiana Food Hub, which helps connect area farmers to markets, including folks who might have limited access to affordable, local produce, has convinced three farmers across southwestern Louisiana to plant 400 Acadian brown cotton seeds. “You can get a better price per pound than cucumbers, without having to store it and preserve it, and the market value is higher,” he said.

Brown cotton is also being grown at Vermilionville, a living history museum in Lafayette.

Emolyn Liden, who grew up at the John C. Campbell Folk School (her mother is Martha Owen, the school’s resident fiber artist), has four rows planted and will either hand-spin her harvest or create a mill-spun yarn for her shop La Petite Carolina. Other small growers are putting seeds in the ground, and Bourque even boosted the amount of brown cotton she grew this year.

At the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s Experimental Farm near Cade, operations manager Mark Simon has sowed 200 Acadian brown cotton seeds, mostly to grow seed for the university’s newly opened seed bank.

Today there’s more Acadian brown cotton in the ground than there has been in probably one hundred years. These nascent cotton stands represent the continuation of a species and textile tradition inspired by Field to Fashion in Acadiana, an initiative spearheaded by Donnan.

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Encouraged by the response to the film and to projects in countries like India, Peru, and Guatemala, where textile workers are transforming sustainably grown fibers into fair trade goods, Donnan has been gathering the cotton curious together to brainstorm ways to ignite a fiber renaissance in the twelve parishes that make up Acadiana—and help save this heritage fiber from near extinction.

“At the end of all this, we’d like to have a sustainable organic product that could help preserve the Acadian textile tradition and contributes to the econmoic development in southwest Louisiana,” she said.

In June, the Field to Fashion advocates in Acadiana—everyone from farmers and spinners to academicians—came together at Vermilionville to discuss the future of the cotton they will harvest in late summer. How will they clean it? Can they sell it? To whom? What can be learned from testing the genetics of it? Are there opportunities for the university students to conduct research with a deep sense of place? What’s next?

What’s possible?

Hopes are running high now that Acadian brown cotton is safely ensconced in the University of Louisiana seed bank. An Acadian brown cotton exhibit is in the works at the Hilliard University Art Museum. The acquisition of a cotton gin, the preparation of fiber to sell to spinners, the eventual commissioning of a mill, weaving local fabric, goods that can be used to promote Acadiana, products that support the building of a regenerative economy—it’s all on the table. One thing is certain, however: The region’s own cotton will soon be opening its sepia-colored bolls toward the sun. Let the good times and the rolags roll.

“I go out a couple of times a day to look at it,” said Hale, the born-again cotton farmer. “Back when I was a kid, I thought it was a tough life. I think it’s kind of romantic now. I’m the last one left in my family; it connects you back.”

Editor’s note: For updates on Acadian brown cotton, visit acadianbrowncotton.com.

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From Field to Fabric Story by Leslie Petrovski

Retired high school history teacher and coach Tony Mullins is just in from checking the cotton plots he has spread out on his forty acres. It’s mid-May. The forecast calls for ninety-degree temperatures and he’s hoping the heat will spur his crops, which are running a bit late.

This past spring, Mullins planted cotton in five main spots on his property in Sarepta, Louisiana, far north of Acadiana. There are sections of green, white, ecru, and miscellaneous browns, and below the house is a swath of Nankeen cotton, a light copper variety, short-stapled with naked seeds.

If the weather holds, he’ll end up with 700 to 800 pounds of cotton after ginning.

Since the 2015 growing season, Mullins has been cotton-obsessed. When a student discovered brown cotton while researching Louisiana products, Mullins ordered a bunch of seed and became fascinated with the antebellum and Civil War history printed in the seed packets that connected brown cotton to slave clothing and even Civil War battles. That spring he put several hundred seeds in the ground, treating them “like little babies,” and began researching the heck out of Southern brown cotton.

Through Facebook, he met other cotton aficionados and learned about antique processing equipment as well as the spinning and weaving tradition associated with Acadian brown cotton. He bought a small gin and sold every bit of the ginned cotton he grew in that first crop to spinners anxious to get their hands on it.

Since then, Mullins has planted more and more cotton.

From the 2016 crop he had sliver produced at the Textile Technology Center at Gaston College in North Carolina, which he sold to spinners all over the world (selling enough at $40 per pound that he and his wife, Carol, were able to go on vacation with the profits). With the 2017 crop, he’s branched out into yarn, some of which he’s having woven into scarves, fabric, and Acadian-inspired blankets in New York and Pennsylvania that he’ll market under the brand Sarepta Brown Cotton.

In the span of about three years, Mullins has managed to establish a small retirement business from the ground up with a domestic supply chain and sustainable products that have the potential to spread the word about Louisiana-grown brown cotton beyond the state’s marshes and prairies. Unlike the movement in Acadiana to create hyper-local products with a direct lineage to the brown cotton Acadian refugees planted in the eighteenth century, Sarepta Brown Cotton is a mélange of all the brown cottons Mullins grows, whether it’s Mississippi brown, Sea Island brown, or Nankeen. He’s just lookTony Mullins. Photo by Beth Hollis. ing for something to do.

“I enjoy this part of our culture, but I don’t want to step on anybody’s toes,” he said.

“I’ll never be an Acadian.”

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wildfibersmagazine.com 113

Nippy Dip

By Linda N. Cortright

Packing for a summer vacation involves the four S’s: sandals, shorts, swimsuit, and sunscreen. Easy.

It’s a basic rule to follow even if your summer holiday is in Antarctica, in which case you might want to add a fifth “S”— sweater. January is the height of Antarctica’s summer season with daytime highs in the mid-thirties. One might even say it’s balmy. Perfect for swimming!

And because I had packed for a summer vacation, I was prepared. I had brought my bathing suit—a brand new one—just for the occasion.

On day four of the trip, which had included a surprisingly benign two-day crossing of the Drake Passage, we were now south of the Antarctic convergence, the point at which the dense cold waters of the circumpolar region flow northward, creating a boundary between Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters. Nate Small, our expedition leader, announced over the ship’s PA system that we would soon be landing on Deception Island, a black caldera draped in fog thicker than a boot.

For those who wanted to participate there would be a two-hour hike up the mountain. There was also an option to go swimming.

Yup, today was the day I had been both anticipating and dreading.

Although this was summer in Antarctica, and the caldera’s black sands were technically “the beach,” there wasn’t a proper changing facility for a person to go from Goretex hiking pants to a matron-style swimsuit. Nope. Unless I could find a discarded whale bone big enough to strip down behind, the only option was to wear my bathing suit under my thick pants, my cotton turtleneck, my Norwegian wool sweater, and my polar jacket. The idea of hiking in this getup seemed fraught with certain mechanical challenges that women will understand without my further explanation.

A group of less than a dozen took off on the hike. And just in case you have never gone hiking in Antarctica, it’s the cat’s pajamas, with expansive views of the white continent in every direction you look, which is exactly what you hope will distract your fellow hikers as you quickly reach down and try to readjust a bathing suit not designed for a two-hour hike.

By the end, I was sweating and surprisingly ready for a swim. Along the beach, nearly twenty of my fellow passengers (all of whom had eschewed the option to go hiking) had already shed their clothes and stormed into the water. The crowd along the beach, nearly a hundred or so, cheered and whooped as the boneheads splashed about.

114 Wild Fibers Magazine 2018

The author takes the plunge

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The ship’s photographer was on hand, and a GoPro had been set up to record the pandemonium.

Off came the parka, the sweater, the turtleneck, the pants, the socks, and the boots, until, finally…FINALLY! I was standing on the beach in Antarctica ready to go swimming.

Idiot.

The first rule—and only rule—for swimming in Antarctica is simple: do not wade slowly into the water. This is not the time to luxuriate or practice your breaststroke. This is the time to run like a shot, dunk, scream, and run back. Which is exactly what I did with one exception. When I screamed, it was not because the freezing water had stolen the air from my lungs; it was because I had a wardrobe malfunction. Upon emerging from my dunk, my left breast was now prominently displayed to all one hundred people who had enthusiastically cheered me on from the beach. The ship’s photographer with his telephoto lens was in position and focus. The GoPro was running, capturing every second of indecent mortification. And I was now freezing and exposed. Although I thought there was just one rule for swimming in Antarctica, there are two—always give your bathing suit a test dunk in advance.

And no matter how much I try, I will never forget my nippy dip in Antarctica, and I fear the rest of the ship’s passengers won’t either.

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