Warp and Weft

Coming here feels as it always does: like I have tripped into a conifer fairy tale. A cabin rooted among moss and mushrooms in a quiet grove, down a quiet driveway, off a quiet street (as they all seem), on a quiet island. It’s just the perfect size, built in the early ’70s from raw timber and stained glass, with chimney-smoke threading its way up toward woolly rainclouds.

I enter, we hug, and Sandy motions me to sit at a table laid with bowls of soup, rye toast, and cucumber salad.

The wood stove at the kitchen’s heart emits an insistent and comforting warmth. We sit, sip soup, speak slowly.

For the first while, we talk of nothing but berries. She has added two new bushes to the currants, blueberries, and raspberries in her garden, there beyond the foggy window. But the conversation soon grows into a dialogue about journeys. Places seen, felt, remembered. Sandy describes travelling to India decades ago, seeking teachings that would help orient her early steps on the Buddhist path. “Buddhism makes me feel more true,” she says, with a kind smile. “It makes me more generous. And it makes me compare myself to others less, which is important.”

She tells of hiking the mountains of Nepal, wandering England’s verdant hills, treading through dry pinyon pines in the American Southwest. Here the double meaning of the word ramble seems obvious. For here we two sit, rambling about rambling—rambling to be understood not as unfocussed chatter but as rhythmic, fluid conversation. Steady, unhurried, the way travel on foot is a steady, unhurried way of knowing a place.

She shows me prayer beads gifted to her by a friend in Bihar and spices from organic farms around Kottayam. Beautiful things, with the glimmer of distant origins still on them. More emphatically, she shares the immaterial treasures gleaned during her adventures: lessons learned about human nature and about Nature’s nature. Gratitude for kind strangers. An appreciation of water.

Then the weft is woven horizontally through the warp, possibly in a different colour of thread. Sandy’s weft is time spent away, with boots on the road. It is the crosscurrent.

When the two are meshed, you have a blanket. Or, you have Sandy, or her house: many yarns from many places, each a story, but together weaving a far richer narrative. I hold a cup of tea Sandy has just poured me and look about—a wicker basket on the wall, a velvety scarf from Ecuador, handmade ceramic from local potters. The rain has stopped, and brightness drops on the berry garden beyond the window. Sandy sits back contentedly in her chair and notices my empty bowl.

"Would you like some more soup?"

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This story first appeared in The Adventure Volume.

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