Essays

In temperate climates, the appearance of masses of bright, cheerful flowers is probably the most...

After I park my car in the lot outside the Davis branch of the Yolo County Library I can’t help...

I arrived in Topanga, a town in the Santa Monica Mountains, in 1979, attracted to the canyon’s...

In the early 1980s, I taught environmental education at a camp nestled in the coastal redwood...

I adore my linen dresses. The lightweight, smooth, breathable fabric keeps me cool on hot days. I wash them by hand, hang them, and then when they are dry I spray them with water from a spray bottle to soften the wrinkles. I never have to worry about one day finding them falling apart in my closest, unlike my synthetic clothing.
Linen textiles are made from the fiber of the beautiful flax plant, known by its three-veined leaves and delicate five-petaled pale- to bright-blue flowers. Fiber from the flax plant is as well suited for weaving into the tough fabrics from which sails, bedspreads, and tablecloths are made as it is for weaving the more delicate fabrics sewn into clothing. Flax fibers are also used in making some of the finest papers available.
Read my essay Weaving Cloth and Culture from Flax: Connecting Continents and Generations on the Fibershed website to learn more about flax’s ancient history across time and distances, the role it has played in my own heritage, and how the art of flax cultivation is being revived today in California.

Humans have gathered and used plants since the origin of our species some 160,000 years ago....