Since I was young, I have always wanted to feel wild: free, brave, connected with nature, and fully embodied in myself and my surroundings. It’s a big part of what drew me to move to northern Minnesota, where outer wildness is easily accessible right outside my door.
Yet “wild” means different things to different people. Living where I do in northern Minnesota on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, when I first arrived as a late-20-something, I felt the need to pursue “cool” kind of wild by doing specific outdoors things. There can be an almost competitive culture (whether real or internally perceived) to be the most hardcore outdoorsperson: to travel the furthest into the wilderness, to hike the hardest hike the fastest, to be into things like winter camping in sub-zero temperatures.
I want to be cool and hardcore just like everyone else. Yet as someone with an invisible, painful chronic illness, a lot of the more intense outdoor experiences are not always accessible or fun for me. Not everyone has a body that works well enough to allow them to backpack an entire hiking trail or paddle for days on end into the wilderness.
I really resist admitting this because I long to be able to do those things, but this is my reality. Most of those activities cause me pain even if my illness is managed well, because stressing my system results in flare-ups. So, I want to offer myself and anyone else who needs it another option: quiet wildness.
Quiet wildness is not flashy or intense. It’s an inner awareness of and connection to your wild self that emerges in specific moments unique to you.
I feel quietly wild when I rollerblade, listening to music with my hair streaming out behind me. I feel quietly wild when I swing on the rope swing at my family cabin. I feel quiet wildness when I walk slow around the yard with my cat Aurora, and kneel down as he roots around in the grass, trying to see what he sees. I feel wild when I squat heavy, when I swim slow in lakes and rivers, when I pause on my walk and lean my cheek against the rough bark of a tree trunk. When, after a long day indoors working at the loom, I step out after dark and look up at the sky full of stars.
Quiet wildness can be accessed anywhere, not just in the north woods. I remember quietly wild moments when I lived in the city: walking to the Cathedral on the dark St. Paul streets with headphones in, something every woman knows not to do. Wandering to the park near my apartment at dusk, looking up, and finding the oak trees teeming with bats. Looking down and finding a feather at the exact moment I needed to see something that reminded me to stay soft and open.
I want my art to embody and offer a sense of quiet wildness, too.
Fiber itself is wild: unruly, textured, nuanced. No matter how hard I try to weave perfect shapes and edges and circles, the fibers always rebel a little bit, making every piece unique and wild in its own way. My designs most often reflect the places I feel most quietly wild: near bodies of water, under boreal trees, beneath a full moon or sky of aurora borealis.
I know my work is collected by folks who are drawn to wildness, too, and I want my tapestries to bring quiet wildness to their homes in times when they’re longing to connect with their wild selves.
I want my weavings to remind you that you are wild and that whatever that looks like in your life–whether you’re hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail or just walking slow to your mailbox, whether you’re paddling into the wilderness or just looking at a piece of art that reminds you of it–it is valid and true.
My quiet wilds are:
- Hikes with my dogs off leash staying in tune with all the noises of the woods and the sound of the ground under my feet.
- When I sit and write and words start overlapping and ideas are cracked open and exposed to words.
- When I am inspired to make new ceramic forms and I take my first ball of clay and try to bring my idea/drawing to life. It feels wild and risky and on the edge of something possibly great.
- When I reach that point in meditation where I am not sleeping nor fully awake, but perfectly in between as if I am floating.