Landscape as textile

Last week I drove from Moncton to Quispamsis to interview Riel Nason, prize-winning author of the locally set and inspired novel ‘The Town That Drowned’.

 This entry is not about that interview. I don’t want to spoil the reading of it in the fall issue of Atlantic Books Today. So patience.

 It’s about the strikingly visual textile landscape I experienced on the drive. A perfect midsummer day. Blue, green and white.

When I have time to spare from my yoga teaching and writing I love to work with fibre and thread. On that day the sky was a piece of silk, palest translucent cornflower on the horizon to rich lapis high above. Weightless clouds were fine gauze, swansdown or fluffy kapok ready to fill a cushion. I wasn’t seeking any Polonius-like “camels or whales”,  just allowed the pure whiteness to float above and settle on my imagined collage.

Harvested wheat appeared as giant reels of golden thread rolling across yards of soft green velvet. Distant hills were two-dimensional tapestries; tree and bushes appliquéd and hooked.  The highway, lined with strong vertical evergreens, provided a frame.

Driving the highway can be boring, sometimes sleep inducing, so little traffic. It’s definitely a case of the destination being more important than the journey. Usually I have music playing, but that day silence seemed called for and I gave my visual imagination full creative licence