Lately as I’ve been in critical identity crisis, due to the fact that the wild around me is literally burnt to a blackened crisp, and will be for quite some time, I am spending some healing time through retrospection. I’m poring over old photos of myself in the wild, remembering those vibrant wilderness times when I thrived, sometimes even with knitting involved.

In the High Sierras, late 90’s, me, knitting in the wild even way back then, while relaxing in in the late afternoon with knitting, coffee, and wilderness. . . all together is just about as good as it gets , and a real defining concept for me. I discovered this photo of my first ever wild-knitted thing, a colorful hat, and in posting it here it is somehow brought back to life…

The old beloved hat I had knit probably 15 years earlier, was packed in my backpack every trip to the Sierras, for those very cold late afternoons when the sun has dropped enough to leave only shadow in the camp, and the chilly evenings and downright frigid mornings at altitude.   I lost it on a ski slope somewhere in the Sierras, and can you imagine how sad that was!  Ah, but to lose a hat on a mountain trail is a noble loss indeed. I am sure someone found it and took it home with them.

Knitting in the Canadian wilderness,  perched over a wild stream, in 2005…

Well, anyway,  I have been renewing my love for the wild lately, walking every day, though maybe not quite as I once was. But yes I was, then and now, a definite Knitter Of The Wild, and I suppose if ever there was one thing that would define me in a single sentence, well, that just may be it.