A case can be made for dropping out of your life every once in a while just to see what you can see. It doesn’t matter where you go or what you do. The point is to get away and do things differently. Ideally, an absence from your “real life” for at least a few days is desirable. Some people go on a cruise or fly to Europe to “re”-create themselves. It is possible to reset yourself with a modest investment of time and money.
Depending on what you are intensely interested in, you can pick can an activity or a destination that suits.
For example I recently signed up for a three-day workshop at the Pacific Textile Center in Fort Bragg. The subject was “Natural Dye” (no pun intended for you older readers) and we learned how to dye fibers with a variety of natural materials. We are surrounded by clothing and fabric items every day that someone(s) had to consciously color but we seldom give this much thought.
Most of us are very attached to our beautiful colored fabrics and fibers. Certainly the world would not be as rich and interesting if everything was uniformly white or even brown or beige. Once you start thinking about how things get from being neutral to being colorful a different awareness opens up.
Starting with water, coloring agents, and heat you can transform pale and neutral fibers. It is a bit addictive as transforming does bring with it a power surge. Going back in time, before synthetic dyes existed, all fabric was transformed into colors using natural materials. In this workshop we used - indigo (leaf), lichen (moss), eucalyptus (leaf), madder (root), cochineal (insect) and other natural materials.
All the materials required special handling using methods that have been developed over time by people focusing their energy on getting optimal results through trial and error.
Before we knew it we were transported to a time and place where stirring a pot and waiting patiently for time to pass was the way to color fabric. Today coloring takes place in a big factory where few ever witness the process and even fewer actually know the steps it takes to make color bloom. I think we all felt empowered by our experience. We were the ones who decided how long to keep the fabric or fiber in the pot — longer makes the color darker and shorter makes the fiber lighter.
There is a larger principal involved in jumping into something like this that is entirely new and unknown. It seems to effectively shake up the pathways in the brain and refresh the mental process. It makes you feel the way you felt when you were younger and experiencing things for the first time. It is a bright and tingling sensation, quite pleasurable.
This same sensation sometimes comes from looking more and more deeply into a subject which is sometimes called “drilling down.” The idea is that if you are drilling a well and you only dig a shallow hole you probably won’t hit water but if you “drill down” the further you go the more likely you are to be successful. When approaching something that is entirely new there are lots of associations you make as you explore the topic that makes up your experience. Everyday life generally fails to provide these opportunities.
Another aspect of jumping in especially when working with an experienced worker or teacher is that the benefit of their years of “drilling down” become immediately available to you. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel and can progress much more quickly than someone who does. There is a positive synergy that stirs things up and creates unexpected outcomes.
My three days in Fort Bragg away from the cats to feed and the husband to nag really “picked me up.” I attended the workshop each day learning about how to dye but also learning about the lives of my fellow workshoppers. One woman who actually hitchhiked to Alaska also had her house in the Santa Inez Mountains burn to the ground.
One woman had been to Borneo where she climbed into a cave inhabited by spiders as big as your hand and glowing wall snakes. You can’t make this stuff up. The teacher, Vicki Fraser, took us to her studio in the town of Mendocino where we saw her masterpiece: the epic 5 x 15-foot “California Rug” for which she had spun the yarn, dyed the fiber, and entirely hand-knotted over a period of ten years (1997-2007)!
Staying in Noyo Harbor I got to eat my favorite seafood: the lobster and crab bisque at Princess Seafood. Later while staying at the Anchor Lodge the foghorn lulled me to sleep. Breakfast at Laurel’s Diner downtown near the Skunk depot was delicious and to celebrate I ate a piece of fluffy lemon meringue pie for dessert (yes, dessert at breakfast, because life is short and I do love it so). All this added zest to an already super-fun mini-break.
Ultimately I had helicoptered out of my life for three days and I think I’m better for having done it.
Wonderful! Thank you for sharing your story, Terry. It is true, it doesn’t take money to get away (not that this was your point; i imagine you paid for the workshop). But just going to the river bar with your sleeping bag, or setting up a tent in an unusual spot on your own place, can make for a free mini-vacation and refreshment.
Learning a new skill set and the history of a craft adds the element of brain-stimulation, which is a good part of a renewal. Glad you enjoyed it. I recently learned that red alder makes for a rich vermilion dye.