Further Up And Further In

Anyone who is familiar with C.S. Lewis, will recognize those words from the Narnia series where in the Last Battle, Lucy is told by Aslan to go "further up and further in" after the door to old Narnia has closed and Lucy finds herself in the new Narnia... the real Narnia. I always think of that passage as a little bit of heaven of which, C.S. Lewis had some insiders knowledge. The new Narnia is more beautiful, is more colourful and vivid... in a way more real than the old Narnia. It is the true place of "being".

Today my dear friend Anita has begun her journey "Further Up and Further In" and ended her journey here in this place.

Thirteen years ago when I moved to this little community a little white haired lady took me under her wing after my first guild meeting, and helped me buy my first fleece... helped me become the fibre addicted freak that I am today. I've never looked back.

She and I have spent many a sunny day sitting on either her deck or mine picking tags, or stewing a pot of woad. We have shared many cups of tea while our spinning wheels rattled away. We've discussed all manner of sheepy things and the aspects of what makes a good yarn. We have in essence been conspirators of our art.

In recent years Anita has battled one bout of cancer after another. Breast cancer first, then bowel cancer next, and finally breast cancer again.... the thing is that cancer never got in the way of a good yarn... you know the kind you knit with. Even on her worst days she always had time for a little spinning and a little knitting. She made awesome Icelandic sweaters.... one after another, some of them with all natural yarns hand spun on her wheel or on her electric spinner, some of them with wools she had dyed from things she had picked on her daily walks. It was nothing to turn down the road she lived on and see her in a ditch with a basket over her arm filled with Mare's Tail or slips of Alder... and God help you if you didn't know the latin name. She would hunt down onion skins from the grocer in town. Always she was fearless in her hunt for a good dye.

Fleece excited her like candy for a child.... a good fleece could never be passed up. I once turned in her driveway to find her with a cheeky grin and a wool bag that had been dropped off at her house by a farmer she had met on her last trip south. She had evidently seen some black sheep in a field as she was driving along and so decided to "drop in" and meet the shepherd of the flock, thereupon, befriending the couple and soliciting a promise to save her the fleece from the blackest one. Unbeknownst to her, they showed up some months later, with their whole clip, some thirty something fleeces all stuffed in one giant burlap bag. It was just as they had left that I came upon her with this giant bag in her front yard, bare foot, and thinking she had stolen the cat's cream.

We have traveled all over this country together, taking our craft to local schools to show children of all ages, what once went into the very important task of covering ourselves for warmth. I remember one young fellow asking what she was doing and she responding, "I'm spinning yarn out of wool from a sheep," and when he responded with the question "Why?" she looked at him as if he was the most ridiculous thing in the world and said "What do they teach you kids in school?" She didn't suffer fools lightly and anyone who didn't show interest in the craft was certainly a fool!

As she entered her eighties her stamina for woolly workshops began to ebb. She would come to them but only if they were short ones. This last two years, she has been unable to "make it through" any workshop at all and so I began to travel to those workshops without her. But always when I got home I would have her over for a cup of tea and an opportunity to talk "shop".
And so it was last week, when I returned from Olds, that I went by to see my old friend. She had been declining in the last month and she knew her time was coming to a close, so before I left for Olds, she had said to me to make sure I came by when I got back to see her and to show her what I had learned. She greeted me from her bed with a sad smile on her face and said in a tired voice, "Frankie, I don't think I'm long for this world. Tell me all about your trip to Olds and show me what you bought." So I did.... and we had one last lovely visit.... two days later she was in a coma-like-state.

I like to think that my friend is "further up and further in" with natural dyes that never fade, with woolly sheep of every colour as far as the eye can see, with a shearer right there on hand, with a spinning wheel that is well oiled a doesn't clunk or bang and hands that are steady, hips that don't ache, and eyes that are clear as the big blue sky....