October on the Oak Slopes
Orange, the colour the oaks turn
the week before the first snow.
She caught it in the wool before it fell
and it has not fallen since.
For one week in October the holm oaks on the lower slopes above Khenifra turn, not all at once but ridge by ridge, so that the mountain looks as if someone has spilled a jar of rust down it. The shepherds bring the flocks down through it. The women gather the last wool of the year. And some of them, looking at that slope, go home and dye a whole season's fleece the same colour, because why would you not. This rug was made in the 1970s by one of them, nearly four metres of orange knotted two fingers deep.
Fifty years have warmed it rather than tired it. The orange has gone toward rust and apricot, the pile is thick and soft, and the whole rug has the settled weight of something that has been a family's floor. It wants a big, plain room, white or oatmeal, with wood and leather, where it can be the sunset.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.