The Warm Side of the Mountain
South-facing, the one slope where snow gives up early.
Red earth, red wool, a loom in the sun.
She tied it thick enough
that the north wind never found the floor.
Every mountain has a warm side, the slope that faces south and lets the snow go first, and the Beni M'Guild houses that stand on it get the long afternoon light. This rug was knotted on such a slope, in a red the colour of the earth once the snow has left it, three centimetres deep and almost two metres wide, with lighter diamonds and dark lines keeping the red company. It is thick enough to sleep on, and it was. Forty years on, the wool has the particular softness of a rug that has been walked on in bare feet every day of its life, and the red has settled into the warm, unhurried shade of a brick wall in late sun.
It is the right size for the room where people actually sit: in front of the fire, under the coffee table, between two armchairs. The rug that makes a house feel finished.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.