No Dye Pot at the Summer Camp
In June the flock goes up and the family follows.
No pots, no madder, no indigo.
Only the sheep, and what they wore,
spun in the evenings above the treeline.
Every June the Beni M'Guild move up. The flock goes first, then the mules, then the family, to the high pasture above the cedars where the grass stays green until September and the nights are cold enough for a rug even in July. You take what you can carry, and nobody carries a dye pot up a mountain. So the summer rugs are the colour of the flock: cream from the ewes, oatmeal from the yearlings, a line of brown from the one dark ram everyone complains about. This is one of those, nearly four metres of undyed wool spun in the evenings while the light lasted.
It has the dense two centimetre pile of a rug meant for sleeping on, and forty years have given the cream a warmth that new wool never has. It belongs in a room that already has colour on the walls or in the paintings, and wants a floor that will let them speak.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.