Copper Before the Frost
October, and the oaks go the colour of a kettle.
One week, then the wind takes it.
She kept the week.
Four metres of it, two fingers deep.
There is a week in October when the oak slopes below the cedar line turn copper all at once, and the women who weave up there know it is the last warm colour they will see until April. This rug is that week, kept. It is enormous, more than four metres, and it weighs what a small child weighs, because it was made for the largest room in the house and for the coldest months, when the whole family would gather on it and the brass tray would come out and the kettle would stay on the embers until late.
The pile has settled to a dense two centimetres over forty winters, which is exactly what you want from a Beni M'Guild: the wool has found its depth and will not change again. The copper has gone warm and even, closer now to burnt orange where the light falls. It wants a big room with plaster walls and a long low table, and it will make that room feel like late afternoon all day.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.