Life with Wool: Our Journey Begins

Greetings from Maine!

I’m writing to you from beside the old rusty fire pit, where I’ve set up a small fire to ward off the chill that always arrives in early September. It’s a sudden, sharp bite that signals our natural world has begun its poignant and pivotal shift toward autumn.

We entered the month innocently enough, still in our flowy linens and flip flops, with sunscreen at the ready and plans for at least one more dip in the ocean.

But all that ended, as it does every year, on the Tuesday after Labor Day. That’s when the Blue Hill Fair closes and the big Ferris Wheel gets unbolted, loaded on the truck, and trundled out.

That’s when Mother Nature lets out a great bit sigh of relief, kicks off her shoes, dons the comfy pants, and gives the sun permission to go to bed early.

Those early sunsets signal to the geese and the vireos, parulas, warblers, and dozens of other birds that it’s time to pack their bags and head south. They also send me straight to the hall closet for my wool.

Sweaters stay in storage this month, it’s a wool shirt I seek, a prized Ralph Lauren find at a Goodwill. It’s thick and sturdy with gorgeous autumnal shades of goldenrod and asters, changing leaves, a streak of brilliant blue sky, and bands of black marking early sunsets and the return of darkness.

I drape the shirt over my knees and give the fire a stir.

Maine is a state of many seasons. Not just spring, summer, autumn, and winter—although they do a good job of expressing themselves.

We also have mud season, blackfly season, mosquito season, lobstering season, blueberry season, deer-hunting season, ice-fishing season, and, of course, a frenzied tourist season that doesn’t extend much beyond an equally frenzied garden season.

Note that I said nothing about wool season, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as wool season, not in Maine, not anywhere. That would be as preposterous as suggesting chocolate or coffee or oxygen had a season.

Wool is eternal, like a magic Swiss Army knife with blades and tools and gadgets to prepare us for any eventuality life may throw at us, 365 days a year.

Sometimes wool’s utility is obvious, like when it appears in blankets or socks or sweaters. But it also has more obscure moments that I love dearly, like when I need to fix a drafty chimney or window, prevent a sunburn, feed my tomatoes, or keep the winter blues at bay. Life with wool is fun.

So I propose that we walk through the seasons together, through my seasons, celebrating all the ways wool touches my world. Starting here, by the fire.

I think about the beautiful wool shirt covering my knees—about the world it was made for, and the world we live in now, and how wildly different the two have become.

I think about my small Maine town, whose population is barely 930.

As recently as 100 years ago, this same town managed to support six general stores and a range of industries including lumber, lobster, granite, ice, hay, and porgy oil. We even had a small woolen mill that, according to the 1907 edition of the Blue Book Textile Directory, had two sets of cards, 288 spindles, and two boilers for dyeing.

The lobstering continues, but everything else, including that woolen mill, is long gone. Like most of this country, Maine’s infrastructure for transforming wool into yarn and fabric has been reduced to something so small, I can’t even call it a shadow of its former self.

Woolen mills that once filled six and a half pages of that 1907 directory could barely fill a paragraph today. And one of the few surviving mills from that directory, Jagger Brothers, just announced they’re closing operations.

Another loss in a season full of endings.

It’s foolish to think we could go back to a time when every town had its own mill and enough sheep to clothe everyone. We don’t live in that world anymore.

When the light starts to change and the air gets cooler, the geese and hummingbirds and monarch butterflies and all the other migrators aren’t paralyzed with sadness.

They don’t cling to the past, they don’t stick around in denial and hope that somehow the light will magically return. They take the change as a signal to act. They keep moving forward.

And so, while our resident chipmunk ferries seeds to his secret hiding place and the dragonflies feast on the last of the mosquitoes, I’ll put one more log on the fire. Together, we can get on with the business of moving forward.