Basketweaving and Creekwalking

We held this class at Venture Retreat Center once again, with Jay Sliwa as our instructor, taking the opportunity to study up on some of Jay’s skills while Jon is in Germany. We arrived to news that one of the group had a whole salmon to share for our dinner. We spun up a coal and built a fire as the bringer of salmon had an impromptu filleting demonstration. Yum, sashimi.



We used the carcass to bait a trail camera southeast of the retreat center, in the edge between a coyotebrush stand and a grassy area, near the road, just up from the creek. We caught some critters chowing down. If I can get those photos I'll post them here. Until then, post a comment with your guess about who found the carcass and why you favor that particular critter.

The next day, after a damp, chilly, and peaceful bird sit, we came back to the fire circle and found piles upon piles of straight, supple green willow shoots. These were not like the standard twisty forky branches one commonly sees on trees unmolested by disturbance, but long straight canes at least three feet in length. Where could one go to find this much basketry material? What makes a tree produce long straight shoots? Could I find the right materials near my home in Oakland? Could I manage trees near me to produce this kind of growth?



Then we got down to the business of making burden baskets. Here’s a how-to of our process:

We started with four short lengths of thicker willow shoots, and four longer ones. We split each shorter one lengthwise, from the center partway to the ends, creating openings in the middle of otherwise whole shoots. We lined the openings up and pushed all four longer shoots through them at a right angle, creating a grid.



Then we began weaving the bottoms of the baskets. Taking two long thin shoots, we wedged the tips in the latticework and began twining. One went behind a thicker grid piece as the other came forward, twining around in a twisting pattern. Ideally one would spread the longer, thicker grid pieces as one wove, giving the whole an overall oval shape. I didn’t manage to do that part very well.

By this time the sun was toward the south and stomachs were growling. We stopped for lunch and I found someone to join me in climbing a tree.

When we returned, we started on the sides of the baskets. First we sharpened the butt ends of 16 long shoots, and shoved them in parallel to the thick grid pieces, producing a giant spreading hexadecopoid shape.


We then started “pricking up” the 16 long shoots, which entailed stabbing them through with a knife, near the base, but not cutting them, and then bending them up at a right angle. The pierced area bent rather than broke (if we were lucky) forming a vertical wall of weavers that were anchored in the horizontal base. We drew them together and tied them in a teepee shape over the base.

Then we began twining three shoots at once for the sides. We started by shoving the thin ends of three long shoots in adjacent crevices. The pattern was “skip two, under one,” though I found it more useful to just look for the next opening and tuck my furthest-away cane in it.



And that’s as far as we got in one day. By four-thirty we were all tired and a little bit grumpy from wrestling willow shoots all day, so we went for a wander up the creek.






One of us tried to jump and instead took a tumble when the bank crumbled. Waterproof shoes are great – for holding the water in when you’ve just belly-flopped up to your waist. Sploosh!

Laughter helped to release the tensions of the day, as did simply walking the creek. I hadn’t realized how tense and micro-focused I’d become, until we were strolling along the creekbed and I started to unwind. I felt my chest open and my back straighten. My weight settled down as my muscles loosened. My head came up and my neck released and stretched a little, and my focus began to spread out. I began to feel better, after not really realizing that I had been feeling worse.

As fun, addictive, important, necessary, interesting and useful as basketweaving is, I need to remember to walk the creek too.