Embroidery applique and Native Americans
I had gone on many hikes previously, including a fifty-miler across Montana with my Boy Scout troop earlier that summer. Along the way we saw beautiful mountains, streams, and fields. We carried everything on our backs during the entire extent of the journey, including our tents, food, water, tools, flashlights, sanitation supplies, and so on. Every night we would reach our planned campsite and finally pull our backpacks off of our wearied bodies, resting our tired legs and basking in the immeasurable joy of stasis. We brought light food and simple fire-making supplies, allowing for us to create simple meals that were still filling and satisfying after a long, hard day of hiking.Considering the epic and arduous nature of that hike I had taken up earlier during the summer, I figured that our brief foray into the Grand Canyon would prove to be completely unchallenging and uninteresting. However, the sheer red rock walls fascinated me. Below on the canyon floor, beautiful green shrubbery enticed me. Though sweat dripped down my back, I was largely unaware of any physical exhaustion and instead enraptured by the swelling vista before me. By the time that we reached the very bottom of the canyon, I found that this valley had captured my imagination and refused to let it escape.
At the bottom of the canyon we stretched, relaxed, and drank water, much like we did at the end of each day on my fifty-mile hike earlier that summer. After I had rested enough, I decided to have a look around while waiting for my two little sisters to catch up with the rest of us. Several tents were pitched not far from where we sat, so I made my way over so as to investigate their contents, and whether they contained anything (or anyone) of interest.
To my sheer and utter delight, I found that the first tent contained a trio of ancient, wrinkled Native American women dressed in shawls. They sat in the dusty red dirt on the bottom of their floorless tent, taking shelter in the shade from the day"s hot sun. Sitting on the ground before them were cloths of all kinds: shawls, like those that they wore, carpets, headdresses, rugs, shirts, pants, and so on. Each of these items of clothing had been hand-made, and hand-embroidered with various patterns and images. Embroidery applique is not usually my cup of tea, but I found myself to be fascinated by the intriguing images. Embroidery applique, for these women, seemed to be almost something spiritual. Embroidery was obviously more than just a way of weaving images into cloth-it was a worthy craft that connected these women to their culture and to their heritage.
At the end of my canyon journey, a journey that I expected to yield little of interest, I found myself enthralled by the simplest of things. Embroidery applique is a simple and humble craft that I had ignored for most of my life as being nothing more than quaint. Embroidery applique was usually good material for making fun of my little sisters and their futures with cats. appliqued Embroidery
was boring. But at the end of a journey in the beautiful outdoors, I saw it, and most of life, as being more than what I had originally thought.