Lately, I’ve been tying knots. In the spring cleaning frenzy of last week, I uncovered several unfinished Orthodox prayer ropes that I’d tucked away for “later”. My future father-in-law taught me how to tie them, and though I was enthusiastic at the onset, my interest had dissipated. They require quite a bit of patience.
Many of my plans for last week, our longed-for Spring Break, went the same way. Exited about more time to read, I lined up four books. John and I agreed to work together to renovate our leaky woodshed. We would take the dogs on day hikes every day. I planned to start the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers for the greenhouse.
On Friday I uncovered the prayer ropes. I realized I was a quarter of the way through three different books, all of them on faith (Vine Deloria Jr.’s The World We Used to Live In, Clarissa Pinkola-Estés’s Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul, and Tin House’s themed issue on faith make for interesting dreams, by the way).
I set all of this aside to tie knots. I’d carried this craft string – once black and white, now silver-black with mysterious stains – the length of the entire Appalachian Trail almost two years ago. Memories started to trickle in: sitting on top of my filthy pack at a trail crossing, cussing when I got the knot wrong, John reminding me cheerfully that prayer knots were intended to be made ‘prayerfully’.
Muscle memory guided me through the first half of the knot-tying process, but I couldn’t complete the knot on my own. I watched videos online and searched through the giant book on knots that I’d told John was a frivolous buy. The rest of the process came back slowly. I practiced. Then I started scouring the shelves for a good novel.
The Ashley Book of Knots, first published in 1944 by one Clifford W. Ashley, is truly a treasure trove. It’s no wonder Annie Proulx cites this hefty reference as a source of inspiration for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Shipping News. Set on the rugged coast of Newfoundland, the novel follows Quoyle, a floundering newspaperman who returns with his daughters and a mysterious aunt to their ancestral home.
Each chapter begins with an excerpt from Ashley’s book of knots or the mariner’s dictionary. Fate would have it that the very knot I keep tying is pictured at the beginning of the chapter titled “Sometimes You Just Lose It”. ( A similar knot is pictured in “The Sled Dog Driver’s Dream”.)
The knot, sometimes called the Sailor’s Knife Lanyard Knot or the Two-strand Diamond Knot, can also make the “Sailor’s Cross” if you don’t pull the side loops all the way through (see ‘Fancy Knot’ picture above). After a while, all of Ashley’s knots started to look the same to me. Bottom line: knots join two strands together and keep one from losing ‘it’ – whether ‘it’ is a knife, a boat, or a mind depends on the situation.
Confession: I’m still not done with the prayer rope, or with Proulx’s excellent novel. We’ve got a ways to go with the woodshed project, but we’re making progress. The tomato seeds are sprouting. We get snow, it thaws. We’re waiting for summer.
This summer, we’ll tie a new kind of knot, one that the priest says (somewhat menacingly) will never come untied. The idea is the same, really: join two people together, task each to keep the other from losing the proverbial ‘it’. The woodshed is only the beginning.
As I pounded some nails in and wrenched others out, I thought about how Quoyle fixing up the old house on the rock – the one legend has it was hauled by cables and sled across the ice from Gaze Island – also acts as metaphor for the process of piecing together his splintered life.
While all this spring daylight leaves me feeling a bit frayed (get it? frayed knot!) and manic, I’ll try to ground myself in the waiting process. I’ll keep tying little knots, physical and metaphorical, and try to hold on. I think that’s what prayer is for.
read . write . wander 
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