On making, wearing, and not wearing clothes Published on Substack: NOV 24, 2023 I made an orange corduroy skirt a few weeks back, and I’ve been wearing it everywhere. It’s cut so it curves in at the hem, makes a sort of bubble, an inverted bell. It’s a riff on my favorite Japanese pattern book big skirt that has gathers at the bottom, on each side seam. Gathers would have been too bulky for corduroy, so I got out my French curve, and I cut the shape I wanted into the pattern. And then I cut it into the fabric. And then…

On killing and eating close to home. Published on Substack: NOV 13, 2023 Hello lovely readers and welcome new subscribers! It’s been a minute, for a bunch of reasons. I have a few new things I’m working on, but in the meantime, here’s a piece I wrote for The Dark Mountain Project a couple of years back. Since the valley is full of (mostly) guys in blaze orange, and since I just had my annual beer with one of my managers, who comes up to hunt with a couple of buddies, I thought perhaps you all might be interested in this essay about meat,…

Home just in time to batten the hatches Published on Substack: OCT 30, 2023 I got home from California just in time to spend most of last week running around trying to get ready for the snow and cold temperatures that blew in late in the week. There was an actual hatch to batten on the greenhouse shed, storm windows to put up, tomatoes and herbs and flowers to harvest, strawberries and herbs to bury in straw, and a chicken coop that needed winterizing. All while working my regular job (which thankfully was a little slow last week, for the…

Between the life and the work. Published on Substack: OCT 17, 2023 I almost pulled the plug on this trip. I’m doing a writer’s workshop that starts tomorrow. I booked this trip back in April when I was closing my mother’s affairs and planning the funeral, a process that was much more complicated and ongoing than it seemed like it should have been. I found this little cottage across the street from the workshop venue (I’m way too old to share a room with a stranger), and then, exhausted by estate stuff and funeral planning, I added days. A full…

Dualism and the wilderness dilemma Published on Substack: OCT 5, 2023 A few weeks ago, before I definitively killed my Twitter account, this tweet came across my feed from the British nature writer Robert Macfarlane: Hello — I’ve been away a while, following a river to the sea, this river, who turned me upside-down & shook me out like nothing I’ve known before, & was powerfully alive in ways that exceed the sum of the lives it contains & enables. Tell me of the most alive river you know? It immediately stuck in my craw. We’re categorizing rivers as more…

Even the parts that don’t seem like it. Published on Substack: SEP 28, 2023 My brain has been on fire over Lauren Elkin’s Art Monsters , and Charlie Porter’s Bring No Clothes, books that each take on the questions of what it means to build a life as an artist. Not an influencer life, but an artists life. Reading each of these (and underlining, and filling the pages with sticky notes, and copying out whole passages) has lit me up with a flame of hope that finally, the discourse of art might be moving away from the notion that art is only measured by how it sells. I’ve been…

Handwork as thought, frugality as practice. Published on Substack: SEP 11, 2023 The weather is changing, the garden is full of tomatoes and greens and herbs and zucchini, and I’ve been slightly obsessed with making dumplings. The past few years, the cookbooks I’ve been most intrigued with are those by writers who are describing the cooking traditions of Ukraine, Georgia, the Causcaus, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Writers like Olia Hercules, Alissa Timoshkina, and Caroline Eden. One thing these regions have in common is dumplings … I mean, who doesn’t like a dumpling? Even the word is endearing. Look at those little dumplings up there…

Mushroom Hunting Rewards the Slow and the Halt Published on Substack Sept. 5, 2023 Dashboard The Walking Cure Mushroom Hunting Rewards the Slow and the Halt CHARLOTTE FREEMAN SEP 5, 2023 12 52 Share Here’s another in my series of older essays I’m reprinting here as we all get to know one another. This was originally published in Culinate, in probably 2009. The site is long gone now, but it’s an essay, and a topic that still informs much of my work, and as the rains have hit here, and as I’m too busy to go out this year, it’s…

Green Salt to Subvert Consumerism Originally published at Substack: AUG 28, 2023 When I was in high school, we’d take the train in from the suburbs to spend the weekend with our mother, who had moved back to Chicago when we went to live with our dad. It was a weird time in a lot of ways, but what I loved about the train, what I’ve loved about trains in lots of places, is the glimpse we got into people’s backyards. There was one stretch of the Chicago and Northwestern line where we’d pass by small brick 2 story buildings…

On quitting writing, on building a home, on quitting writing again Originally published at Substack: AUG 22, 2023 To kick off the LivingSmall at 20 series, here’s an essay I wrote for a workshop with Alexander Chee a couple of years back. It’s never seemed like something to send out, but it’s a pretty good summation of the long-term project. Making Home The email from the agent was good, but it was a clear no. She  loved the writing. She could see there was a real story. But, she said, she could also see the places where I didn’t want…