We’ve all been on a trip where Stuff Happens. Flights get canceled, luggage is lost, we run out of yarn. But what if that stuff becomes a little more epic? Like earthquakes, poisonous snakes, engines-falling-out-of-your-plane kind of epic? Could you roll with that?

Listen to the Episode

You can listen and subscribe to Fiber Nation on your platform of choice. If you love the podcast, please rate us and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts to help other fiber nerds find the show!

Meet Linda Nesbit Cortright, the Indiana Jones of the fiber world. She’s the editor of Wild Fibers Magazine: National Geographic meets Outside Magazine, but with yaks. Linda travels all over the globe to write about indigenous fiber traditions. That might mean visiting camels in Oman, silk weavers in Afghanistan, or lotus farmers in Myanmar. (Yes, you can make cloth out of lotus plants. Cray-zee.)

When things go wrong, things can go hilariously, appallingly wrong. This episode covers three trips where all hell broke loose. Meeting silk weavers in Afghanistan, she’s ignored by her guide but adored by locals who think she’s a Turkish film star.

In e-Swatini, a tiny African kingdom, the snakes make their appearance. And a wildfire. And engines-falling-out-of planes.

And in Chile and Tierra del Fuego, Linda must wrangle a charming businessman who promises the moon, the sky, and lots of guanacos. But all he delivers is a maxed-out credit card and one epically carsick child.

Happy listening,
Allison

Links for this Episode

Wild Fibers Magazine

Books by Linda:

• Twisted Tales: A Memoir of Earthquakes, Orphans, Opium, and Other Wild Yarns from Around the World
• The Eye of Fiber: An Uncommon Story

Keep learning with Interweave!