— It wasn’t until I moved to Boulder that I discovered the joys of a clothesline. When John first asked me to leave Manhattan and join him out West, I pictured him fetching me in a covered wagon. Leaving the city that never sleeps for what was then a sleepy town made me feel like a pioneer woman (“Rivvy of the Prairies”), and so did using a clothesline. I guess I was finally learning the simple tasks of daily life. And after years of urban living, I relished each old-fashioned chore.
I loved standing barefoot in the grass, using wooden pegs to hang our sheets. I delighted in watching them blow in the wind as the sun and air naturally dried them. And later, when I made our bed, I savored their fresh, sweet scent and remembered how, as a child, I would walk between and smell the sheets my mother hung to dry.
Now, I admit it: The clothesline broke and I reunited with our electric dryer. No worries, I told John. We can still save energy. I’ll just wash less often . . . and vacuum less too!
But now and then, I still hang something out to dry, and that always feels right. And when we’d phone John’s ninetyseven-year-old mother in England, she’d often tell us she was just outside, hanging the wash to dry. She never did anything but. So this one’s a recipe from Dorothy Wilcockson (“Dorothy of Mole Valley”), who knew the joy of simple pleasures.
