Friends of the Road Bandana

The Wheel of the Year at the End of the Road

These 22×22 Japanese cotton bandanas are ridiculously soft – the kind you actually want against your skin when you need a good cry or when the Homer wind kicks up. Each design features select flora + fauna that keep us company through the seasons on our 5-acre homestead, telling the ongoing story of what grows, dies, and returns here.

🍄 The amanita mushroom pops up in fall when everything else is dying back, fruiting from the spruce forest floor and reminding us that decomposition feeds the next round. These little teachers know about boundaries - beautiful but don't eat me, magical but respect me.

🌲 Spruce boughs and pinecones from the trees that have been here way longer than us. Their new growth bursts forth in spring as spruce tips, they drop pinecones as little packages of future forest scattered across the land. Even in the darkest months, they stay green, holding the line while everything else sleeps.

🦴 The coyote skull speaks to the wild edge we live on. We hear them yipping in the draw behind the house at night - sometimes close enough to make you pause. Last year on my birthday, I locked eyes with one who'd been picking off our chickens. That direct stare reminded me we're just visitors here, that the wilderness has its own rules. The skull reminds us that death and wildness are always closer than we think. On a homestead, death is just part of the deal - nothing personal, nothing tragic, just the way things go. Coyote teaches us to laugh at the cosmic joke of it all.

🦃  The humble spruce grouse (aka heart attack chicken) who scares the hell out of us every time she explodes from the underbrush. She's here year-round, perfectly dressed for every season, showing us how to blend in when needed and make noise when it matters. In winter, we hunt them with our guardian dogs - grateful for the sustenance, part of the give and take of living this close to the land.

🌸 And fireweed, Alaska's summer clock. The blooms climb the stalk week by week, marking time better than any calendar. By August the whole property is pink with them, and when the flowers reach the top, we know summer's almost done. Come September, they put on one last show - burgundy and rust leaves that rival any maple.

Printed on Japanese cotton that only gets softer with washing. Use it for your altar, your tears, your sweat, your pocket companion. Tie it around your neck when the wind bites. Each one connects you to the End of the Road, this place and its cycles - you become a Friend of End of the Road, part of the extended web of people supporting this land as a place for gathering, learning, and remembering what seasonal rhythm feels like 🕸️

Machine wash cold, hang dry. Gets better with age, like all of us.