DREAM WEAVER

THE WOMEN told stories as they worked - long, symbolfilled parables about haste and laziness and greed. Their hands moved alternately fast and slow, shifting sometimes to their lips to cover toothy smiles and laughter. The Apache culture encourages modesty.

Teri Goode hid beneath her grandmother's camp dress, watching as the women plied sumac and devil's claw, strung beads onto leather and added bells to burden baskets. The women - her grandmothers - had gathered beneath a giant cottonwood tree in Lower Peridot, on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, to craft and to drink a corn alcohol they brewed themselves.

"It was always such a big deal when my grandmothers came together," Goode says. "They would throw out a big canvas and sit and plan out the rest of the year - how they were going to collect materials. When they got together to get the drink going, you knew something was going to happen. Just preparing it took two weeks."

A girl of 6 or 7, Goode wasn't really supposed to be near the gathering. "Usually, children aren't to be near the adults," she says. "They're always told to go play - This is an adult thing, you can't be in the middle of it." But Goode was curious, and she was her grandmother Adela's favorite, so she hid and watched and listened.

"Adela was more like a mother to me," she says. "She raised me, she took me on adventures."

One such journey took the pair to the town of Cochise.

"She'd tell me, 'This is where you're from. This is where you belong. You're a descendant of Cochise.'"

WEAVER

They find a job, they're what's going to help you find one. They're there for work. That's something Adela taught me."

Indeed, the crafts of Apache women can be a lifeline of sorts, providing financial support for their families, as well as a means of building strong female relationships. But even then, Goode's grandmothers told her, she'd need a husband.

"They'd tell me, 'You won't have time to go gathering. Your husband will have to go out and gather for you. He can go to the mountain,'" she says.

And just as a dream told Goode to pick up the awl again, others have inspired designs.

"I saw this basket in my dream - I don't know how many years ago," she says. "Then, recently, I actually touched the basket I saw in my dream. I'd never actually seen it, anywhere. Then a relative gave me a book on weaving, and I looked at it and saw that same design."

For Goode, whose husband, Farrell, runs an outdoors outfitter, basket-weaving is a link to her ancient culture, a vehicle through which she hopes to preserve Apache tradition. And though Farrell helps with the gathering, the creative spirit flows through Goode's hands.

They're the hands of someone who's long used them - strong, fingers nimble, nails short and square the hands of someone who's gone to the mountain herself, time and time again. But, once, her hands nearly failed her.

"We were coming back from selling our crafts in Scottsdale in 2003. It had been a rough day. No one wanted to buy," Goode

BY KELLY VAUGHN KRAMER / PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID ZICKL

Then, at the age of 10, Goode picked up an awl for the first time. It terrified her.

"It was sharp, you know, I could fall," she says. "One of my grandmothers did - she poked herself - and I remember crying and crying."

"I had a dream one night. My grandmother was telling me, 'You know what I taught you. What are you waiting for?'" she says. Today, Goode is among the last of the traditional Western Apache coil basket weavers. Her work is in high demand, and it's work that's rooted in both tradition and necessity.

"Your hands are on your body for a reason," Goode says. "They're not just there to hold your boyfriend's hand - they're going to make crafts and provide for your family. When you can't remembers. "It was around 10 or 11 at night, heading back into San Carlos. It was windy, there were horses on the road, and there was no way to stop. I hit the brakes, but the horses stopped the truck. I hung on to the steering wheel and didn't even realize my wrists were broken. It was the scariest thing for me. I didn't think I would ever weave again."

After months of rehabilitation, she began working again. Sometimes, at the end of the day, her bones ache, yet she'll spend as many as 20 hours at a time working on a basket.

Her art has become part of her identity, but she also speaks on behalf of the Apache people.

"We still have a heritage," Goode says. "We're still here. Native Americans are still doing basketry. Someone has to say something." Teri Goode's work is included in the Basketry Treasured exhibit, which runs through June 1, 2013, at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson. For more information, call 520621-6302 or visit www.statemuseum.arizona.edu.