Richard Sisson Tripp and his wife Carol are regulars at the Vineyard artisans fair, weaving sheep’s wool from their farm in Lakeville into blankets and shawls.

Mr. Tripp learned to weave in the early 1970s while living at a sheep camp for three years in Zuni, N.M. The experience is now the subject of his memoir, Lessons Learned In Zuni: A Pueblo Memoir.

“It’s a book I had planned to write forever,” he said.

Mr. Tripp will read passages from his book and share stories from his years on the Zuni Pueblo reservation at Stillpoint on Saturday, June 14 at 7 p.m.

Mr. Tripp said his time in Zuni was transformative. He moved there in 1967 to teach high school English after graduating from Bridgewater State College. Upon arrival he noticed a lack of enthusiasm from the teachers and children. He said many of the non-native teachers forbid the students from speaking their native language.

Mr. Tripp said making his classroom a friendly place to learn became an immediate goal. He filled a bookshelf with novels he cherished along with Zuni stories. He also brought in a couch and let the students use his loom to learn how to weave.

“[My students] read with excitement, actually contributed verbally in class, and were more animated than I’d seen them before,” Mr. Tripp writes in his book.

The sheep camp Mr. Tripp lived on had kerosene lamps, wood stoves and a hard packed mud floor. It did not have electricity and he had to walk down a long dirt lane, traveling behind a sacred mesa, to retrieve water from a spring.

“I kept a portable typewriter on my table with a piece of paper...” Mr. Tripp said. “Everything was so different that I just felt the need to be journaling all the time.”

Mr. Tripp said one of his closest friends was a Hopi woman named Daisy Nampeyo Hooee who worked in the cafeteria. She was an excellent potter who made traditional Zuni vessels. Ms. Hooee taught him how to grind clay and make strong, but thin, pots. Each item was fired in a kiln made of sheep manure.

Mr. Tripp said he enjoyed learning pottery and this interest helped him connect with his students. Today, an estimated 150 Pueblo pots rest in his home in Lakeville. He said he hasn’t made pottery since he left Zuni in part because the methods he learned couldn’t be replicated in Lakeville.

But weaving has long been a focus of his life, learning the craft from a Navajo woman named Noël Bennett who taught a class at the University of New Mexico.

“It’s very contemplative for me to sit and weave,” Mr. Tripp said. “It’s a quiet thing. At first there’s a lot of math and figuring out your pattern, dressing the loom and everything. But once that’s done, you can let your mind wander and think about Zuni.”

Mr. Tripp also met his wife, Carol, during that time. She was an elementary school teacher in Zuni. Today the couple live on their 22-acre Windy Hill Farm raising Border Leicester sheep, dying the wool and spinning it into yarn. They are also frequently on the Vineyard, at the artisans fair and their home in Vineyard Haven where they also keep sheep. Mr. Tripp said his Vineyard roots go back over a century.

He sat down to write his book while isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic and it was released in October 2024. Mr. Tripp said he is almost finished writing a second book.

Mr. Tripp said he still thinks about Zuni every day. When others read his stories or attend his talks, he said it brings him back to the sheep camp and the classroom he cherishes.

“[My time in Zuni] is now an important part of my life in a different way,” Mr. Tripp said. “I’m an educator again. I’m teaching again.”

At the event on Saturday, Mr. Tripp will also be reminded of his education career, as Stillpoint founder Thomas Bena was once a student in Mr. Tripp’s English class in Lakeville.

Stillpoint is located at 20 Stillpoint Meadows, West Tisbury. For more information, visit stillpointmv.org.