Wild and Giving

“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.” 

Robin Wall Kimmerer

The bearded man, wearing cut-offs and a tan t-shirt, pointed to a tall, robust weed at the edge of the gravel road and told us its name: Burnweed. Burnweed is often one of the first plants to return to fire-damaged areas, he told us, hence it’s other moniker, Fireweed. The leaves can be eaten, but the flavor is very strong. He passed around a cluster of leaves he’d clipped from the plant, and we each pinched off a small bite. I chewed it tentatively. This was definitely not the mild taste of the lettuces I’m used to enjoying.

I was with Kathy and a handful of other plant lovers on a walking tour at this year’s Wild Herb Conference in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. We were learning from a long-time forager about edible plants we could find practically outside our own front doors. Though outside our doors at home, we certainly didn’t have this awe-inspiring view of mountains rolling across the horizon or cool breezes like the ones that occasionally lifted our hair.

He told us about Black Birch and Sumac and Evening Primrose. We learned that the young, new growth of Hemlock has a fresh, citrusy flavor. As we munched the tiny needles of the evergreen, Kathy leaned towards me with an expression I couldn’t quite interpret until she whispered, “Didn’t Socrates drink a poison made of Hemlock?”*

This experience of eating straight from wild plants brought back memories. As a child, I spent a lot of time outdoors, roaming through fields and forests. In the spring, I often ate chickweed and wild strawberries, taking what the plants so generously offered. How had I first learned of the light, crisp taste of chickweed? Or how to distinguish wild strawberries, small, red and bursting with sweetness, from mock strawberries, which I’d been told were poisonous? Maybe my father or his mother, both from a family of subsistence farmers, passed along this plant wisdom. Or is this something that lives in our DNA?

By the time the tour ended, I had begun to see the wild growing things around me in a new light, like old friends. The foraging walk reconnected me to my younger self and to the abundance all around me – food and flavorings and medicines—from the ones who take such good care of us.

*Socrates drank a brew made of Poison Hemlock, a herbaceous plant that is a member of the carrot family. What we tasted was Eastern Hemlock.