The Medicine Woman's Roots

As much as I love all local foods, there’s something truly special about wild, totally uncultivated food growing right at my feet, and in the case of the Wild Grapes, dangling right above my head. There’s a vitality to be had in wild river-grown Watercress that the best cultivated varieties can’t even compete with. The sharp bite of Mustard, the sweet crunch of Wild Lima flowers and the fine flavor of fresh Cottontail brings me back to my body, and closer to this particular stretch of enlivened land.

Late afternoon often finds me waiting out the heat down by the river. After floating on my back down the cool current I usually gather greens for dinner in the shade of the Cottonwoods and Alders. Come summer, I’ll be able to curl up in the shadow of Red Currants, Gooseberries and Wild Mulberry trees to gather the juicy, tart fruits at my leisure.

Foraging draws me into the woods, gets me up close and personal with my source of energy, with my personal connection to vitality and life. In the eye of the deer in the heat of the hunt, or in the spiny folds of the Cholla bud, I see the gifting cycle spinning full circle. To eat and be eaten, to live and to die, only to become yet more life.

These plants and animals here are tough and willful. While the mountains of the Gila are usually fertile and rich in diversity, they’re also dry and nearly barren for months at a time. The strongly cyclical nature of the Southwestern seasons makes for especially resilient and insistent creatures. Every life I take, every morsel I eat, I honor it with prayers and a deep respect for its primal desire to live. Whether animal or plant, I give thanks for the magic that grew it, the breath that animated it, the land that sustained it. This is the sacrament of the ordinary, of the exrtra-ordinary, of the daily transformation of food to flesh, life to life.

Connection to what is wild spirals me deeper into my own wildness. The thorns and hard edges inspire me to grow stronger. The soft underbelly of the running Elk and the sensual curves of the Rose open me up to my own vulnerable side. We are what eat: physically, energetically, completely.

May what we eat always be beautiful, wild and full of the vital mystery of life.

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I also just did an essay vignette on immersion in the natural world over at the Anima blog, you herb blog readers will likely enjoy it as well, so go on over there and check it out.

some mornings
I lay my face
against
the canyon walls
and listen to the hum
of the river current

while trees tower
along the arroyo
flush with flowering
white petals littering
the path up stone
and earth crevice

and I climb fingers first
into every cool cave
searching for the green
vine of life
as it curls
into fine cracks
uncoiling from pools
dark beneath
the surface world

water seeping
out of arid mountains
moist veins to feed
the delicate embroidery
of green life
to unfold the ivory mouth
of yucca flowers –
desert lilies
that taste
of bitter silk
cold and smooth
on parched lips

life beneath the surface
is a song
that has flowed into me
liquid and silver
as dawn
on the river
as stone
erupting into quartz
as lupine
drinking dew
the flowers
all falling down
on my hair

I press
my hands
against
canyon walls
and feel
the river run

in the spring
green shoots curl
around my toes
and the wind
sings into my veins

wild twist of blue
this river winds
through the root fingers
of willow and wild rose

down by the water
brambles hold me fast
cling to my skirts
and hush my whispers

blood from thorns
sweet like flowers
eaten from their stems
wild as the river shaking
the banks loose
of last season’s skin

the floods of winter
have brought me treasures
of seeds and stickers
weathered roots and red stones
that mark the place the sun stood
as I danced myself free
of the darkest days

in the daytime sky
the moon grows fat
and rolls across the hills
I watch her in the mirror
of this water
rippling and turning
as the first flowers open

as the green shoots unfurl
and red dirt drinks me in

For the Blog Party hosted by Ananda of Plant Journeys: Plant Myths and Archetypes

One of the ways I first came to herbalism was through stories, and especially fairy tales. The many volumes of such stories I owned as a child were read so often that eventually most of them completely fell apart, their spines broken, pages creased and worn cover beginning to crumble. Many of these tales did not present the plants and trees as benign, friendly assistants but as powerful entities capable of both generosity and what could sometimes be considered cruelty. I still remember of some of the horrifying images from a few of the oldest stories, of corpses hanging on Briar thorns, babies tortured to screaming by a cradle made of Elder wood and of ancient forests obscuring a young girl’s safe passage back to her village.

In other, or even the same, books, the plants cured blindness, provided shelter and food, or created transformational magic. Sometimes the plants were metaphors or representations of goddesses, monsters or giants. Whatever perspective the narrative took, it was clear that the plants, and especially medicinal plants were complex, varied with a life and language that is the root of our own. The European forest, still a powerful living force when these stories were first birthed, represented a complex organism that permeated human consciousness and had to be dealt with by rural people and travelers, and touched even those tucked safely away in walled cities and cozy agricultural towns.

These days, children’s books and movies tend to show cheerful woodland scenes with singing animals and helpful flowers. This is an easier approach to take now that many of the great archetypal forests of the world have become but mere shadows of their previous selves, and some have disappeared altogether. We’ve reduced our understanding of these places to whitewashed animation and culturally censored fables. Yet, there’s a special power to old growth areas, a palpable presence of the spirit of the place that is far fainter in fourth growth woodlands, mined mountains, plains stripped of their great migrating herds and whole continents deprived of their predators. This isn’t to say that there’s not magic in every area where the natural world is still present and pulsing up through sidewalks, burned out wastelands, clearcut strips and oil slicked beaches. These places are still important, beautiful and capable of healing. In fact, I feel that wounded land holds special gifts for us humans, we who are so often wounded ourselves. Yet no matter how lovely they may appear or how quickly they grow, they lack the intensity and complexity of the vital force that is present in places where the ecosystem has been allowed to grow, spread and bloom without radical interference for millenia.

The heart of the forest has long held special significance for humans as a magical place that few human ever have the courage or skills to navigate. From the lyrical tales of Tolkien to the enchanted forests of Miyazaki’s movies, we find remnants of this powerful place that still holds a profound sentience, and also the great mystery once so central to the human experience. This is the place at the very center of oldest trees, a place where it is still easy, even unavoidable, to feel and hear the forceful personalities of some of the world’s most ancient beings. How many of us have been there? More importantly, how many of our children have wandered with us through the primal wildness of a place unaltered by development, chainsaws and roads. Not just unaltered for the last fifty years, but for the last five thousand years? Will our little ones grow up to know, recognize and honor the power of these special places?

For most of us, experiencing these places will require conscious action, a pilgrimage of sorts. This is an effort, but it is only through personal relationship with these places that we will remember their importance, their magic and the necessity of preserving them, both for our benefit as living parts of the land and for the diversity of other life that depends on their existence. No matter how far we retreat into concrete, insulated particle board and reinforced steel, we are still a part of the ancient wild places, connected at the roots and bound by the very breath we breathe. The Heart of the forest is our own.
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The First Forest

Carry the knife
Carry the dress
Between your teeth
Crawl through
This cold water
Knowing that
You may never
Reach
The other side

This is the myth
This is the story
No one tells
I am the girl
Who will kiss
Your mouth
And be gone
Back to never
Never land
Not so long
Before dawn

Peel this calico skin
Can you see who I am
Can you taste
My body
Taste the sweet
Bite of tree sap
And the tang
Of running blood

I’ll take you back
To the trees
To the first forest
The myth held
Inside stone
Water
and the liquid
States
of the human
Spirit

Whisper then
Walk closer
to every edge
Follow
the spiral
Down to earth
to the mystery
of water
Rising to cover
Everything
You have
Ever known

Listen to me
Let me
Bring you back
to the first
Human home
the original
Wood still
Splintered
with stone
that rises
from the earth

Heaving
with the
Ache of fire
the birth
of myth
and landscape
the human
Hands spiraling
Stone and water

Touch me
Until I turn away
Leaving
Only a mound
of leaf mould
and a million
Flowers still
Smelling
of honey
and the
Sweet scent
of new decay

Hold these
Handfuls
of scarlet
Petals and
Twining
Vines
Give my
Body to
the sky

Remember
the stories
Remember
that all these
Faery tales
are true

Fear of Fire

in flannel skirts and bare feet
I sit among the rare mosses
of a dry land
sweet beds of solace
in a place ghosted by flame
every pine needle a match
every cloud a pillar of smoke

even in winter
I watch for lightning
the one strike, the one tree
that will become a torch

in my dreams, everything smells like smoke
and singed skin

I bury my body in the in the river
and let the cold throb
wash the fire out of me
I let myself remember the liquid song
of my blood

I forget about fire
just long enough
to breathe

—————————

Fire Season

the fingers of the pines are turning brown
each summer a little crisper, the fires a little bigger
in the village, people fan themselves
and look warily at the sky
for lightning or smoke
back then, they say,
we knew how winter was going to be
the forests didn’t burn so hot
the earth told us her name
and the aquecias ran full

up in the Pecos
the pines are naked, bitten
dead or dying
barren as a battlefield
every mountain a memorial
though we give no names to our dead
only mutters of pine beetle and damn drought
and fire season
fire season, that every year
stretches longer

down here, we’re still waiting,
shifting from foot to foot
as we have another monsoon
big enough to get us through
just big enough for the grasses to grow tall
and then dry to kindling in the autumn winds

in the north
fire is what keeps you warm
cures frostbite and cooks food
here it is the telltale ribbon
at the edge of the woods
that sings a death song
for wildflowers and rivers

these fires are hot as hell
no manzanita and fireweed
will spring from the charred ground
no resurrection after three days of sleep
only charcoal, ashes and cracked rock
and the absent rains that refuse to wash them clean

Wet yellow flowers
woven into watercress
the ground cool
and damp enough
that puddles form
around my bare feet
gold petals slick with sundots
late season survivors
of a quick coming winter

on this island of lush life
I linger among the red skinned dogwood
and let the sun warm my cold toes
watching the light turn to gold
as it passes over willows
and the wild hills of the Gila

gathering up summer in my hands
I eat monkeyflowers and watercress
tasting all the spice
and sweetness of heat
as the ice forms along the river

In the night
Purple asters
Curl inside themselves
Give death to autumn

And I
Stand beside the river
Let leaves
Slide from the sky
To shiver against my skin

October falls asleep
Her mute mouth
Pressed against
Roots and dust
She dreams the dark
Beds of elk mothers
Among willow and
Barren alder

She dreams
The wind as it pulls
At yellowing mistletoe
And the red brambles
Of my hair

Among the nettles
She dreams a green birth
Under a blessed snow
The rocks are red
Wet with icy rain
Slick as a beating heart
Laid bare
In the hunt

The hollow click
Of empty chambers
Troubles the sleep
Of a she-bear
Blanketed in red leaves
Roots and a slow rain

Gunshots echo
From ridges
Rife with tired men
The elk mother
Leaps on unshaking legs
She clears barbed wire
Leaves clumsy hunters
Fumbling in their own fences
Far behind

October smiles
And turns over
In her bed
Of dust, wood-smoke
And darkening sky