Of Old and New

The bright sun coming in now, after Solstice, makes me want to change lots of things. I've purged my dresser and a few key places in my home just getting rid of old and making room for new - or better yet just leaving it open and clear. As you can see, my blog was in the line of fire! I'm playing with the new layout and background.... I like it today but we'll see if it lasts. 

One thing new in my life is the Anima Medicine Woman Tradition Herbal Path - my lovely long time- long distance friend and fellow herbalist Kiva Rose from the Anima Sanctuary has been offering her correspondence courses at a growing rate. I didn't take it before because I was busy doing Susun Weed's Green Witch Course, which I finished this past Fall. 

I suppose you might think that was enough, right. Well, it could have been.... but I need some deeper transformation in order to realize the truth of who I am. I had a feeling this would be the route for me - fitting both my philosophy as well as my logistical circumstances. The course doesn't separate the cerebral process and the personal process, which is vital for the becoming of an Herbalist in whatever style expressed. 

So far, I am on lesson 2, and it's nothing short of rockin' my world. What I didn't expect is how rough my emotional waters are, and how much I have just, well, ignored - parts of myself that need tending. I'm on the journey now, to find out who I am, really, under the assumptions and stuff and looks and titles. It's a very mysterious feeling so far... not knowing exactly how to do it or what to be open to noticing. I do know, however, that I can't expect anyone else to brave their inner wilderness if I don't know it myself.

I've got some water, a knife, and a backpack....

I'm goin' in..............

Snippets of Yule

As a bonafide bah humbug, it is useful for me to consciously focus on the parts of Yule that bring me very special moments and memories, and that align with my core values. Here are a few of them......

Lighting my son's hand made tallow candle. In his Pioneers course, they rendered some beautiful deer tallow from a deer that the instructor had taken in as a mercy killing after it had been brutally hit by a car.

A green Yule...... I decided against wrapping paper this year. Everything we wrapped was in re-used stuff: Paper bags, last year's stuff, and extra packaging material from shipped boxes. The coolest ones were the bubble wrap (which my nine year old loves to pop) and the no-longer-needed blueprint paper. The Trader Joe's bags are pretty groovy too.

The amount of herbal gifts I give has drastically reduced from a large basket of maybe 20 goods in it per person or couple, to just one or two. Since working at Great Hollow I just don't have the time to keep up on home made herbal products or inventory for that matter. But I did manage to make a coupe really nice things..... a lovely sacred solstice smudge blend, containing red cedar needles I harvested, rose petals from an organic bouquet my hubby gave me, copal, myrrh, frankincense, lavender, and white sage. mmmmmmm. and the little finishing touch is the shell to scoop it out with.

A delicious and supremely soothing staple is a good quality comfrey salve. This one I kicked up a notch for gift giving - ok fine, for my own guilty pleasure! I put in a little cocoa absolute and clementine co2 and it smells out of this world delicious! The wrap on the left is a wash cloth I crocheted out of some really buttery wool blend yarn, and tied up in it is some good soap.

Now what did I get for Yule? Well, I got a few really special things, but topping the list is a generous antidote to my above stated dilemma...... HERBS! Yes, my Mama herbalist came through with flying colors and granted me a beautiful basket of organic and locally harvested bulk herbs, labeled "to my Medicine Woman Daughter" - almost needed the tissues for that one! Oats, Nettle, Red Raspberry leaf, Peppermint, Sassafras, and Astragalus. Perfect.

Recovery will be a breeze.............
I can sit back for a little while and sip my infusion amidst the boxes, new books and calendars, and watch the juncos collect seeds,

...and the Pileated Woodpeckers as they spiral up the hemlocks in a glorious and rhythmic tandem dance. Happy inbetween days everyone........

Keying Conifers

Learning how to use a key is fun. Last week the kids in my herb class and I did this. First we learned by making a key from our selves, by dividing into two main groups to begin with. The idea is that you start with the most general, and work your way to most specific, splitting the options in to two each time (dichotomous key). First we split into boys/girls. From there we split each group up even further, until finally we could define each individual by their most absolute feature. Then we used the framework to classify two more people (the teachers of course!)

From there, we took on the world of evergreens. We put our order of questioning to work, tracking the least to most subtle details of each bough. Conifers are incredibly fascinating! And the perfect type of plant to learn to use a key from. They also make good material for a starter talk on the evolution of plant life. And it's always interesting to teach kids about 'naked seeds'.

After noting all the defining features of our green trees, we used the information to finally ID each species. We had a wonderful round table debate on the 'Blue Spruce', commonly known but not listed in my books. With a little help from our lead instructor and the Internet, we found it to be synonymous with the Colorado spruce - of which we did not have a bough.

The kids successfully ID'd at least the genus of each evergreen, in some cases they got all the way to species. Woohoo! Ok, I know the poster looks simple.... but the observational skills that get exercised in the process is a lot more noisy and fun and complicated!

The middle one is supposed to follow through to list the Norway Spruce, one of my personal favorites - the way the boughs drape along it's sides like gypsy sleeves. If you get a good blister of sap it makes wonderful salve or wound dressing. They seem to line the highways of Western Connecticut in an elegant way that buffers the otherwise preppy atmosphere.

Hopefully the kids will be examining their Yuletide tree up close this year!

I LOVE this guy! (Green Dean!)

Mr. Dean has some of THE best plant tutorials I have seen. He is clear, concise, thorough, and really lovely to listen to. His I.T.E.M. acronym is a great teaching and learning aid as well. 

Have Fun!

http://www.youtube.com/user/EatTheWeeds

and more formally:

http://www.eattheweeds.com/

Before consumtion

Comes understanding. The more I learn about plants, the more I realize I don't know. The world of plants and their intricacies is so vast and layered. Understanding plants on a simple and spiritual level is deeply satisfying, but in order to pass on the knowledge to the next generation I am finding that concrete understanding is most essential.

Take for instance, the simple twig. Or an herbaceous plant. Or second year growth.




As an herbalist these words get taken for granted; tossed around in the books with the assumption that us lay herbalists actually know what they mean. I know they assume because they aren't explained in the glossary or given any special attention. It wasn't until recently that I finally read how to identify the "second year growth" of Mullein. The first year is the basal rosette and the second year is when it sends up the stalk. (hmm, what happens in the third year?) With the rise of global warming, we are paying attention. I for one thought that the tree was confused... with her little buds already on the twig tips in December. Upon more studies.... I now understand these buds as the terminal buds, which hold the genetic information for spring's renewal and supply food for wildlife in the winter. An herbaceous plant actually has a useful definition.... it's not just a random term for low growing nifty plants that aren't trees.


"The inner bark was used to treat stomach disorders"


This is a common type of explanation we might find in an enthobotanical text or a modern herbal. For historical purposes this is very nice to know.


But I am left hanging by a thread. HOW on Earth do I get the inner bark? WHEN do I harvest it? Do I just take my pocket knife and start hacking away? WHAT part of the tree to I take from- the trunk? The twigs? How do I peel back the outer bark? What preparation do I make and what is the safety level? Not to mention that we don't even know what kind of stomach disorder we are dealing with. So many herbals are just infuriatingly uninstructional. They are theoretical.
I realize that the flip side of this can be books and studies that are entirely too dense and overwhelming to feel grounded.

I need to know more. I need to know more variety and how all this harvesting will impact my environment if I teach others to harvest it too. What if we all go harvest the Nettles? The birch bark for fires? The cattail for food and tinder?


The more I study, the more questions I have. And I am not sure I know where to go to get untangled. I'm certainly not going to "Herbal School". I have a family and a job. And I am very bad at following rules and orderly instructions.


I suppose the best thing to do is continue to apply myself to the experience of nature, take extremely good notes, (my latest obsession being leaf rubbings) and follow up with some of the actually good books. I'm finding the herbals less and less appealing, and the nature education books increasingly satisfying. Since I avoid buying herbs and prefer harvesting them myself, identification is essential. Which means botanical detail is essential too... and I'm on my own for learning it.


In case you are another baffled herbalist.... here are my latest favorite books you might find refreshing:


Hands on Nature by Lingelbach and Parcell / Vermont Institute of Nature Studies


Keepers of Life by Joseph Bruchac


The Tree Identification Book by George W.D. Symonds


Mountain Medicine by Tommie Bass


Although not released yet, I have high hopes for Kiva Rose's Medicine Woman Herbal :)
(no pressure!)

And, while not technically a book, the indispensable www.herbmentor.com

New Life with Plants

Working near full time at the Wilderness school affords some interesting changes. I don't see plants as useful to just me anymore, and not just useful for food and medicine. They seem so much more broad. They span the Earth cycles they are inseparable from, and the generations they weave in and out of. The wintergreen above, we harvested a small amount of to oil and make into salve for the Friday class. It grows intertwined with the Mitchella, on a small cliff overlooking a woodland river. It's mossy and beautiful. Beyond it's fame as a medicinal herb, I now see everything around it: the plants in grows with, the south facing lilt of rock it chooses, high up near water and in a mixed wood forest. I imagine the intricacy of the soil at its roots. 

At the water's edge grow two trees I hadn't yet had the pleasure of meeting up close. The profusely papery river birch makes not only a striking visual display, but superb fire tinder. My son collected a nice big bag along side his cattails, to bring to his Pioneers day on Thursdays.

This beautiful starfish leaf is that of the Liquidambar, or Sweet Gum. I can't help but hear the old song I learned as a young child about the Kookaburra, who lives in the old gum tree. (Merry merry king of the woods is he :)

There is plenty of writing on how the sweet gum sap is used. But little on how the leaf is used. As a home herbalist, I can't imagine going through the long laborious process of reducing the pitch, but I sure would like to know how I can make good use of the intensely fragrant leaves. The smell is rich and sharp, like camphor and peaches, or mint and incense. Peculiar and wonderful. A smell that makes me think of good uses, like healing skin infections or as a scalp tonic.

Autumn

(sassafras syrup)

Autumn in New England is undeniably bittersweet. It's the in your face demonstration of transformation. And we all know that when we watch something dramatic or intimate occurring, we can't help but experience it ourselves. The leaves fall again, as they do every year, yet somehow it never feels less. Considering how intrinsic a part of Nature we are, it isn't surprising that we feel the pull, like a seasonal gravity. 

In fact, I'd go as far as to say fall in New England is a cult. People come back here after living afar, just for the fall. People scurry like frantic squirrels, hoarding apples, pumpkins, mums, and corn decorations. Leaf piles are as much of a requirement as a holiday. The crisp air with warm afternoons lend itself perfectly to the trend of quintessential sweaters, which you can watch like a catwalk show if you get to a farm market on a Sunday morning. 
Folks discuss their fall plans, their food menus, their busy work schedules, and their travel experiences. It's weird how many people have travelled so much nowadays. The juxtaposition of old town folks and new corporate families has created a language divide, making directions confusing and history thwarted. Everything has two names.... the "Berry Farm" is now Settlers Park, and so on. Locals have taken stock in our place so much as to create a Southburyopoly game. Good for them.

Of course, it isn't too long before they are hook line and sinker in love with the land. The sweet Earth smells, the apple pies, the old world farms and the new world extreme affluence. It's tempting and romantic. And hard. And no one is as hooked on the virtue of hard work as Connecticut and New York. I'm not sure it's gotten us anywhere closer to ourselves, but gosh darnet it's gotten us closer to being worthy. (yes that was sarcasm)
The corn maize is another great tradition. If you've ever gotten lost in a corn field, you know what a crazy thing it is. Obviously there is no path like the mazes created for us - they are just miles of bewildering unison. The only way to get out is to hope you are paying attention to the sun, and it's not night time. Each time I enter one of these mazes I have mixed emotions. They are so beautiful, with their golden tassels and claw footed roots, and finding your way through is really fun. But I also think of my dear childhood friend back in Iowa (the King state of corn fields) who's older brother, bless his heart, had taken some kind of drugs, wandered off into a corn field, and got lost. He was missing for several heart wrenching weeks. Finally his body was discovered by the farmer, while reaping his crop. It was the saddest thing I'd seen yet, at the tender age of 14. His mom was the apple queen of the town, and perhaps her days spent peeling apples on the back porch became her closest ally. For me, the fall means deadline. Get the warm clothes set up, the wood stacked, the chairs and cushions in, and hope you got all the herbs you needed. Dig up the roots before the soil is too hard, and think ahead. It means 'get ready'. For cold, snow, holidays, and mostly anything that feels like hardship - or really is. So far we've replaced an entire door system and our well pump which broke. I'm stamping 'done' on my quota sheet. 

Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for hard work. But I'm also for reward. I'm all for sleeping late on Sunday morning, stopping for the last of the organic dark plums, giving handmade earrings just because, and looking others in the eyes for the simple love of exchange. I'm all for adoring the gnarled hands of elders, and stopping to investigate a tree. In New England, rewards come cheap - because they are often store bought with the approval of a brand name tag. But the dying breed of us who like to spend the time to hand make one special thing, have a sweetness beyond trend.