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Allowing on a Late Summer Day

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty, Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 31 Comments

Tags

allowing, appalachia, baked goods, contentment, loving what is, lyme disease, meditation, pastries, self love, summer, sunflowers

There is a specific slant to the late afternoon sun that floods my living room with a cast-iron butter of deeply heated light. It’s always that last stretch of sunshine that seems to glow the hottest. In the downward arch of day, the fever of collected sunshine gathers like a stove coil around the rim of the sky, flooding the world with heat. That glow itself kicks up a kind of exhaustion, the feeling of every hurried project just aching to be complete. Recently, it seems the close of each day comes with a command: find your completion or, for goodness sake, find some release.

Max Patch

In Appalachian summertime each day marks a creation in progress. The basil leafing out in pairs from where it was last snipped. The sunflower rotating like a mandala from pollen to seed. The bees carrying fulfillment from one flower to another, rubbing their bodies against everything soft and petaled in their path. Every morning it as if the rising of the sun turns on the great hearth of the world and each new creation, stirred of dirt and mineral and rain, is placed within the hearth of the earth to ripen.

Flower Essence Bowl

Throughout the summer months there are so many individual projects, visions and collections, tiny destinies awaiting to be fulfilled. I imagine the sun must be like a pâtissier in the great kitchen of kings, sending out emissaries in every direction to tend the grasshoppers and zinnias and bees. Perhaps the clouds take part as well, gentle assistants roaming over the hillsides to check the cobalt beginnings of the blueberries bushes or tend the heavy branches of peaches. Each cumulus a white haired women, trailing cotton aprons and the tracks of great care.

Just as the embered end of a long day in Summer bring forth an almost overwhelming peak of heat, the last stretch of August can, at times, seem almost impossibly bright and big and full of needs.

Group Sit

Sometimes, in the thickest ring of a day, I’m just able to keep up. Matching my pace with the flowers expanding ever-wider, the vines finding new perch, or the grasses that risebefore your eyes like well-leavened bread. But then, just as the sun begins to ease back towards the horizon it is as if someone finally opens the door to the oven of the world, to halt all of creation at its peak. The earth floods with a deep heat and everything living is given the signal that it is okay, okay now, to nod your head like the sunflower. It’s okay to give up creating for a moment. To take oneself out of the furnace and find a peck of shade. To put your feet in the creek, to allow yourself some peace.

Perhaps, all along, summer has been the ripest season for such reprieve.

Altar at Max Patch

We often see high Summer and the dead of Winter as opposite wings on the wheel of the year but the truth is that they have more in common than we might imagine. Like the Yin and Yang, anything that is opposite also holds the other within it. The essence of Winter, and its demand for rest, recuperation and the regathering of vision, is flecked like mica throughout the high summer months. In Winter, we rest because there is nothing to plant but dreams. In high Summer, there is a similar pause. At the hottest peak of the day, there is often nothing to do but take our well-mixed creations out of the oven. Let them cool on the windowsill and give ourselves a moment of quiet regeneration and soulful reprieve.

The Queen 2

Summer as a time of rest is almost unheard of around these parts. For all those that garden or homestead it can feel as though the tasks are never-ending. And even those who don’t tend the land seem to fill their coffers with well-intended parades of vacation, work projects, or pie making, but the end result is often the same. We pray for Autumn to come so we can receive a break from the break.

Like the waterfall buzz of cicadas, the high-whine rush of summer always seems be repeating the need for growth. We see the sunflowers grow twice our height in the span of a month, the grass following quickly behind, and there is some deep internal nudging inside of us that says. You, too, must grow so tall, so quickly, so fast! In high summer, however, there comes a natural time when all our bustling projects fall flat. Like seltzer water left out on a sunlit patio. Try as we might (and, to be sure, we try mightly!) we never get quite enough done as these long sunny days would suggest. And perhaps this is when we should simply it let all fall like the head of a blossom gone to fruit and seed.

Passionflower at Sunset

This Summer I have had dedicated myself to practicing the art of relaxation. At the beginning of this summer I contracted Lyme disease (for the second time in two years) and so, very quickly, my attention to plans, both bold and bland, fell away. Rest became my most important prerogative; I went seeking the mica speck of Yin amongst the overwhelming sunshine of Yang. Most afternoons, when the heat reaches its peak, you can find me lounging in bed (the darkest and coolest room of the house) with a tall glass of chilled tulsi tea and a good book. Some days this Summer this was about all I could manage. And it was enough.

This season, I find myself asking new questions. What if we can find our fulfillment in long tides of rest? What if, going even deeper into the season, means finding stillness in the rush of summersong? What if, the most profound lesson of all is to be able to bask in that mirror of Yin within the Yang? And what happens when our entire structure of To-Do lists collapse in the face of allowing ourselves something the nectar seekers never once deny themselves– good old fashioned contentment.

Contentment

// Allowing Contentment //

Every day, in every way, we are all trying. Trying to weed the garden, or get dinner on the table, or find the love of our life, or heal our heartbreak. We try to be better, be happy, to take care of ourselves. Some days I think we are the only beings in all of creation who try so hard! The sunflowers in my garden dwarf me, but not once did they ever stop to try to be magnificent. They simply took in their surroundings and grew. The hummingbird tests each fushia flower and never once grows frustrated. Even the ants, those who work to rebuild their colonies with each overturned stone, go about with a dedication that excludes even the option of trying. They are simply doing what they must. It makes me wonder, what would happen if we stopped trying, like the sun in its last sling of heat easing in the horizon, and simply allowed ourselves to move in natural ways of contentment.

Allowing is a difficult concept for most of us to swallow. Allowing doesn’t mean comprising your goals, your dignity even your boundaries. It means making space for what is. And when we allow for exactly what is, doing what needs to be done without telling ourselves that we are trying to do it, we make the space we need to truly live.

Sunflower heights

After I was diagnosed with Lyme disease this summer I was left with one simple goal. How can I enjoy, I mean truly, enjoy myself. How can I be so filled with my own contentment, that spilling fullness of life, that there is room for little else in my body but more own vital vigor, my own zest for life?

On the days when all I can do is lie in bed with my books and watch the fan whirl, I embrace allowing. There is no trying in this moment, only the sense of doing what I must. It has been rough in patches, I won’t lie. But over my time spent in bed this summer I have learned something incredible.

Juliet's Garden Flower basket

Allowing is the gateway to loving what is, yes, but it is also the gateway to embracing exactly who (and where) you are. And when you can love that person, and all her needs for quietude and nourishment and podcasts and comfy pillows then you can accept almost anything. Including the slow tendriled creep of healing back into your life.

Self love is a term that is often thrown around, but not fully embraced. And frankly, it can feel incredibly difficult to try to love oneself. And so I say, stop trying and instead, on this hot and humid day, simply allow yourself the pleasure of finding contentment. Contentment is a gateway to recognizing yourself in your most peaceful form. It is a way of being receptive to oneself and ones destiny. And it feels so damn good.

Tea

So, for today, I ask you. What brings you contentment? Can you take yourself away from the To-Dos for an afternoon and let yourself be like summer scones just out of the oven. Sighing, resting, sweetening before your eyes. Because this is the truth that is sung by the hearth and the oven, the fire and the sun itself. Creation never becomes complete until it is taken from the heat and allowed, with time and space and tender breath, to let go of the hubbub of transmutation and find its final shift into peace. After all, this— the cooling, the rest, the reprieve— is what makes any fresh baked delicacy ready to dined upon. And what makes that banquet of being alive so very delicious indeed.

Mandala

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Spring Ephemerals + the Magic of Vulnerability

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

anemone, appalachia, bloodroot, blue ridge mountains, botany, dicentra, ecology, flowers, foamflower, hardwood cove, herbalism, iris, lady slipper, meditations, pedicularis, philosophy, pink lady slipper, relationships, showy orchid, spring, spring ephemerals, spring flowers, trillium, trout lily, violets, vulnerability, wild geranium, wild iris, wildflowers

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I walked through the warm woods barefoot to the cleft of hill overlooking the stream. Following the old worn way through the trees, the thin stitch of footfall over a soft quilt of pine-worn leaves. It was one of the first sun-warmed days of spring and I was opening my heart to finding something ephemeral and unseen.

All winter long I have watched the bare blue mountains behind my home like a card reader, hands scrying the mud and evergreen, imagining what might be rooted, precious as garnet, between the hard knobs of the trees. I studied the enduring leaves of beech like sheaths of papyrus, because I knew that they had lived for many springs and were intimately acquainted with what I was awaiting – the tender arrival of the woodland ephemerals. That rare breed of flora that flowers in the brief span of spring before the trees find their leaves. The plants that bloom, seed and cease before the rest of the world even sets out their green.

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Wild Geranium

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum)

In the deciduous belt of the earth, where trees sleep like Persephone and lose the entire crown of their leaves, ephemerals acts as heralds for the return of the growing world. They are akin to the dawn chorus, a kind of songbird that celebrates the re-awakening of a rich hardwood cove. Every spring in Appalachia we experience an eloquent succession of these woodland ephemerals, many of which blossom for the handspan of just a few weeks. Taking advantage of the slowly waking slumber of the trees, these flowering plants occupy a unique niche within the forest’s overall ecology. For most of the year, these plants await as roots. But as soon as the earth warms they begin their quick ascent to supply some of the first food and medicine of spring. In the time it takes for the maples and tulip poplars and basswoods to unfurl their leaves, these soil-dwellers go through the entire cycle of their above-ground existence, dying back to the roots as the canopy finally flushes to fullness.

Showy Orchid

Showy Orchid (Galearis spectabilis)

The first ephemeral always catches you by surprise, as mysterious and discreet as only true denizens of the underworld can be. You must attune yourself to the subtle, the unexpected arising from bare forest floor. Once your eyes catch their contours, however, you will notice that the flowers come in waves, as exotic and earthly as silk flags in the caravanning desert of early spring. Bloodroot, Hepatica, Spring beauties. Anemone, Trout Lily, Trilium. Temporary miracles. Each one, so gentle in petal, seems to be able to break even the hardest heart (and soil) wide open.

Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)

Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)

And so I found myself, on a spring-warmed day in April, out wandering with a heart that ached to unfold. I climbed up into the woods, letting my feet find the slopes of forest with the right cove of hardwoods, the perfect slant of light and bare canopy of trees. I had just returned from spending a long weekend with my new sweetheart and I was feeling that particular pang of tenderness and possibility that comes when a heart first decides to stir from a season of soilsafe hibernation. I was holding the tender petals of this inner ache to bloom when I first spotted them: an entire glen of bloodroot, curled in the palms of their own hands, rising to reach the sunspace of early spring.

Here, growing amongst the moss-laden roots of the slumbering trees existed an entire world of flowering beings where once there had only been winter-browned leaves. I couldn’t help but crawl in close, as awkward as a newborn fawn on shaky hands and knees. To be with them was to sip from a thimble-sized dram of spring’s most potent energy. The bourgeoning, the beginning, a blissful shot of sheer bravery.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

Spring ephemerals are regarded as the lace glove of the flora world. They come and go as swiftly as a spring rain, often dying back to their roots in just a handful of weeks. Some spring ephemerals, like Trillium for example, can take upwards of seven years to even begin to bloom. There is a reason why such ephemerals are so rare. Delicate and scarce, their exquisite gentleness can sometimes be mistook for daintiness until you sit with them and ask them to speak.

Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum)

Yellow Trillium (Trillium luteum)

In the heart of the forest’s own mythology, the story of spring ephemerals is a far cry from this picture of fragility. It is a tale of root-deep courage, otherworldly patience and the magic of vulnerability. Although the flowers themselves bloom for only a short breath of spring, their colonies flourish for decades. In fact, some Trout Lily communities are so old they predate the surrounding trees. Surviving, thriving and blooming in the short span between earliest spring and the first flush of the canopy, to be a spring ephemeral is to have mastered the art of divine timing and the life-generating strength of such open-blossomed vulnerability.

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Trout lily (Erythronium sp.), Pedicularis (Pedicularis candensis)

In our culture, we have a tendency to mark tenderness as weakness, but when a single bloodroot bloom can rock us back on awe-struck heels, we begin to glimpse the power of such exposed intimacy. Tenderness is perhaps the most potent form of bravery. It is the ability to open oneself, despite (as Anais Nin says) the incredible risk to bloom. To open, despite the danger of unexpected frosts and herbivores, the weather whims of spring’s mood and the negligence of passing boots. It takes unbelievable courage to expose oneself in such vulnerability. To say yes— to blooming, to loving and to living once more. Would it not be so much easer to stay quietly in our roots? In spring, the sun draws closer to earth, almost as if to say how much she believes in us, and we respond with a sweeping show of blossoming trust and the gift of our own transformational vulnerability. We bloom— not knowing if this is the right moment, or how the whole story will unfold— and this is how and where and when true growth begins.

Wild White Violets (Viola sp.)

Wild White Violets (Viola sp.)

There is a part of us that feels, acutely, that first wildflower bloom. That sharp acknowledgement of just how much bravery it takes to open oneself in such a seemingly empty place. How many of us have been protecting our hearts through a long winter’s sleep? How many of us have shrunk our tenderness down deep in the soil, like Catbrair roots in the cold winter sleet? When I sit with such ephemerals I think, perhaps, our hearts never needed to be roots. That’s what the soles of our feet are for. When we allow them to, our hearts can be flowers. Blooms that open in stunning vulnerability to the world, exposing themselves to all the possibilities of pollination and creation, to the sheer joy of radiating.

Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule)

Sometimes messages are simple. Often, the best ones are. Be brave. Be open. Bloom and offer the unbelievable gift of your vulnerability to this world. Say yes to the life that lives through you. Begin again.

This world is full of gifts. We must simply open our eyes and hearts and be willing to receive. Laying amongst the cupped hands of so many ephemerals, on a warm day in early-spring, I was being given the gift of yet another beginning. The opportunity to embrace a new opening. The brazen invitation to fall in love— with a new season, a new person, a new spring. I held my heart, tender from such invitation and felt at once as strong and vulnerable as dicentra leaves. I accepted the bliss of such brave transience and felt truly released.

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Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

Squirrel Corn (Dicentra canadensis), Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia)

We can only love now, bloom now, find ourselves in the now that happens between the first kiss of sunlight and the leafing of the trees. On my belly, a humble student of these most ephemeral blooms, I opened myself up to the daylight and welcomed in the tiny, thimble-sized tears of such ground-breaking gratitude.

Wild Iris (Iris cristata)

Wild Iris (Iris cristata)

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Winter Pearl Diving

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

ama, appalachia, caspar david fredrich, chaga, florida, hematite, herbal medicine, intuition, meditation, pearl diving, shamanic journeying, southern appalachia, springs, stone medicine, winter, winter weather, wintertime

Screen shot 2015-02-02 at 1.59.41 PMToday is Imbolc and winter has reached its fullest depths in our blue-hued mountains. Here in Southern Appalachia we don’t get the same thick quilts of winter-hewn snow as our neighbors farther to the north. Instead, we are tucked in by the frost that touches the early chickweed and the amber fountains of summer’s lemongrass still left in garden plots. The earth resumes a subtle wheel, one of silver on gold, glimmer on pewter— a frostshine that disappears with the afternoon sun. Here, we normally get only a dusting of snow, subtle gusts that come through like the tiniest song. A sonatina, quick and small, relished and then released in warmer winds. Here, winter is a fawn-colored mixture of dried beech leaves and muddy raccoon prints. Rivers of grey clouds and frost-covered stones. The white pines sigh and reach upwards through the empty forests, bare armed in the white milk of sunny winter skies. The spruce and fir grow imperceptibly. This is a season that belongs to such evergreen, to winter grasses and standing stones.

der-chasseur-im-walde

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 presetScreen shot 2015-02-02 at 2.27.13 PMThere is a mystery to winter days, a fated subtlety. Even in their sameness, each day turns itself over anew, like the dried bones of yarrow stalks, thrown and scryed for imperceptible hexagrams. As the outer world seems to stay stationary, the inner hues change from day to day— from calmness to tumult, interiority and hope. I’ve always cherished the divinatory mystery of winter. It is the only time when the exterior word is allowed to go fallow and the interior worlds, our innermost places, are given permission to take up all of the sky. It is a time for inner wonderings and wanderings, woven blankets and wool gathering, self-study and the smallest sensual delights.

Screen shot 2015-02-02 at 1.59.01 PMI’ve been cultivating these inner depths ever more richly this year. Researching, gathering and mapping for my newest class series (Winter Intuition School) and beginning the journey of writing my very first book. It has been a time of deep self-exploration, of sea depths and unknown spelunking. It has been a time of seeking hidden treasures and swimming in the conscious unconsciousness. This winter I have been practicing the art of pearl diving.

der-wanderer-ueber-dem-nebelmeerA few years ago I traveled to Florida to stay in a house that had been built and then carried, and then built again, along a cold spring fed river. Only a few minutes walk from the spring’s origin source, we would make daily pilgrimages to its depths. Upon my first visit, I had expected to find a sweet bubbling pond, a crystal clear brook that was all invitation and gemstone clarity. Instead, after a couple paces, I found myself on the edge of an actual chasm, an electric blue crater whose sheer depth was fathomable only by the deepening gradients of sapphire, cobalt and navy blue. It took me a little while until I felt comfortable enough to venture beyond the ledge, a kitty pool expanse where one could sit comfortably with both knees on the shallow under-rock. The distance between one edge and another was punctuated by an enormous blue hole, deeper than an iris and wider than a full-grown whale. Finally, gathering my courage, I pushed off the crushed rock edge and let myself sink feet first, knowing I would never touch the bottom. It was a thrill and a fear, a fantasy and a kind of ecstasy of bravery all at once. Over the course of the next week I went everyday, and everyday it took a bit of coaxing, heart in my throat, to re-approach the sharp underwater edge once more and throw myself eagerly overboard.

Screen shot 2015-02-02 at 2.03.09 PMIn many ways, this is how almost every day of my winter has begun. Free diving into one’s own depths requires much courage and bravado. To explore the inner realms often means plunging with naught but your hands and the bellows of your lungs to seek the deepest veins, those that seep warm mineral clouds and hold such surprising life. It requires skill, a practice of patience, and the innate knowing of when to kick and surface. When to return to sunshine and sea waves and rest like a seal on the rise. Such inner explorations is its own kind of pearl dive; what you seek is a rare treasure, one that exists solely within the soft bellied shells of the deep.

Traditional Japanese pearl diving was done by women called the “Ama” – sea women. These women of the ocean often lived independently, many of them diving until their elder years in naught but a single loincloth. You do not need to carry much to find such pearls, and here, age is an asset—for it means wisdom and untold skill. It takes great practice to be a pearl diver. Navigating depths with only quick fingers and seaweed strong lungs.

Pearl_Divers_Girls_insanetwist_1In many traditions, the unconscious (or wider consciousness) of the soul was symbolized by water. Water is an entirely different medium than earth, an entirely different world. In water, our bodies must learn how to move as another type of species. In the waving depths of consciousness expanding meditation, creative work or shamanic journeying, our embodied selves must learn an even deeper fluidity. Exploring one’s deeper self and opening one’s intuition doesn’t happen or unfold all at once. An Ama must sometimes open a thousand mollusks before she finds a pearl. Such exploration is not built as a ship, simply navigated with wheel and star. You must be committed to diving down, over and over, practicing how to keep yourself alive in other worlds. With each dive, frigid and thrilling, we learn how to go deeper and how to sight the glimmer hidden in the centermost folds. Sometimes, it takes pulling open a thousand shells, each one with a kind of learning, to find that absolutely perfect round of pearl. That opalescent build up of years, the gem that results from a single irritation. The desire, first, to know more.

Perfect snowflakeThis winter I have been a sea woman, but I have also been a hearth-tender and earth watcher as well. In the midst of such explorations it is always important, vital really, to return to shore. In water, we can be both weightless and as heavy as an anchor. On earth we must stretch these sea bending bones and reground in our solidity. It can be easy, in wintertime, to float away. Whether to different realms of light-bearing consciousness or even into the dark stagnation of our own personal underworlds. Even in the midst of our deepest mid-winter imaginal navigations, we all must come back to the tangible world— the life-giving practices of fire tending, hearth sweeping, water boiling, bone saving, stock making, tea sipping, drop spinning, nut roasting and reading. Winter exists within the halves of both dark night and dry light. We must keep ourselves balanced and whole.

Processed with VSCOcam with c1 presetThere are many ways to ground in wintertime. Simply getting yourself outside, inspecting ice crystals or the dried heads of winter seeds, can do wonders to re-earth us once more. Often times, on the coldest days, I find that my best grounding happens in the kitchen. Like a sea-farer arriving home to a salt-creaked cottage lit by puffs of woodsmoke, I am often eager to get my fingers in sacks of winter-stored roots or kneaded dough.

In winter, I seek balance within the insides of most things. My home, my heart, the marrow in fresh cooked bones, the sweet blood of oranges that travel hundreds of miles from their Florida homes. I find balance in beginning an evening with a single recipe, working my way from the inside out.Processed with VSCOcam with c1 preset

Shortly before the holidays I fell in love with a new chocolate stove-top concoction, created from the core of such interior magic. It has been my dark winter companion ever since. After a full day of deep diving, long travels through inner places seeking pearls, I return home to rough-hewn cups of this Chaga Hematite hot coca, sip and rest once more in the nurturing opportunity of this dark and mysterious Winter’s embrace.

<<<>>>

Chaga Hematite hot cocoaDark, earthy, and profoundly grounding, this mystical hot cocoa will settle you in to the warm and nourishing delights of wintertime embers and star rich skies. Crafted from the stone that lies at the center of our earth and the mycelium within and underneath every inch of soil, this drink is a hearty root bringing you back to the warm heart of the day-to-day world. Sweetened with maple syrup and lightened with rich sea-foam dollops of coconut milk, to bring in the milky remembrance of diving for the deepest pearls. Warm yourself a cup of Chaga Hematite Hot Cocoa and settle in for a profoundly meditative wintery evening.

Chaga cocoa steaming

Chaga and Hematite rug Chaga cocoa from the top

Chaga Hematite Hot Cocoa

Recipe makes two mugs of hot cocoa

  • (Optional) Vanilla Extract
  • 2 oz maple syrup
  • 2 oz coconut milk
  • ¼ – ½ tsp cinnamon (or to taste)
  • 2 tsp cocoa power
  • 1.5 cups water
  • ½ oz chaga
  • 1 piece of Hematite
  1. Place a piece of hematite in 1.5 cups of water. Let infuse anywhere from one hour to overnight.
  2. Pour the water off your hematite into a separate pot.
  3. Decoct Chaga. Combine chaga with your hematite water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and let churn for at least 20 minutes (or until your tea turns to the shade of dark wood). When your decoction is done, strain the tea into a separate container.
  4. Sir in cocoa + cinnamon powder until all lumps are dissolved
  5. Add Coconut milk and Maple syrup
  6. Garnish with a cinnamon stick and make a toast to all rich and nourishing worlds!

Hematite and Chaga

Hematite is what makes up the core of our earth. It is the stone upon which our entire world is balanced. Iron rich and dense, Hematite is like the open arms of a profoundly grounding mother, welcoming us home after a hard day with a warm apron and bone stock bubbling away on the stove. An intensely sturdy stone, Hematite reminds us that we are here, now, and that to live on the earth fully is to recognize that we are unconditionally loved. Hematite helps us to come back to the bedrock of who we are, connecting to the precious anchors of body, embodiment, and our own inner places of self-love. Protective and solid, hematite can provide us with the sturdy container needed for shamanic journeying, creative visualization and explorations in consciousness. Hematite reminds us that we do not need to try to survive, this skill comes as naturally as the sunrise. This raw stone can help to bolster our deepest hearts so we know that we will be able to make it through even the longest winter. Hematite is a wonderful stone ally for the wintertime scholar and student of consciousness; this solid stone helps to concentrate the mind, bringing deep focus and balance to any wintertime pursuits. (To learn more about an ancient Daoist Hematite stone treatment for ghosts, check out my Samhain blog post from this past fall)

Chaga is a medicinal fungus that shows us the literal roots of the world. Often called a mushroom, Chaga is actually an outgrowth of the mycelium (or root system) of the fungus itself. Found most often on black birches in our Appalachian forests, chaga is a nourishing immune tonic. Antiviral, immune modulating, and adatogenic, chaga is an indispensable wintertime decoction in the far northern climbs of Russia. Simmered for half an hour or more, chaga makes a rich but mild tea high in antioxidants. Traditionally used internally for cancer, chaga has been shown to have an antitumor effect in clinical trials. Also called tinder fungus, chaga is renown as an excellent ally for catching coals of fresh drilled hand-fires and holding the spark for a deep amount of time. A vital companion for travelers and those who need to bring the spark of new life with them whenever they go. Chaga has been used in this way for thousands of year, it was even found in the pouches of Otzi, the Copper age man who lived and died in the Alps around 3,300 BCE, and who slept in the alpine glaciers on the border of Austria for thousands of years. Chaga is an ancient medicine of fire and continuance. Bring this nourishing companion into your world of tea kettle and late night inspiration and ignite a spark this winter whose embers will carry you through untold distances, perhaps, even, until the spring.

** Paintings by Caspar David Fredrich. Photograph by Iwase Yoshiyuki

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Summertime Leisure

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Asia in Earth Medicine, Inspirations

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

albiza, appalachia, being in the present, flower mandala, herbal medicine, invocation, leisure, lyme disease, mimosa, poetry, relaxation, summer, summertime, walt whitman

Max patch 1This past weekend I let myself be free. At around 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon on Friday I pushed all my lingering work in a drawer, packed the car with a basket of food and my favorite blanket, and drove west into the sea-blue mountains. I stopped often, taking time to dip in the river and swim under the branches of mimosa trees in their full fuchsia-bloom. There was no aim, other than to sit on thick river moss and find familiars in the stones. Later, after the swim, after a thunderstorm, after the sun crept back out to dry my hair,  I took a winding road up to a high mountain meadow to watch the sun set. One of my favorite places on earth, Max Patch looks out onto the blue folds of mountains in all directions – north, east, south and west. It was all the food I needed. I drifted up to the top of the world with a bottle of sparkling water and my thoughts. Quiet wind and clover up to my knees. I watched the sun descend through the clouds in bright drops of strawberry and wine. There was nothing to do but be. It was sherbet-perfect, nothing less than divine.

Mimosa circleMax patch 2It’s been a while since I’ve taken myself on such a date. The months leading up to this year’s Solstice have been beyond full, brimming. Tending the garden of one’s life is a full time job. Planting, planning, nurturing the germination of every single seed. I have sometimes felt like a clematis vine…. my spirit having gone from its early days of sleep, to creep, to now leap… and it’s all I can do but continue to climb. After a long season of work, everything inside of me seems to ache for the kind of exploratory leisure that makes even the smallest moments come alive. With the sun at her lazy zenith, and the whole hemisphere saturated in life, I find myself seduced by a novel concept – the leisure of time.

red cloverMelon relaxingWe spend our time. Have you noticed? Day-in, day-out I often find myself quantifying time in dollars or what “makes sense.” Parceling out hours into quarters, constricting it like a cuckoo to a small wooden clock. Yet… in my best and most transformative moments, time is a kind of creature– shapeshifting and alive. Time is as diverse as a well-fed creek. On a slow sunny day, wind-blown and dry, it may move as slow as threads down the mountainside. And yet, on the next, with thunderclouds overhead, hours rush as fast as ocean waves. Time moves the way we invite it to. Our attention, our intention, is the spring that feeds all waters. In every moment we have the opportunity to decide: how do we want our time to flow?

Big laurelProcessed with VSCOcam with c1 presetTo me, it is a simple fact. When I let myself wander, allowing long moments of soft fascination and pause, life feels eternal. When I un-dam the spontaneous flow of my imagination, creation simply flows. The best inventions are born from such spaces of effortlessness. What if all we needed to feel fulfilled, as rich as strawberries in a bowl of porcelain cream, was to allow ourselves time to ripen?

Reishi bud

Reishi bud

When I was a child, summers were like fairyland eternities, and I was invited, every hour of every day, to  play. Bare feet and half-finished flower crowns, cold sprinklers and baskets of berries. The whole landscape of my imagination unrolled, like cloth at an emperor’s rich feet. The older we get the more we are encouraged to step away from this imaginal realm, pushing ourselves out into a terrain where the space between thought and creation is so much denser. As we grow, many of us abandon our beautiful tapestries of imagination and play, and the weave, like a well-loved but forgotten dress, fades.

Cali poppy on rug

California poppy harvest

Every moment of every day we choose how to experience our lives. When I focus on that which feels incomplete, stressful, small or scarce, I bring the whole of my being into relation with limitation. When I consciously choose to shift my mind, investigate the beauty, the blessings my life (and all the beings in it) my entire existence expands.

Intuitive plant medicine altar

Intuitive plant medicine altar

This past Fall I contracted Lyme disease. It has been a long road of rebalancing and recovery, and a seriously deep journey of learning. In truth, one single revelation has been my biggest teacher: Whenever possible, do what you want to do, when you want to do it.

When I engage in the activities that feed me – writing, reading, medicine making, exploring – I am full of energy and vigor. I forget that I even have spirochetes in my body. When I linger too long on the computer, push my body to work past dark in the garden, or pour too much energy into other people’s projects— I get sick. It’s that simple. It’s that novel.

My invocation for this summer season is plain but powerful. To enjoy. Life, like rivers, like well-fed streams, moves fast. If I don’t take pleasure in my existence now, then who will? When?

Mimosa flowers in jar

Mimosa flowers

So how about a toast?

To choose, in this moment, to invite the deepest leisure into our days. Let’s allow ourselves the time to be delightfully present, inquisitively alive. Seek soft adventures, bask in sunlight thick enough to drink. Let’s invite life to ripen in its own time. Allow our deepest fascinations be our guides.

As Walt Whitman says: lean, loaf, invite your soul. It’s summertime.

*************************************************************

In the spirit of following ones fascinations and inspirations, I am delighted to introduce One Willow’s newest elixir (and my most constant summertime companion).

Easy livin with text copySundresses and sangria, fresh cucumbers from the garden and mint tea. In summer, even the simplest things can be a cause for celebration. Frisky and effervescent, Easy Livin’ elixir incites a deep devotion to summertime’s bliss.  Crafted with melon-scented wildflowers, strawberry syrup,  birch bark mint and champagne, Easy Livin’ encourages you to embrace an expansive season of
leisure. Whether you are reclining on sun-warmed rocks or falling under the spell of a twilight romance, Easy Livin’ invites the softest fascination to be your guide.

Summer is a time of deep abundance— baskets of blueberries and rope swings into cold mountain streams. Easy Livin’ reminds us that our richest creations arise from such moments of effortlessness; the best ideas appear like fireflies, bright and fluent in the dusk. This sun-drunk elixir encourages us to live from the inspiration of the present and recognize that all we truly need to be fulfilled is to let ourselves feel free. Picnic in fields of wildflowers or watch the crickets jump in cascades. Sip mojitos in the early moonlight and flirt with the very idea of evening. Easy Livin’ reminds us that we are allowed to take the deepest pleasures in our lives. Today is a fizzy drink, full of lively possibility and faint notes of jubilee. You must only tip your cup and toast to your own vibrancy.

+ Extracts: Black Birch (Betula lenta), Pedicularis (Pedicularis canadensis),
Kava (Piper methysticum)
+Essences: Strawberry, Hibiscus, Kyanite
+Strawberry syrup & Champagne

//Visit Easy Livin’ in the shop//

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A Snow Globe, Shook

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Asia in Inspirations

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

appalachia, appreciation, blue ridge mountains, flurries, inspiration, meditation, mysticism, snow, snow globe, storm, winter, winter storm

I was watching a cat, calico and sunning herself on the metal roof of our shed, when the weather suddenly shifted. One moment the light was grazing contentedly upon the emptied winter landscape and the next, the whole earth had clouded over with snow. Moody and feline, more than falling, the thick flurries raced toward the ground. It was a complete surprise.

Snowglobe storm steps

We’ve been dogsitting for a large, ruggedly handsome German shepherd this week. With the furious arrival of so many flurries, I ran to the back door to rescue the poor dog amidst the storm. Poised like a sphinx on our back stone steps, letting the whirl of the unexpected blizzard lick at his fur, he was decidedly nonplussed. He looked at me, cold flakes scattered like pearls across his paws, and my plans for hot tea and cozying in bed quickly dissolved. I threw on my coat, slung my camera around my neck and launched myself out into the snow.

The sky nuzzled my face; the wind pushed my coat open with its insistent snout. The sun hid, and I didn’t miss its light. I explored the small slope of my backyard and caught the tiniest flakes. The mountain itself was obscured, forgotten. There was no need for grand vision, because it was all happening now. In that moment, I let go of all the biggest things. I released the overarching resolutions of transformation, the great callings for initiation, the howling insistence of change. Talent the dog bounded in loops through the high winter’s yellow grass. I ran after him. We both chased the tiny unseen patterns of the storm.

Snow globe storm tree line

We spend so much time trying to approach the vastness of the world. In the seemingly endless array of diversity and opportunity, I am often overwhelmed. There are always new arcs of possibility snagging my attention, great shifts with unheeded arrivals, universal callings that tug at me like bramble to the hem of my sturdy winter coat. But the reality is that the world, my world, can also be gloriously small. There is revelation in each precious detail: the dark hedge of queen anne’s lace defining the collar of the hill, the dense cloud of snow forming shapes in a miniature space of sky, forgotten stones gathered like tiny, well-worn villages in the swirl.

I make this pilgrimage through my life, not only to encounter the wide world I inhabit, but to touch the smallest worlds that inhabit me.

What is inside each moment is so incredibly brief and varied. It takes courage to stop and simply appreciate the perfectly rounded circle of what exists within your reach. Today, the world was a snow globe, shook— and I gave myself permission to spend a long moment witnessing it settle.

Snow globe storm tricolor

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Mythical Mushrooms & Dark Magic Reishi Tuffles

18 Thursday Jul 2013

Posted by Asia in Wild Foods, Wildcrafting & Collecting

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

appalachia, cacao, chocolate, Gandoderma, herbal medicine, medicinal recipes, mushroom hunting, mushrooms, rain, rainy days, recipe, reishi, storms, truffles, wildcrafting

It’s summer in Appalachia and there is endless rain. Some days it has poured from grey dawn to greyer twilight, the sound of it like trees harshly arguing. It’s become a rhythm: the rain, the rain. Last week, it reached a pitch. The soil was saturated; every step raised small lakes of footprints. Low fields became like shallow ponds, their basins filling with mud from the river and the tiny eggs of tadpoles. Up north, whole bridges washed away. Times like these I wonder if the earth itself doesn’t experience that same sharp catharsis we call crying. The moment when something inside finally tears, and there is nothing to do but allow the fresh gift of deep weeping.poppy in rain

Rain is a part of these mountains, as ancient as the softened curves of its stones. It is a harbinger—sometimes soft, sometimes thunderous— of the dying and the born. Old trees topple with sodden roots to the forest floor. The waterfalls carry boughs away. Plants grow heavy, yet ravenous. Moss and mold cover all unmoving things. Deeper still, in the rotted logs of the woods, death is transformed, stunningly and sudden, into life. This is the time for mushrooms.

Ganoderma tsugae

Ganoderma tsugae

Mushrooms have always held a great and murky magic in my mind. They are mysterious. Neither plant, nor animal, nor mineral, mushrooms occupy a space of being that is hard to communicate…let alone conceive. Like us, mushrooms breathe. They take in the same oxygen we so unconsciously praise, and exhale the same spent carbon dioxide. Many people lump mushrooms in with the plant kingdom but mushrooms are actually as different from those chlorophyll-loving beings as we are from a blade of grass.

The shrooms that we see growing from soft logs and standing trees, are actually the wisely-timed blooms of a much larger, hidden network of vegetation called mycelium— colonies of branching beings that extend underneath the soil of our entire world.

Mycelium breaks down massive amounts of organic material, turning winters leaves into the rich humus of a forest floor. Without mycelium, life on our planet, and the great relief of dying, would be irrevocably altered. Mycelium is not only an organism (and some say the largest organism on earth) it also functions as a vast network of interaction. Some scientists believe that trees and other plants are able, not only to communicate, but also send vital nutrients to each other through the infinite strings of this mysterious web. Mycelium is so adept as breaking down organic compounds, many think they might be the first to adapt to the new chemicals of our world, transmuting radiation and pollutants into something more benign.

Richard Giblett - Mycelium Rhizome

Richard Giblett – Mycelium Rhizome

Mushrooms, often as ephemeral as an orchid in the rich cove of spring, are rare heralds in our world. They remind that we are all connected, in vast and unfathomable ways. That our lives, singular and unique, are but a single bloom enriching the whole. They lay bare the pungent, primal fact of existence: that the release of one form ignites another. From death and decay, the darkened sway of one life extinguished, Double layered reishinew life arises and is born. They show, exquisitely, how all are really one in the same. Here in Appalachia, the birth story of reishi begins with the death of the Eastern Hemlock.

Our abundant local species of reishi is Ganoderma tsugae, named for the scientific genus of the tree on which they flourish. Eastern hemlocks (Tsugae candensis) used to dominate large swaths of southern Appalachia. Today, almost all of these great hemlocks are falling. The wooly adelgid, an invasive East Asian insect, has single-handedly brought down an entire population. As the hemlocks falls, the reishis boom.

In these mountains, reishi is sought after, searched for and prized like gold. Every season I try to dry enough to get me through the long winter. I like to decoct reishi for an everyday immune tonic tea, and add it liberally to my soup stocks and broths. For many people, finding a good patch of reishi in the woods is tantamount to being blessed inexplicably by a fabulous, life-affirming dream. You feel unshakably on the right path.Reishi on log

The Asian species of Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is called “Ling zhi,” which translates as “spirit plant” or the “immortality mushroom.” In traditional Chinese medicine, this rare wild mushroom was reserved for the emperor and his court. Reishi was cherished for its ability to nourish the heart and safeguard shen (the Chinese word for the concept of a person’s mind/consciousness and emotional balance). Chinese reishi is considered an adaptogen, cardiotonic, immunomodulator and gentle nervine tonic.

There has recently been a crisis of confidence in the world of Southeastern herbal medicine. Some herbalists in the region have become so convinced that our local species of mushroom is inferior to the imperial G. lucidum as to declare it useless. To that, I say, “phooey!” I live in Appalachia and I believe, fixedly and with all my heart, that the medicine you need is always growing around (and within) you. When I collect our local reishi, I feel its medicine radiate through the very air we both breath. The experience is sensory, incandescence, pungent with a humid and fragrant fate. I believe in the medicine of this reishi.reishi above rushRecently I went for a solo hike at a beautiful high elevation trail. I was hoping to skip between the breaking bouts of torrential rains to find a hint of this illustrious mushroom. I hiked down the slippery mud-laden path through the fog to a spot rumored to be rich with early summer buds. Finally, after two hours, I dropped down into a forest of old hemlocks, and slowed my pace. For a while, I only spotted last year’s reishi, far off the trail and up high on the dead standing trees. I passed several streams, swollen with water. I saw no one. And then, in the soft distance, I heard the rush of a much madder flow. A waterfall, or a new river, pushed from the stones by our recent deluges of rain. As the sound grew, and I neared closer…I suddenly knew: in the middle of the torrent there would be a soaked log laden with reishi. Without question, without expectation, without pomp, I opened into the white water clearing, and there it was. If you listen long and hard enough, you can always hear medicine speaking.

four reishiI couldn’t help it. I threw caution to the wind (and my shoes in a nearby tangle of roots) and climbed up onto the precariously perched log. It was slippery, bogged with water and furred with moss. The fresh sweet buds of reishi and the illustrious varnish of their mature orange fans cascaded down its long body. I angled myself with my camera, careful not to let an elbow slip lest I tumbled myself into the falling mass of white water. Underneath me the wood radiated the fragrant, mineral breath of loose earth. I lingered for a long time, exploring life at the edge of such a deluge, listening. When the reishi gave its soft nod, I harvested. I cut a few creamy nibs off the fleshy buds, to be slow cooked later in warm butter and a cast iron pan, and took precisely four mushroom blooms. On the hike back the sky grew ponderous, unhinged and finally poured. I sloughed through the rain in a wide poncho, singing to myself as I climbed the trail, already dreaming of the enchanted reishi concoctions to come…

dark magic truffles

Dark Magic Reishi Maple Truffles

I crafted these bittersweet delights on a dangerously stormy afternoon. The soft music of the kitchen was swallowed by the drum of the rain and the thunder shook the whole house. Lightening drew close and gave an electric spark of energy to these dark magic creations.

This recipe is a decadent way to incorporate reishi medicine into your life. The combination of the cacao with a luscious dash of dark maple syrup, makes for some seriously addictive incantations. Night owls be warned. These chocolates have kept me up into the wee hours of the morning. On their own, neither reishi nor cacao have ever been able to keep me from sleep, but there is something in the synergy of these truffles that had me (and my roommate) twiddling our thumbs and daydreaming until dawn. Eat one before a rich evening of conversation, live music by firelight, or studying in your library.

reishi balls lined upIngredients:

1 cup dried chopped Reishi (if you are using powder I would reduce the amount to ¼ cup)
3 cups Water
1/3 cup Maple Syrup (depending on your sweet tooth)
1/3 cup Cacao butter (melted) – you can also substitute coconut oil
1 cup Pecans ground (or nut of choice)
½ cup Coconut flakes
½ cup Cacao powder
Optional: Maca powder, to taste

[Makes approximately 20 heaping teaspoon-sized truffles)

reishi in teacup far

Directions:

The medicinal constituents of reishi are most soluble in water. To encapsulate the medicine of these mushrooms, this recipe involves the finesse of creating a truly delicious bitter syrup. To start, combine your dried reishi and water in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and cover. Simmer until the water content is reduced to 1/3 cup (The water line will be just covering the reishi. You can press the decocted reishi through a cheesecloth or potato masher to get out every last drop of bitter mushroom goodness. Save the spent reishi in the fridge and add to your next tea for a gentle taste of mushroom).

Pour your concentrated reishi decoction back into your empty saucepan and combine with maple syrup. Gently heat (uncovered) until you have reduced your syrup in half.

reishi in teacup super close

Dried reishi

Pour your reduced reishi syrup into a separate bowl. Taste to determine strength (Ideally you would have a perfect balance between reishi’s bitter medicinal and the mellow sweetness of the maple). Reserve a spoonful of syrup to drizzle over the finished truffles if you so desire.

Cacao butter ready to be melted

Cacao butter ready to be melted

Melt cacao butter over low heat and then combine with your reishi syrup to make a small pot of pure manna.

In a separate bowl combine ground pecans (or nuts of choice), coconut flakes and cacao powder until well mixed. (Add your optional maca or other super food powders)

Cacao powder

Cacao powder

Measured pecans

Measured pecans

Slowly pour the liquid cacao butter and reishi syrup into your combined dry mixture. Stir well. If it still feels runny, add an extra dash of coconut flakes or nuts. It should be warm, supple consistency.

Put your finished mixture in the fridge for at least an hour. Remove when it is solid enough to roll into teaspoon-sized balls. Finished your truffles with a variety of creative toppings. You could try toasted sesame seeds, candied ginger and cayenne, or ground pistachios and sea salt. Drizzle with your reserved reishi syrup and serve on any rainy day.

reishi balls in a rowreishi collection on ottoman

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Fall Harvest & Deep Colors

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty, Earth Medicine, Wild Foods, Wildcrafting & Collecting

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

abundance, acorns, appalachia, Autumn, black walnut, blue ridge mountains, buckskin, calamus, chestnuts, deerskin, elecampagne, fall, goldenrod, harvest, harvesting huts, herbal medicine, herbalism, hickory nuts, maypop, natural dyes, passionflower fruit, red amaranth, stinging nettle, wild foods, yellow root

Autumn has passed swiftly. In one momentous sweep the mountains around my home turned from yellow, to gold, to amber, to ruby and then finally– with a last groan– to earth and brown. Here in the Blue Ridge we watch steadily for that first bit of color. It seeps down from the top of our hearty navy mountains slow and liquid, as if the sky had poured its technicolor honey straight down onto the tip of their crowns.

I love fall. I love how sublimely the earth shows its individuality. One tree might be totally bare by mid-october, while another is just beginning to let go. We spend so much time plodding through unkept piles of leaves that we get lost in their commonplace and collective familiarities. But I love thinking about each leaf. To our eyes, they are always falling. But to a single leaf, the moment is singular, irreplaceable. There is a surrender in Fall that takes my breath away. It’s almost ecstatic, how the living let go to the cold’s embrace. Some die, some sleep, some pull inwards and prepare for the season of their magnificence. I imagine it must be powerfully peaceful, transcendent.

Goldenrod (Solidago spp.)

Fall is the time for harvesting. Collecting roots and the fruits of your labor, taking stock of all that you have tended and grown over the year and letting go of the rest. Harvesting means more than embracing that which has flourished and nourished you, it also means leaving behind that which no longer serves you. I am simply in love with how this season defines abundance– in Autumn’s shape, abundance is not just the acquisition of what you need to feel full and happy, abundance is a kind of inward expansiveness, a steadiness and contentment that allows you to let go.

Maypops, Passionflower fruit (Passiflora incarnata)

My fall was infused with joyful and conscientious gathering (and partings as well). Wild fruits like autumn olives, maypops (passionflower fruit) and persimmons (which should be collected when soft and mushy, otherwise you risk an astringent mouth straight jacket like you have never experienced before). There are leafy fall medicinals making their return on the other side of spring– stinging nettles, chickweed, and cleavers– as well as some herbs that only appear this once, in the waning of the season’s warmth. Goldenrod, a common roadside adornment, is one of my favorite fall medicine flowers. Known to many as an allergen, Goldenrod actually works to combat the symptoms of allergies, alleviating the sinuses as well as helping to improve kidney function and heal UTIs.

Harvesting Golden Rod

Fall is the best time of the year to dig most roots. From fields and wayland to forests– these are the roots for which we have waited all season. I scrambled under fences to low pastures of Yellow Dock, Dandelion, and Poke. I climbed wooded hillsides to find Wild Yam, Black Cohosh and Appalachian Osha.  I journeyed to the Pigeon river and dug thin and willowy Yellow Roots from their sandy banks and slanted roofs of river stone. I harvested roots from my garden that I’ve been watching grow for years, waiting for them to return heavy and thick. Valerian, Calamus, Burdock, Echinacea, Comfrey, Angelica, and Elecampagne.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica)

Calamus Root (Acorus calamus)

Yellow Root (Xanthorhiza simplicissima)

Elecampagne (Inula helenium)

I am in deep awe of elecampagne. The day after I harvested over 5 lbs of root a friend from out-of-town arrived at our doorstep, bemoaning a deep, boggy chest cold that had been lingering for weeks. Hoping to give her at least a little bit of relief, I brewed a big pot of elecampagne tea for breakfast. Everyone exclaimed at its deliciousness! Aromatic, clearing, almost spicy with hints of both sweet and bitter. Walking down to the pasture afterwards our friend began coughing up long stuck muck. When we saw her the next day, she was glowing. “I am completely healed!” she exclaimed. Apparently, after battling this chest cold for almost a month, all of her symptoms completely disappeared. She was breathing easy and her lungs felt unfettered and free. Frankly, I was shocked. I normally think of herbal tea as a pleasure activity with the added benefit of some gentle healing. But this pot of elecampagne tea was powerful medicine. I felt reverent. As the old Latin phrase goes, Enula campana reddit praecordia sans (Elecampagne will the spirits sustain).

Hickory nuts

Freshly de-hulled Black Walnuts

Freshly de-hulled Black Walnuts

Fall is also the season of the nut. Many people are totally unaware of the blissful amount of food that falls from the tress every autumn. When I was growing up I remember thinking of nuts as fun toys or loathsome burrs. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I was introduced to the wonderful world of eating wild nuts. Hickorys, acorns, black walnuts, and chestnuts. All of them require a bit of processing, but they are well worth the effort.

Kitten hoarding acorns

The first step is always to remove the nut from their fleshy hulls, otherwise they’ll rot. Once bare, nuts can be stored in their shells for over a year without going bad. Some nuts require additional processing, like acorns, which must be leached of their tannins (an astringent and bitter compound that will turn your digestive tract into an uncomfortable fist). Some hulls have additional uses. Black walnut hulls make potent medicine for parasitic and fungal infections and an excellent dye. In fact, if you process a good bit of Black Walnuts without washing your hands, you’ll end up with dark brown paws. We saved a good bit of hulls to dye deerskin that had already been softened and smoked. You can also use the dye for any other natural fibers like wool or silk.

Black Walnuts in hulls

Deerskin dyed with Black Walnut

Red amaranth, which grows in wild profusion at the top of our hill, is known for its deep and jewel dark dye. From seed to bloom, I have worshiped this plant for the richness of its color– an almost maroon, ruby-velvet hue. We collected enough to stuff a tall stock pot and brought it to a boil. Using alum as our mordant (a substance that helps to set dyes in fabric) we plunged a hearty load of cashmere and silk into its depths and simmered our brew for over an hour. As with most things wild and handmade, the process was slow and much less flashy than you might expect. But the soft pink dye that was left behind was simple perfection to me.

Alum

Hopi Red Amaranth

This past weekend we had what might be the last of our lovely fall days. It was sunny and bright and the colors of the mountain looked as if they had just been born. I spent the whole day sitting on the hill behind our cottage. I watched the gardens with utter appreciation, loving that which I knew was falling asleep underneath the thick duff of leaves as much as I admired what remained– the hardy fennel and tobacco and the flowers they both still bore. Despite the bareness of the trees and the gray web of their forests, stretching in a fog across the ridgeline of our valley, I cannot remember a day when I felt so sublimely alive. Everything, all of it, was just so delightful.

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A “Tribute” to Appalachia

25 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

appalachia, asheville, bloodroot, botany, forest, hunger games, katniss, movies, plants, tulip poplar, woods

I went to see the Hunger Games last night and was delighted to find some of my favorite places on earth displayed in full color on the big screen. (Warning: minimal spoiler alert)

The entirety of the Hunger Games was shot in North Carolina. In the book, District 12 is located in the beautiful, but socially-grim, coal-rich Appalachia of the future. Luckily for Katniss, the “arena” within which the tributes fight was created to be very similar to these woods. Most of the filming took place in and around Asheville and, as the tourist office would like for you to know, all of the film’s stars stayed and “played” in town also. (woop)  Many of the Arena woodland scenes were shot up in Barnardsville, close to location of my campout a few weeks ago. (Check out my post to see what the area looks like before it’s all leafed out)

oh hey, tulip poplar in the righthand corner

In between the blooming anxiety over Katniss’s survival and near two hours of heart palpitations (all this from someone who actually read the books!) I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the forest was! When I should have been concentrating on which tribute was creeping up to kill our trusty heroine, I was examining a patch of chickweed directly behind Katniss or the budding rhododendron that she briskly runs past. When Katniss woke up from her tracker jacker-induced slumber with a compress of leaves on both arms, my friend, and fellow plant dork, actually leaned over to me and whispered, “aren’t those bloodroot leaves?” Looks like it to me! (which actually isn’t all that cool, because bloodroot is endangered! Hopefully they didn’t disturb the root)

The Real Deal: Bloodroot leaves

I’m well aware that a botanical fascination was not “the point” of The Hunger Games movie, but it’s definitely one of my more lasting impressions. Sitting in that theater and drinking in the panorama of those breathtaking forests, I felt this incredible heartwelling urge to run, right then and there, to the woods and see what new green had come up since I’d last visited. All at once, I remembered summer and the incredible procession of unfurling– blooms, leaves, flowers and canopies– that is still to come, and I was exhilarated!

Sometimes, you really need to be reminded of just how lucky you are, and of the incredible abundance of the life (and learning) awaiting you. This time, there just so happened to be a multi-million dollar movie poised and ready-to-release at the head of spring to help me remember.

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First Camping Trip of the Season

15 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by Asia in Appalachian Beauty, Wild Foods, Wildcrafting & Collecting

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

appalachia, blue ridge mountains, boulder, camping, creek, fire, harvesting, herbal medicine, national forest, nature, partridge berry, river, stars, wildcrafting, wilderness, woods

At the beginning of the week I loaded Mr. Forester (my Subaru who also goes by the name “silver fox”) with sleeping bags and long johns and friends and headed to the woods.

The drive itself was beautiful. We passed through Appalachian farmland, admiring the weathered barns sliding drunk from the hillsides and the empty pastures with their solitary tree swings and watchful grazers. This is the time of the year for which the Blue Ridge Mountains are named. With the trees still bare, the gently rounded peaks of these ancient mountains remain cloaked in a dusky blue twilight. We drove straight into their folds.

By the time we hiked up into the woods, it was already mid-afternoon. Unlike time’s normal routine of skittering past your grasp and forever down its rabbit hole, this bright day just seemed to get bigger and bigger. Sometimes, when you really lose yourself in nature, time stretches so thin it almost ceases to exist. We spent long, sun-dappled moments swimming in the cold mountain river, leaping from one boulder of moss to another and exploring the awakening forest.

I got lost for hours laying in a bed of partridge berry. This lovely, creeping evergreen dripped from rock faces, tree roots, and rhododendron shade everywhere. It was profuse. An incredible native medicinal, I leisurely collected handful upon handful as the day drew on. (If you want to know more about this humble and powerful plant, check out Juliet Blankespoor’s awesome post on her blog Castanea).

Partridge Berry- Mitchella repens

black walnut extravaganza

We snacked on black walnuts (gathered this past fall by many friends with black hands!) and ate dried wild apples.

That night we cooked local deer and wild rice (harvested, danced upon, and carried back to Appalachia all the way from Minnesota) over an open fire. We rolled our sleeping bags out on the ground, spent one last moment looking up at the black silhouettes of the trees, and then fell asleep under the stars.

In moments like these, I can’t help but be left in wonder. How charmed life can be.

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Defined

[wool-gath-er-ing] v.
daydreaming, the gathering of thoughts and dreams as one might collect fallen tufts of wool

[wild-craft-ing] v.
the harvesting of herb, root, flower or inspiration from the wilds

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