Tag Archives: woods

Love and Woodland Wildflowers

19 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Appalachian Beauty, Earth Medicine, Wildcrafting & Collecting

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Lately, I have been a girl in love. Wildflowers are climbing over moss and besides creeks and in every ditch and gully from here to the highlands. It’s some kind of heaven. I always forget, every year, just how stunnily beuatiful these empheral moments of color can be. These flowers dissipate as quickly as the fog on the ground of a sunny morning. One moment they are there and the next, they are gone. Perhaps that is why they call them spring empherals. And perhaps that is why I love them so.

Wild Iris

Last week I went on my first true wildcrafting trip of the season. A carfull of botany friends and wildliving lovers packed into my car and drove out north to a spot I have heard much about, but had never visited before. Miles and miles on backroads and a forged creek later, we arrived.

Wild Bleeding Hearts

Trillium

There were wildflowers living in every crease of the landscape. It was thrilling! I walked with one hand out in front me like someone grasping at an apparition, and the other planted firmly on my camera.

Violet

Pedicularis & Bee

Pedicularis & Bee

There was one flower is particular, however, for which I searched. For a year I have been waiting to meet Pedicularis again. I cannot tell you how steadily I watched the slow progression from slate to blue to green with a sole heartug of wonder….”when will Pedicularis peek up once more?” This wild-haired flower is an important and profound medicine. There are people close to me who use this medicine daily for chronic muscular pain. For some, this flower can be a literal saving grace. A nervine, hypnotic, antispasmodic, and amourant, Pedicularis is one of the best skeletal muscle relaxants on the planet. Eat a leaf while you’re hiking and you will most liking feel as chilled out as this bee. This robust flower bursts from the ground in such an inconspicuous pomp and whorl. Once you spot it, however, it will draw you in hypnotized, humble, and spinning.

Sleepy in Heaven

This might be you in a bed of Pedicularis

Wild iris

Wild Iris

If you want to learn more about this incredible flower, please visit herbalist extraordinaire 7Song’s seriously wonderful monograph. He’s included pretty much everything you could ever want to know about Pedicularis. Awesome.

Below are two more beautiful spring medicines. Wood anemone (the shy and mesmerizing white flower on the left) is used for panic and anxiety attacks, migraines, and to help ease out of “bad trips.” Wild Geranium root (on the right) is an extremely astringent medicine that can be especially useful for those with IBD, Celiacs, ulcers, and diarrhea, as it helps to tighten the digestive tract.

Wood anemone

Wood Anemone

Wild Geranium

What more can I say. Is there anything more exquisite than spring flowers? They are born and live as eternally as fawns, wide eyed and full of purpose for just a few foaling weeks. I would happily settle for such an existence. Wouldn’t you?

Solomons Seal

Trillium

Patch of Violets

Foam flower and violets

A “Tribute” to Appalachia

25 Sunday Mar 2012

Posted by in Appalachian Beauty

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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.

First Camping Trip of the Season

15 Thursday Mar 2012

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

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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.