The tribe

I'm supposed to be making strawberry jelly right now, from the berries we picked yesterday from our favourite "I don't spray" strawberry farmer's fields. I simmered them down - with some of last year's (frozen) apple peels and cores so I don't have to use commercial pectin - last night; the gorgeous red juices have dripped into a bowl and are waiting for me to get off my butt.

I also have to make a big batch of chilli, get that huge tray of chicken thighs in the fridge marinating for the chicken marbella .. oh, and I kinda have to make some extra bread to freeze, too. There's a heat wave coming our way in a few days; a week long, highs in the 100's, nobody-wants-to-cook-in-that-kind-of-weather heat wave. I have to get ready, or at least as ready as I can, with at least some pre-cooked meals. It's not like we have restaurants up here!

But what am I doing instead of all that? I'm contemplating making yet more coffee and thinking about tribes. Actually, I'm thinking about the tribe I know is out there but I'm unlikely to meet - my tribe. Those who, like me, don't see a mass of green when they see a forest or a meadow, they see individuals, they see 'the standing people', as the First Nations peoples call them.




We had a visitor to the back yard a couple of days ago, and it was fun, but it was also, at least for me, pretty painful. She was, as is everyone who visits our back yard, quite charmed and entranced to discover that there is such a thing as a medicine garden. Her eyes widened as I pointed out a few of the plants and their properties, but of course we only touched the tip of the ice berg. To the uninitiated, that tour gets overwhelming pretty quickly.

And that's the part that I find painful, that I never have the opportunity to show the whole damn thing off. It's not that I'm aching to brag, it's that I'm aching to open their eyes to what the green world really is all about.

Yet as I explained comfrey .. that I allow so much of it to grow not because I need it for medicine but because it enhances the health of every plant and fruit tree in the yard, that the ground that we stood on is alive and the plants exchange nutrients with one another, that now familiar to me look of discomfort came over her and she said "But surely you have too much of this, what do you call it, come-free? Boiling water would kill it, yes?"

And as I bit my tongue (I wanted to tell her that what she had just said was both ignorant and rude) I longed - oh how I longed - for the chorus of "Boo!" that I knew I would hear if the rest of my tribe stood beside me that day.

I know I'm not the only one who allows "too much" comfrey or who grows nettles on purpose or who rejoices as the chickweed carpets the soil of the vegetable bed.

I know I'm not the only one who walks out into the garden, alone, yet feels companioned by the trees and plants that are as aware of my presence as I am of theirs.

The green world is not the background to this tribe I belong to. The green world is the foreground. Nature is not a place or a thing, it's a community of creatures of which I - and you - are a part. What part, what role we have is up to us. Most choose to ignore it, although everyone likes a park or the beach. Some, perhaps, take some intellectual interest in botany and many feel a sentimental bond with the prettier of the green creatures. But those of us in this tribe are cousins with the dirt itself. Kissing cousins, even.

I guess I'm just a little bummed out right now. It's discouraging to hear from people who write to me saying they'd love! (there's always so much enthusiasm, initially) to "do what I do" and please will I tell them more? So I do, often for weeks or months worth of email exchanges and hand-holding and encouragement. But then they bleat that it's too overwhelming or they don't trust themselves or any of the many ways they begin to tell me (between the lines) that in fact, they really don't want to, they just think they do. Wish they could.

Believe me, if you are part of this tribe, nothing will stop you from "doing what I do" in your own way. If you don't feel it in your bones, just admit it! It will save me the trouble of teaching yet another person who really doesn't want to learn, they want to be given information. There's a big difference there.

I suppose it could be said that I've been lying to my readers all along. There is nothing simple or easy about the Medicine Way, it's life changing and soul-shaking. This isn't about curing illness or relieving aches and pains, it's about building a life with heart from the ground up. It's about redefining what it is to be human.

That's the real Medicine.

And so it is that I rant against the buyers and the sellers. You can no more buy the Medicine I'm talking about than you can buy the love of another human being. Nor are the plants in your garden or out in the meadows commodities or products to be consumed, they're Beings.

And if you can't wrap your head and heart around that, you've been reading the wrong damn blog.