Tools of the trade

We were driving over to the town of Renfrew, (a small town, but bigger than ours) to do some shopping.

It was a snowy, blowy, blustery day. Paul was driving (Paul always drives) and I was looking out the window (I always look out the window) at the treetops against the sullen grey sky. At the shapes of shrubs and outlines of the old, golden stalks of last year's perennials against the perfect snow. At the snow itself, sculpted by the wind, so white and so deep.

The snow is very deep this year.

As I look, I name what I'm seeing. I can't help myself, it just happens. Birch, oak, golden rod, thistle, mullein spike, alder, alder and more alder (their branches burgundy, their catkins and cones dangling like earrings). Cattails. Queen Anne's Lace, wild parsnip, corn stubble.

Some of the names fit better in winter than in summer; without their leaves, the branches of staghorn sumacs (for example) really do look like antlers. It's in winter that their thick velvet covering - just like the velvet on deer antlers - is most prominent. It begs the question - could one use staghorn sumac velvet in the same way that those ultra-macho types use deer antler velvet? I wouldn't be at all surprised.



Along the way I was struck (again, for it always strikes me) by the particular grace of poplar trees. Their branches arch elegantly upward and in the right light one can actually see the skyward pointed tips of next year's leaf-buds, even when speeding by in a car. I thought about the penetrating fragrance of those buds - spicy, sweet, intense. I thought about it deeply as we passed a mostly poplar forest. And suddenly I actually smelled it. My brain somehow delivered the memory of that fragrance so perfectly that I could have sworn for half a second that there was a branch of budded poplar in the car. Spicy, sweet, intense.

These are the kinds of tools of the trade I need if I want to forage for food or medicine - or at least, if I want to be good at it - a sense of smell so acute, and an imaginative memory so well trained that I can conjure up a fragrance at will.

Our brains are set up so that memory and smell are wired together by imagination.

So, when it comes to learning one plant from another, pictures won't do. We must smell them.

And taste them. And touch them, intimately, like we would touch a beloved. We must look very, very closely at them and yes, even listen to them. What is the sound of bare poplar branches in the winter wind? It's different than maple, and different than wind in the pines.

Our senses are far more sensitive than most of us realize.

While most people who teach 'wildcrafting' or foraging will tell you that your knife and your digging stick are your most important tools (and they are very important, and so is good solid footwear), I've learned it's the senses that must come first. Without them we're just stumbling and bumbling our way through the natural world without really noticing any of it.

Using the senses is the only way to hone the senses.

Interestingly, along with more finely honed senses comes a sharper mental focus. The ability to conjure up smells and tastes and textures and sounds, to experience them, inwardly, is awakened as we become more attuned to our physical environment. We call this ability the imagination. It's our imagination that enables us to process what we experience.

I like to play with words. The word "remember" is a favourite of mine.

Re-member.

That's the opposite of dis-member, the action of taking something apart.

When we remember some thing or event we're putting that thing or event back together in our minds; it's not so much a process of logic as it is imaginative. We never remember objectively, our memories are subjective, coloured by the meaning we have assigned to them.

Science and logic tend to 'dis-member' the object of study. Take it apart, into its 'constituents', as though that somehow explains the thing itself better than seeing the whole in context would. It doesn't of course. This method pretends to be objective, but it's not, of course; it's just meaning of a different colour.

When we go out into the world of the plants themselves and learn about them, learn from them, through our senses, we can - sometimes, hopefully - catch a glimpse of meaning as the plants themselves know it.

For if all we ever know of mullein comes to us as words about (dis-membered) mullein, words that we repeat in our heads when we see it or work with it, how well do we know mullein?

At the beginning of this post I said -

"As I look, I name what I'm seeing. I can't help myself, it just happens. Birch, oak, golden rod, thistle, mullein spike, alder, alder and more alder (their branches burgundy, their catkins and cones dangling like earrings). Cattails. Queen Anne's Lace, wild parsnip, corn stubble."

What's in a name? As I name what I see, I'm re-membering each of these plant/creatures, putting them back together in my imagination, using what I learned about and from them through my senses. The names of each conjure up their fragrances, textures, sounds, the conditions they grow in, and their communities, too.

The more I use my senses, the better I'll get to know the plants; the better I get to know them, the more finely tuned my senses - and therefore my imagination - become.

This is why so many of us say that the best way to learn about the plants is to ask the plants . Their answers - spoken in fragrance and texture - change us. If they didn't, we would never understand what it is they're trying to tell us.

So it is that I can say the plants re-member us. By enhancing our senses and sharpening our minds, they put us back together into a more - dare I say it? - whole version of our human selves.

What is the sound of bare poplar branches in the winter wind? It's different than maple, and different than wind in the pines.