The Foraging Connection
An essay by A. H., © 2020.
The foraging connection is something very experiential and deeply emotional. It is the people’s connection to all things wild and natural, and each other. The relationship between families, tribes, the elders, the youngers, and the land, water, and air that sustain us all. We receive our life and livelihood from the land and water with thankfulness; the land and water needs us, appreciates us, misses us when we are absent, enjoys us when we harvest, and welcomes our return with each season.
There are probably dozens of good reasons to forage for food, and each reason will have more or less appeal to each person depending on their location and needs and lifestyle. But relying on, and caring for, the wild lands and foods that grow naturally, of their own will, for our pleasure and use, brings us into a connection and relationship with the wild that is the most important aspect of foraging, I believe.
Imagine a world where people felt more at home and safer, more supported and nourished, in the woods, deserts, wilderness and ocean sides than in a supermarket with the artificially strong scents of processed foods and the rows of identical packages of long-distance, long-shelf life, long-dead, long-ingredient-list, name brand, manufactured food.
Imagine the outrage if America’s favorite fast food chains (wow, that word ‘chains’ just jumped out at me) and favorite grocery stores were being systematically destroyed in favor of government run energy pill outlets. Would people be content to be deprived in this way? Yet a similar change is happening as prairie lands are tilled for mass wheat and soy bean production for export markets, rain forests across the world, and temperate forests right here in Idaho, are being clear cut for cattle grazing. The Amazon rain forest, as just one example, is more abundant in food as a rain forest — producing nuts, fruit, fish and amazing medicinal herbs — than it ever could be as cattle pasture, which only lasts for a few years before its fertility is exhausted and more land must be cleared. This cycle of ignorance started because the colonists were not connected to the elders of this land, did not respect the old ways, and consequently viewed the wilderness as a threat that must be conquered.
People are not the problem. We are the solution. We are what the land needs. But the land needs us to need it. If humans remain divorced, separated from, ignorant of, our need for the land, we will continue to poison, pave and dismiss it, diminishing our own health and happiness, stealing from our own future, while trying to appease future generations with promises of money, ease and technology instead of the vibrant, active future they deserve.
In the current system we get enough calories, enough protein (if we are lucky), not enough minerals, but what we are really starving for is the connection — the awareness of being needed and desired by the land. The elders who want us as students, reservoirs of the most precious of all knowledge. The future generations who will need us as elders someday…
The land needs us… wants us…
Imagine a world when the connection between people, tribe, generations, land and water is valued, what is carefully nurtured and guarded for retirement security, health insurance, self-esteem. That is the world we build every time we learn to identify a plant as edible, or learn the traditions around harvesting fish or berries. Every weed that makes the move from being a gardener’s enemy to the gardener’s table and stomach is a thread in the connection we are building. Every time a neighbor shares with me his knowledge of the mushrooms that he and his dad found in days gone by, a relationship grows that satisfies the entirety of the human soul.
There is an epidemic of disconnect. It is recognized that many young people are spending unhealthy amounts of time on social media, and other screen time, trying to fill the need for connection. Less well recognized is that the source of connection is the land, the water, the tribe, the elders. In the absence of these vital connections, who can blame the young people for finding connection where they can? How many have grandparents that take them out on the land and show them how to harvest wild onions, flax seed, or cattail roots? How to enter into a relationship with the land? I cannot express how thankful I am for my parents taking me to the wilderness, teaching me to fish, camp and walk lightly on the land. They also taught me how to garden, plant trees, preserve foods, and cook. But for the most part they had not been instilled with the knowledge of foraging. I’ve been gaining that knowledge through books, websites, web searches, and, yes, Facebook groups.
This has been a pleasure for me. It is so thrilling when a common garden weed or familiar forest plant suddenly, when recognized by photo in a book of edibles, becomes part of the direct support that the land gives me. There is also a bittersweet element and a feeling of disappointment. Why did I not know this sooner? Why didn’t any of my forebearers take the time to learn so that they could teach their children and grandchildren? Why did a neighbor point out to me and identify this mushroom, and not tell me it was edible? There’s also an element of sacred duty in the learning process for me. The land needs, wants me to know of its bounty. My friends, neighbors, and the generations to come need me to know the land in this most intimate way.
One of my grandfathers came to stay with us for a week after his mind was failing. He barely recognized his own daughters by that point. But his mind was perfectly clear when he showed me, as a young teenager, how to sharpen my tools, how to trim and care for an old apple tree to make it more productive. That is one of the most powerful memories I carry with me.
You don’t have to know everything to be a forager. It’s a huge topic. All you need to know is that the living land and water is abundant, it gladly produces gladly more than we need, and all it asks is that we, in return, enter into the relationship of mutual need and desire. And the land rejoices when we partake.