Plants have always inspired me. I grew up on a rural property in
Southeastern Pennsylvania, just over the border from Delaware. My
siblings and I spent countless hours outside, playing in trees and
running in fields. My first encounter with a plant that really piqued my
curiosity was the result of a middle school biology project: describe a plant and determine its family. I chose a plant in the Mint family (although I didn't know that when I chose it) called Heal-all, or Ajuga reptans.
The reason I chose it was because it was completely symmetrical: it had
opposite leaves that got smaller and alternated direction as you moved
up the stem. The tiny blue flowers at the top of the stem were
fascinating: they looked like little open mouths. And the
stems were completely square! Little did I know, these are the defining
characteristics of all plants in the Mint family. I also didn't realize
at the time that plants are all created using mathematics and the phi
principle, meaning that there is a specific order that the cells follow
to form roots, leaves, stems, flowers and seeds. The structure of all life is built upon this same system.
Looking
at the flowers, you can tell that bees and other pollinators extract
the nectar from the base, all the while fertilizing the flower in a
sacred kiss. Sex doesn't get much better than that!
From that day
on, I was hooked. But not in the usual "knowledge-thirsty" way - I
wanted to know what I could EAT. One summer I was hired by my neighbors,
who lived in the woods, to pull out "weeds" from their property. As I
was pulling these plants from the soft understory soil, I noticed a
distinct Anise or Fennel-like odor emanating from the roots. I decided
to take some of them home to make tea - but I chickened out once I'd
made it, because I just wasn't exactly sure of what it was. It turns
out; I could have drunk the tea, as the plant was Sweet Cicely, or Myrrhis odorata, which is a wonderful aromatic plant in the Carrot family. In this case, it was good to err on the side of caution, as there are several poisonous species in the Carrot family, one of which - Poison Hemlock, or Conium maculatum
- is deadly. Only a very small portion - a few leaflets - is enough to
kill an adult. Socrates' demise was brought about by forcing him to
drink tea made from the leaves.
The following summer (I was sixteen and had just graduated from high school) I decided to take a trip to New England. I got a ride with my friend Ted, a graduate student at the University of Delaware who was doing research in botany. He was going to Boston to visit family and friends.
At the tender age of sixteen, I was already somewhat of a traveler, and
I had met and made friends with people older than me - several of them
lived in New
England, and that's where I was headed. I had heard about
the Morris Dance Guild from my friend Vic, who was a Morris dancer in
Boston. I also wanted to visit Jon, who lived with his fiancé in
Vermont, very near an entrance to the Long Trail of the White Mountains.
My parents learned long ago that there was nothing they could do to
change my mind, once I had decided to do something. Nothing. So they
quietly waved good-bye as I drove out the driveway with Ted in his
little car packed with tents, sleeping bags, camping gear, etc. They
didn't know that I would be hitchhiking around New England - they might
have tried to draw the line there, and I knew better than to tell them.
After
visiting with Vic, he drove me to the Morris Dance Guild, which was a
cool medieval festival, full of traditional English dance and music.
From there I found a ride to a quaint little farm in New Hampshire where
I stayed a few days, then headed to Vermont to see my friends. After
several days there, I decided to make my way up to the Long Trail, high
up in the White Mountains. It was cloudy when I started out, and then it
began to rain. And it rained, and rained, and rained some more. I had
my poncho covering my backpack, but some of my stuff still got wet. As I
was climbing the steep, slippery slope, I slipped and fell, crushing my
shinbone against a rock. It was bleeding quite a bit, but I just
covered it with a leaf and moved on.
I finally made it to a
shelter built just off the trail on a steep and rocky slope, about
halfway up the mountain. Good Capricorn that I am, I decided it would be
wisest to just spend the rest of the day and the night
there, and I would move on in the morning - no use in killing myself on
the wet, slippery trail. Little did I know what kind of night was in
store for me!
The shelter was quite big - it could have easily
housed 15 or 20 people. That night I was alone. And I was lonely, and a
little scared. In spite of all my "big girl" traipsing around the
country on my own, I was still just a frightened sixteen-year old,
wishing I were home in my own bed! As night fell, I climbed into my sleeping bag after having some dried fruit and
nuts for dinner. There were the usual early summer night-time sounds -
crickets chirping, tree frogs peeping - but as the night drew on I
started to notice another, more worrisome sound. Scratch, scratch,
scratch... Holy moly, that sounds like something big! A bear!! Is it
going to break through the door and come kill me?? Oh my God! My mind
was racing between picturing my half-eaten carcass found by some hikers a
few days from now, and seeing myself fleeing the scene, tripping down
the mountain and ending up at the bottom of a ravine somewhere. The
first scenario seemed somehow more attractive... or maybe less insane
than the second. So I stayed put, paralyzed, listening to the ominous
scratch, scratch, scratch of the bear, or whatever it was. It had to be -
whatever it was, it was BIG!
I felt like I was 9 years old again,
when I would lay paralyzed in my bed, waiting for the werewolf to come
crashing through the window at the slightest movement of a finger or a
toe. Dark Shadows was a TV show that aired back in the late 60's and
early 70's. My youngest brother, Kenny and I would get home from school
and turn on the tube to watch our favorite show. It was my favorite
show anyway, in spite of the terror it instilled in me.
Barnabus and
Angelique, the vampires, were scary enough. But the werewolf... for a
full year, I was petrified to go to bed, just knowing that he was
lurking outside my window, ready to pounce at any moment, at the
slightest stirring of my covers. That's when I learned how to fall sleep
without moving. Those of you whose tender years were not emblazoned by
this traumatic psychodrama were spared this particular lesson. I'm
grateful, though - in my case it was only imaginary. Some people have to
deal with real werewolves, sometimes disguised as humans.
At any
rate, the night passed, morning came, and I was still alive and well. I
wanted to see if I could find evidence of the HUGE animal it must have
been, so I looked at the outside of the door where I heard the
scratching coming from. There were definitely no big bear claw marks
anywhere to be seen. There were, however, some tiny little scrapes and
scratch marks that could have been made by a raccoon. Big deal - what a
tizzy I had put myself into for nothing! But by that time, I had already
made my decision: after that night, I just wanted one thing - go back
down the mountain and try my luck with a far more dangerous species:
humans.
Backpack hoisted and ready to go, I set down the trail,
light-hearted about my decision. It was no longer raining, but the
clouds were still low and I was in no mood to dictate to the sky how I
thought it should be behaving. I was going to hitch a ride south towards
Boston, where I would meet Ted and drive back home with him. The humans
I got a ride from were probably less civilized than bears, although
they seemed pleasant enough. I realized after a while that I was likely
sitting in a stolen car. Judging from their drinking and conversation,
they were on the run from somewhere or running to somewhere, and I
didn't want to know anything more or have anything to do with it. So I
asked them to drop me off up a ways, and they complied without a hitch.
And I thanked my lucky stars, as I do very often, to be alive and well.
But
before my encounter with the "less-civilized-than-bears" humans, on my
way down the trail before reaching the road, I had a very interesting
experience with a plant. The trail had leveled out a bit, and it was
much easier to walk. I spotted several gorgeous orange flowers that
looked like Lilies, hanging down from narrow, almost transparent stems.
Next to the flowers were leaves that were the most stunning leaves I had
ever seen. They were simple, smooth-edged, wide-ish blades, but not
grasses. They were remarkable by their sheen and by the brownish
mottling that characterizes the leaves of Trout Lilies, or Erythronium americanum.
As I approached the plants, I had to stop dead in my tracks to take it
all in. It was surreal, because this was obviously the first time I had
ever seen these plants, and yet I knew that I knew them. And I also knew
that I could eat them. This knowing seemed to come from another time,
another place, perhaps. But I was absolutely certain that I knew this
plant and that I could eat it. So I did - I plucked a leaf and ate it.
It was the most divine thing I had ever tasted. I knew I had taken the
cake, just because it was the sweetest, freshest taste my palate had
ever experienced. That was even better than making it to the top of the
mountain... and, I lived to tell the story!
I
also lived to tell the story of the misguided souls who picked me up,
and I gained a valuable lesson from that experience: never get into a
car unless it feels completely right and safe. That lesson served me for
many years after that, and I don't regret it. Instead of basing my
actions on fear, I learned to discriminate by using my intuitive
guidance. This has been the story of my life: trusting that I know, and
marveling at the serendipity of circumstance. I am so blessed and
fortunate to be connected to so many wondrous souls, whether humans,
plants, animals or stones, incarnate or not, who have helped me to
negotiate the intricate web of this human, earthly and wildly sensorial
existence - including the bears and the werewolves!
