tracking the story of human choice
We were walking close to a snail’s pace down the path, each one of us finding something new to point out to the other. The tracker found the tiny chipmunk prints from a morning skitter, the birder rattled off names of which woodpecker it could be hammering it’s head into a nearby tree, and I wandered slowly, trying to train my eyes away from the plants and into the world of animal tracks. We had just finished inspecting a dried up chunk of bird scat (junco, they agreed – somehow), when I glanced over toward a very familiar bay tree, only something vital was missing.
Towards the bottom of the 4 or 5 trunks that peeled out of the ground, there used to be a giant ganoderma, also known as artist’s conk, also known as reishi. Now, there I see only a long, jagged saw mark. I used to think of that mushroom as a bracket, helping to support the great weight of the towering bay tree. While it’s possible some scientist came by and decided this bracket conk needed to go (and the verdict is still out on if these fungi have it out for their host trees, or not), but more likely it was an enthusiastic herbalist, excited to put that mushroom to good use. The medicine of reishi spans thousands of years and several continents as an invaluable treatment of cancers, inflammation, immune response, the list goes on. It also treats the heart, support for our own pumping center.
There were several smaller conks around, but this one was the most visible, so close to the trail you barely had to put a foot on the forest floor. I stood dumbfounded for a moment, shocked that another herbalist would break the rules of the honorable harvest. This indigenous wisdom, as laid out by Robin Wall Kimmerer, says don’t take the biggest, oldest, wisest beings for yourself. It says take only what is given, and ask before taking (asking requires deep familiarity and scientific observation). And perhaps the hardest one: take only what you need. How much do our wants get entangled with our needs; what part of the heart do we use to interpret this rule?
This path has a special place in my life, but I don’t live here. The chipmunk, juncos, woodpeckers surely have much more of a say than I do about whether or not this mushroom that measured almost 2 feet across, was needed here. The problem is, we barely know that others exist these days, beyond our human-centric experience. Had I not been with other trained observers, I would have missed the junco poo, stamped out the chipmunk track, and only briefly wondered about the woodpecker. How can we ask what’s okay to take if we don’t know who to ask? And truly, what medicine might come our way, in leaving that special find where we spotted it, for all of us to know?
More and more people are excited and interested in learning about foraging, herbal medicine, wild foods, natural dye plants, etc. It gives me both hope, and pause. I think the first question for any of us – myself included – in wanting this deeply connecting wisdom is this: how do I enter, and what gifts do I bring? Like coming to a dinner party at a new neighbors home, we never arrive empty handed and let ourselves in. Generosity is our guide, greediness will be our collective demise. Generosity will lead us in the work of reparations, both with other species and our own. As far as I can tell, reparations are about relationship, and reckoning with what it means to not continue the trajectory of taking something – everything – and making it of use for our own benefit…be it the blood of the mountain, the sanctity of a dark star-filled night, or the support of a great old tree.
What would it mean to leave what we find behind with a song, a nod of gratitude? It seems our deeply human work is to stop trying to own everything, finding instead that we feel much more like we belong to something.