I was sitting by the lake and suddenly my “little voice” told me to move.
There was no obvious reason to move, but I did. Within minutes, the brittle, dried crown of an old maple snapped and crashed right where I had been sitting.
One of the reasons I like spending time in the woods is because I use my senses more fully. Every once in a while I get the message to leave the woods. Much as I hate to trade the woods for indoors time, listening to the message typically results in a significant improvement in my life.
So, once again, I get the tug to come inside, past the fireflies, the waxing moon, the feel-good warmth of a long summer day and night.
I happened to have some extra bus tickets and “Wildman” Steve Brill happened to have a foraging workshop. Even if I know the plant, I’m bound to learn something more from this dedicated forager.
I’m brewing spicebush leaf tea, drying epazote and garlic mustard seeds, and getting ready to feast on a salad of honewart, wood sorrel, lambs quarters and purslane.
Back from the hike - I learned that you can use the same sassafrass root more than one time to make tea and that spicebush is related to mountain laurel.
We nibbled honewort and watched a flock of robins chase a red-tail hawk from tree to tree. We rescued an escaped or abandoned gerbil and shared our harvest as we foraged. One of our group adopted the gerbil, heading off to a pet shop to buy supplies as soon as the tour ended.
These were just bonuses to the precious teachable moments that we all shared.
What else I learned is that nature educators working with young children are faced with some serious challenges. The worst is the fear-based thinking of many program planners.
Paraphrasing Dick Gregory, the human mind cannot simultaneously embrace faith and fear. If you are afraid to let a child touch a plant or learn which plants not to touch, then how are you helping that child - or a student at any age - to function as a contributing member of a community?
I cannot do much about a system that has deteriorated noticeably in my lifetime. But I can make what information I do have accessible to people who seek to learn. To that end, I am adding nature games to my list of Nature Curriculum articles and I am increasing my wild edible recipes to add a number of simple, single plant recipes that will encourage a sense of success.
People learn in different ways. I will always give credit and where appropriate, links, to anyone who knows more than I do.
If enough of us have sufficient faith to perform little, apparently inconsequential, acts, then I do believe there will be a tipping point. Today it’s compact fluorescent bulbs, tomorrow taking a foraging class, the next day recommending a resource; these things add up.