Stories and Species

It came up about quite naturally the other evening to be enjoying a lovely crepuscular meeting at the puddle halfway between Kristen's and my house, discussing story telling and biodiversity as the last daylight faded and lightning bugs began to flash in the forest. The meeting was initiated as a simple passing of 2 eggs from one neighbor to another, an example of people who live quite rurally using neighbors' pantries as grocery stores. Of course she didn't just hand me the eggs and run; we got into chatting about people and their stories, what fascinating things people have to say when you are willing to listen, how Ira Glass has revolutionized radio with honoring human stories of all manners. We decided that no matter where you stand on this planet, there are captivating stories all around. Any direction you look or listen from any vantage point, there is a good, or at least interesting, inspiring or heartbreaking story to be found. We live in a world of abundant stories.

This paralleled my experience of earlier that day, on a little expedition up to the Lone Pine Gap area of Paint Creek, in the Cherokee National Forest. I went with Mentor and his son to collect pictures of 24 native species of plants for the son's botany class and to do a little bird watching. This section of the forest that we were in was quite different from the moist rich cove where I dwell. Piney and a bit scrubby up top, this hillside appears to have burned relatively recently and no doubt was logged sometime in the not so distance past. Beneath the tiny layer of rich top soil, the ground was greyish and so different from the soils I encounter on a more daily basis. As Mentor and his son scurried around snapping pictures, I had the thought that we could probably stand in one spot without moving and gather 24 species of plants easily. I posed this challenge, and this is what we came up with:

Castanea dentata, American chestnut
Rhododendron calendulaceum, Flame azalea
Vaccinium ?, Deerberry
Vaccinium ?, some other species of wild blueberry
Lysimachia quadrifolia, Whorled loosestrife
Kalmia latifolia, Mountain laurel
Pieris floribunda, Fetter-bush
Acer pensylvanicum, Striped maple
Acer rubrum, Red maple
Sassafras albidum, Sassafras
Oxydendrum arboreum, Sourwood
Quercus prinus, Chestnut oak
Quercus rubra, Red oak
Pinus rigida, Pitch pine
Pinus virginiana, Virginia pine
Cornus florida, Dogwood
Robinia pseudo-acacia, Black locust
Nyssa sylvatica, Black gum
Gaultheria procumbens, Wintergreen
Epigaea repens, Trailing arbutus
Rhododendron maximum, Rhododendron
Liriodendron tulipifera, Tulip poplar
Carya sp?, Hickory
Rhus toxicodendron, Poison ivy

I suppose just like people, the biodiversity of the flora around here also has stories to tell. Fire. Erosion. Time. Decay. Adaptation. Speciation. Evolution.

Spicebush

Lindera benzoin, commonly known as spicebush, is a keynote understory species in these parts. Favoring moist soil and part shade/ part sun, it grows to be a large shrub of the laurel family, often under the protection of our prevalent tree species- black walnut, tulip poplar, hickory and ash. Spicebush are most showy in the early fall, when they are bedecked with hundreds or thousands of blood red jewel-like berries. In the spring, spicebush are one of the first flowers to appear in the woods. Their leafless twigs grow the sweetest, most delightful little yellow flowers all up and down them. The flowers are simultaneously stunningly beautiful and humbly understated, if that could be. 

Last spring, while tinkering around the yard one early evening, I was stopped in my tracks by a subtle whiff of what was possibly the best perfume smell I had ever caught wind of. Being a very scent-oriented person, I followed my nose here and there, and within a few minutes I found myself face to flower with a blooming spicebush. The delicate but powerful smell was absolutely perfect. A breath of spring. Palpable freshness and fertility. I hesitate to compare it to anything, but for the sake of this imperfect discourse, I will liken it to a flowery, lemon-like smell, with something almost tangy. 

The next day, I excitedly relayed my experience to my next door neighbor, and we hurried to the nearest spicebush and inhaled. Nothing. We went from bush to bush, sniffing in anticipation. Still nothing. The perfume was gone, and I was left wondering if I had imagined it altogether. 

Within the week or two, a Cherokee friend of mine showed up one afternoon with a buddy to harvest some sochan and bloodroot, two other very abundant plants in these parts. They showed up with lye corn cakes in tow, and came in for tea before heading out to forage. We ended up harvesting a few twigs of flowering spicebush, and the friend showed me how to prepare spicebush tea in a traditional Cherokee way. The little twigs, early in the spring are taken and simmered for 15 or so minutes. The tea is drunk for cold or fever.

From the Iroquois tradition, spicebush is called Duhen Yuks, which might mean something like "helps the man get somewhat excited." It is combined with euonymous and used for gonorrea and syphilis; one root was taken and boiled with 4 quarts of water- boiled down to 1/2 quart of tea. It is also used for colds. A tea combined with jewelweed was placed on the breast for "breast injuries." For cold sweats, colds and measles, the leaves are boiled to a tea. This information was from a text of Iroquois traditional herbal medicine shared with me by dear friend Diana Osborne.

The berries of the spicebush can be used as a spice, similar to allspice. I have used it as a seasoning in apple pie, a mystery ingredient in pesto, and combined in a homemade mead with pears. a little goes a long way. You don't need more than a few berries in a whole pie. 

This evening I was walking along the Laurel River. I turned a bend and was hit again by a subtle but definite perfume. I was distracted by my thoughts and didn't give it my attention right away. When I caught my second whiff, I noticed that I was walking through a little spicebush grove. I stepped to the nearest one and placed my nose directly on a tiny flower. As I breathed in the best smell ever, I noticed a small, pollen- covered fly creeping into another flower, making itself drunk with spicebush perfume. I closed my eyes and breathed as deeply as I could over and over. Clean and timeless. Fresh linens hanging on a precious spring afternoon deep in the mountains. Hard working man and woman sitting down in the evening. Deep and lonely. Light and lovely. A keepsake. The definition of ephemeral. 

Doe Posse

The morning of the last day of February found the Starling Gentry Doe Posse bedding in the snow just above one of my astragalus patches in the garden. These ladies slept in. The first one rose at 9:12, and they weren't all up and browsing until 10:30. "Ain't skeered," they said, in deer language.

 

 

 

Late winter

Hard to imagine the Maypole wrapping is coming up in just a couple months

Plum wore out after a session with the bone

Weeping cherry buds, primed and ready

Mount Cammerer

It took me living in Western North Carolina for, um, 18 years before I ventured across the state line and on into America's #1 most visited national park for any kind of mountain exploration. Perhaps this is shame-worthy, but I am not ashamed because all of these Blue Ridge Mountains, including the ones in the comfort zone of my home state, are holy and more than worth my time. That being said, my visit to the Great Smokies National Park was long overdue.

The trip was planned for me. All I had to do was pack some snacks, and some water, and some (I mean lots) of extra clothing just in case and show up. R.E. and I headed across that state line and into Cocke County, through Newport and straight into Cosby. The Appalachian Farmers Market which we were planning to attend at the Visitors' Center was not happening, so after a bathroom break and a peanut stop at a convenience store, we parked in the Cosby Campground and found the trail head. The day was fresh, and the morning chill was quickly fading to a mild, sunny springlike February delight.

It was a 6.5 mile ascent to the summit of Mount Cammerer, which is nearly 5000ft. I forget the elevation that we started at, but it was a lot lower than that, meaning the climb was steep and "relentless." The lower portion was a familiar scene of rich, lower- to mid elevation Appalachian mixed forest coves. Hemlocks and mixed hardwoods provided the canopy as we ambled through doghobble and lycopodium, across a creek with its cold water falling majestically over mossy rocks and boulders. I saw my first spring wild flower of the year down there- a single, humble, pale pink flower at the end of a delicate long stem from a clump of round-lobed hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba). I thought February 6 to be early for such a display.

As we climbed up through the middle portion of the mountain, we ventured into snow. First it was little patches, and soon the entire ground was covered. We wound around the steeply mountain, through awesome mountain coves, in an out of the angling sun. I stopped to enjoy a large yellow buckeye tree at the edge of a small branch crossing. The sun shone on a little pool of the clean, clear water, illuminating a small stash of lucky buckeyes at the bottoms, like wishes in the woods.

Buckeyes in the pool like wishes

Before long the snow was rather deep, but the balmy breeze graced us with a hint of the promise of springtime. The snow sparkled in the angling sunlight, and shadows of the delicate skeletons of last summer's angelica were cast in blue. We hiked through blueberries and galax, wintergreen, usnea, and lungwort lichen, hydrangeas, and elders. There are no domesticated dogs allowed in the Smokies, but a set of canine tracks wove in and out of the trail as we ascended- either the ghost of a wild canine or some law-breaking hiker's companion.

From the top of Mount Cammerer, we breathed the air of nearly 5000 feet and allowed our eyes to behold the beauty of both Tennessee and North Carolina. We saw I-40 weave around mountain contours below like a ribbon. Behind Snowbird Mountain was Max Patch, a familiar place never before seen from me from this angle. The sky was big and blue with thin, non-threatening clouds periodically wisping their way lazily across the vastness, casting mild shadows on expanses of green forest. There is so much land in the Smokies. A pair of ravens flew at eye level from somewhere high to somewhere else high, their otherworldly croaking unmistakable.

First mountain in the distance is Snowbird. Behind that in the farther distance with a little patch of snow on it is Max Patch.

On the way down the mountain, I remember feeling how warm the sun was when I held my face toward the sky. My knees creaked, and my feet were wet but not cold. We returned to the place we had started shortly before dusk. An unidentified songbird made a ruckus in a rhododendron thicket, and a chill drifted off of the ice cold streams which flowed over the moss covered rocks. The day was beautiful.

The Day After Christmas

Dawn found me waking to a rust colored light cast on the section of Franklin Mountain I can see from my bedroom window. There on my desk is a stack of topographical maps of all these mountains which surround and protect me. They entice me and fascinate me. They intimidate me and feed me. I have more maps now than ever- ridges and valleys and watersheds and roads. Forests and rivers and settlements. Lifetimes' worth of territory to study and explore. May my knees and back, hips and lungs stay strong for so many years to come.

Our bellies are full from backyard venison rump and casseroles and sauces crafted from garden bounty. It was a gorgeous garden year- darn near to perfect. The sun shone at the right times, and the perfect amount of rain fell. The soil was generous, and we enjoyed good health and energy to tend our stuff. The deer were well fed as well, which made our Christmas dinner all the more enjoyable. Mom cooked the roast to perfection.

The year lies before me like a map to be written. The cardinal directions are marked, and there are some key landmarks set in stone, concrete, and blood. The words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart* and the labor of my wrinkling hands will fill in the rest.

Let trust be my compass and humor my faithful companion.


* God bless Pop-a-top rock and all the makeovers it has endured in this year 2014. For my part, I hope it finds it way back to Psalm 19:14 (with possibly the 4 in 14 backward again), the perfect verse for us to ponder on the windy stretch home...

In between times

Day of the Dead offered us a special, spooky gift from the Otherworld this year- a perfect 12 inches of pure, white snow to cloak our world and allow us a window of time outside of time. Every surface was covered, and for the first day, the sky itself seemed to follow the sentiment. It was white on white on white, a perfect canvas; a magical mirror into the Day and into our hearts.

When the snow is blowing and the wind threatens death by treefall, us mortals retreat to the safety of our hearths, and often, subsequently, into the enigmas of our hearts. Day of the Dead. The in between time. The start of a new season, and, according to some, a new year. Can I still myself enough, by the warmth and safety of my hearth, to listen to the whispers of my heart?

12 inches of freshly fallen snow bequeaths to us a blank canvas, upon which both Life and Death imprint their marks. The bright coal red glow of freshly fallen maple leaves, the gold which is hickory leaves, the sassafras mittens- they all rest upon the white canvas, then slowly melt into it. Their gentle and impermanent imprints are reflective of the very nature of Life itself, making its mark for a brief moment of time, then returning to the the earth and its collective pool of Life-sustaining ingredients. The deer and coyotes leave their tracks, wandering here and there, in search for food and Life. Death begets Life. Hopey uncovers a bloody, half eaten rabbit from the snow on the ridge on Sapling Mountain. I carefully retrace my own imprints when the light lengthens and the wind feels colder and I can feel the beckon of the hearth. A young bear head rots in the snow, skull partially exposed.

Tomorrow the snow will finish melting, and autumn will pick up where it left off when a special kind of Winter intercepted it two nights ago. Tonight the moon rises over the great white blanket and its cold, long glow through the shadowy tree fingers will leave an impression upon our hearts.

Sassafras

The end of a season

The brilliant gold of the hickory leaves against the clear Carolina blue sky this time of year is about one of the most beautiful things I have seen. I walk through the woods, gazing up, gazing all around, with "Hickory Winds" playing in my mind as a soundtrack. Please enjoy.

New wood closet, stocked and ready

Bluff Mountain out there

Good night, turkeys

October 3, 2014
7:05-7:20 Turkeys fly to roost on the ridge above the garden; sounds like a lot of them.

September 16

Dang gui seed head silhouettes against dusky sky, smell of honey, cool breeze harbinger of autumn, crickets singing a lullaby

Fall Squash Harvest, Phase 1

Neck pumpkin, candy roaster, butternut, sugar baby. More to come.

Conditioning

It's September 1st, and that tells me it's time for some cardio-conditioning. I'm talking about a sustained heart rate of at least 160 beats per minute for 20 or more minutes. Walking up mountains. Working out. Why? Because everything is better when the heart is healthy, strong and active. Life is more vibrant. Work is less effort. And you never know when you are going to need to run from something, or to something for that matter.

A sister's got to stay fit.

Iconic

Calories hoarded for winter's keeping

fire and ice

tassels and silk

Sun to leaf

Seed to mouth

Ritual

Water

There is a visceral sinking, a drop out in the gut, that hits the moment I realize the water system is down. This week it occurred in the form of a morning phone call from two of the World's Best Neighbors, informing me that their tank was empty and inquiring about the status of mine. They get my overflow. I had been tinkering with my ram pump system the previous week, replacing the weak link again. (The weak link is the only plastic part in the system, a check valve between the pump and the delivery line. The plastic casing keeps cracking under all the pressure. I'm going to try to get a metal one custom made in the local factory.) Skipping over the tedious details of the troubleshooting steps of repairing the system, I will focus here on the sensation I experienced when I hiked up to my reservoir, and, upon opening the lid, discovered it to be nearly empty. For me it was like a quick sinking, not dissimilar to the feeling when you drop down hill on a roller coaster. Accompanying the physical gut drop, there was some sort of cerebral switch-over that occurred with equal swiftness. I can best describe this mental shift as turning a dial from a setting that is called "Post-Industrial Modern Brain" to a setting entitled something along the lines of "Lizard Brain." Something old and animal and basic kicked in. All other pending tasks and plans melted into a descending blur down the priority list as all of my mental, physical, and hormonal resources immediately mobilized into a charged and focused mission of securing usable water. Survival instincts kicked in. And it felt like, as my dear neighbor so poignantly put it, "a punch in the gut." 

Don't get me wrong here. I live in what is sometimes referred to as a borderline temperate rain forest. Water is an abundant resource in this nook of the southern Appalachians. I personally live in a private little watershed, where a bowl shape of hills and coves collects and cleans water, conveniently dispensing it into a continuous flow of cold, clean, accessible spring water year round. I am at no eminent risk of being without water. But I find it awesome, especially with all that being said, how quickly and efficiently the body switches gears when it perceives a decline in access to basic elemental needs. I can only begin to ponder the psychological and physiological state of humans living in drought-stricken parts of the earth. 

Skip the details of fixing the system, which was relatively easy when I think of the on-going benefits and convenience that the system provides, pumping water around the clock, night and day, with no additional power inputs other than water and gravity- supplying 3 households with clean, cold life-blood straight from the teat of the Mother herself.  The feeling of buoyancy endowed to the person who realizes she has an ample reservoir of water with more flowing is the instant antidote to the previously described gut-drop fear of the empty tank. Amazing. Light. Free. My list of things to do ascends back to my awareness, but this time everything seems easier.  A shift in perception. We have water.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, each element is affiliated with a major organ system in the body as well as an emotion, time of day, and time of year. Water governs the kidneys, and is associated with winter time and fear. I think I can experience this most readily when I am confronted with situations involving too much or too little water. A dry tank. A flash flood. The fear is instant, primal, real. Elemental. 

Evening Devotion

One thing I love about the woods is this: the moment needs to be nothing other than the moment. No expectations or judgments.

The hooded warbler sings a song, then a portion of a song. Soon he will start to fly south. This moment he sings here in the angled golden sunlight. The sunlight casts mottled gold through the trees and leaves; it both brightens and darkens the forest, simultaneously.

Caterpillars crunch leaves above. A black-throated green warbler sings.

Hopey sits in a spot of sunlight. She is aging and will die. This moment she sits quietly with me. There are blackberries that could be picked. They hang ripe on the brambles.

The earth turns and the sunlight is shifted.

This moment is heartbreakingly beautiful. And it is just a moment.

On Guns and the Bypass (for Rosemoon)

I gave a very old man a ride to Asheville once the day after Thanksgiving in my old doo-doo brown 1979 Pontiac Catalina. He was hobbling down 25/70 very slowly in the rain on the bypass. I couldn't bear to see it, so I pulled over and asked him where he needed to go. Asheville. I was going anyways. He had his hand inside his coat holding something which I couldn't see, presumably to protect it from the rain. I said to the man, "sir are you armed?" He squinted, rain in his face, and loudly replied, "What?" I repeated myself one or two times, very loudly. He said, "no ma'am, I ain't armed," to which I politely informed him that before I would give him a ride to Asheville, I needed to see what he was holding inside his coat. 

He pulled his hand out to reveal a light bulb. "I found it on the road. It's still good" he told me. 

I told the man I would give him a ride to Asheville, but then he would need to find another ride home.

During the ride, I asked him how his Thanksgiving was. I gathered that it hadn't been much of a to-do, what with his wife being old and bed ridden. I couldn't verify if he celebrated Thanksgiving at all. When we got to Asheville I asked him where he wanted to be dropped off. He told me he needed to go to the Sheriff's station downtown to get his gun back. As I dropped him and his light bulb off, he attempted to insist that I take $5 from him for gas. I refused thinking he might need that later. 

Saint Johns Day update, small scale

I was awakened last night by a beetle trying to crawl through my ample head of hair. At least it was not a wood roach, of which I occasionally find a few in the house. At least it was not a cockroach, which thank the god of all things nasty we don't have here. At least it was not a wolf spider spinning a web in my hair like what happened to RM a couple summers ago. Just a small beetle, trying to get somewhere.

I am on a food growing kick for some reason. I can't stop planting more and more seeds. It's really scratching an itch.

I am putting together samples of the Xiao Yao San tincture with an official letter explaining my philosophy and methodology for the process of making this formula, which includes cultivating some of the ingredients. These samples will be distributed to acupuncture clinics in Asheville. I am hoping that local practitioners will want to use this locally produced product to meet their Xiao Yao San needs.

I saw a man walking on 25/70 yesterday on the Marshall by-pass. He was walking rather briskly and was carrying 5 or 6 rifles over his shoulder.

Mowing on Thor's Day (just when you thought the Thor tributes were on summer vacay...)

This evening, as I mowed through the jungle which is also called my yard between rain showers , I stopped after a time to refuel. As the engine quieted I heard the rumble of Thor. I couldn't tell if it was the deeply wild and prehistoric sounding beating of turkey wings flying to roost up in the woods, or the thundering rumble of another storm over beyond Franklin Mountain. It was both. I remembered it was Thor's Day. Glory. The frogs sang extra loudly, and the wet heavy smell that hung in the evening air permeated all of me like a memory. The perfume of the woods in June.

Poppies in foreground overlooking garden stretching up into cove. Thor has been good to us this year. 

Dang gui

This is dang gui (Angelica sinensis) thriving in my garden. The dang gui root is harvested after the second year of growth, dried, soaked in yellow rice wine, and then cooked in a wok over an open flame. It is then combined with 7 other herbs to make the Xiao Yao San traditional Chinese herbal formula. The cultivation and production of this formula is my primary project on the land here.

Apparition

This week, an apparition.
Story starts in Year 2000. I was fresh out of college, renting a house in Swannanoa with friends and working as an assistant at the Chinese Acupuncture Clinic in Asheville. Deeply interested in the medicine, and particularly the herbal parts, I endured what clearly was not a good employment fit for as long as possible just to be around the medicine and soak up as much information as possible. My favorite place was the herb room, which contained over 300 large jars of various dried roots, barks, leaves, resins, minerals, and animal parts, categorized by their effect on the human system. Clears heat. Tonifies qi. Moves blood. Yang tonic. And so forth. I tried to memorize the names, smells, tastes and functions of as many as I could. I also enjoyed providing direct care and body work to the patients- massage, cupping, moxabustion, electrical stimulation to needles, etc. I was fascinated by the dramatic effectiveness of the the treatments. However, my sense of humor got me in trouble. I just couldn't resist the frequent opportunity to crack a joke or play a prank. My antics were harmless, and (I believed) provided some balance to the overall mood of the workplace, but I was causing too much laughter and disruption in the clinic and after a few months was moved outside to the garden and lawn. As much as I love gardening, I was disappointed. I didn't get a job there to garden or mow the grass. But that was my first exposure to the cultivation of Chinese herbs. They had a small display garden with some of the medicines growing. I don't think they had Bupleurum chinense (chai hu) growing (I could be wrong), but that was one of the herbs that had captivated me in the herb room, and I decided that year that someday I wanted to grow that herb. I didn't last long in that job because a special opportunity to travel came forth, but the seed had been planted.

Flash forward to Year 2014. It is late May, and this week the time came for me to plant out my first lot of Bupleurum chinense (chai hu), which, as it turns out, is a main ingredient of the formula Xiao Yao San (Free and Easy Wanderer) that I am producing here. I planted the seeds a year ago, and waited patiently for their delayed and very spotty germination all season long. As they germinated, I carefully transplanted the seedlings into small pots, then stepped them up as they grew in the greenhouse nursery. I allowed the plants to overwinter in the nursery, and waited until blackberry winter seemed to be over before I planted them out.

It was Monday. I had a wheelbarrow full of chai hu plants and was about to wheel them up the hill to the south facing terrace I had prepared for them, as they like well-drained, sunny to part shade, drier conditions. Hopey was resting in the grass near me. From the corner of my eye I detected something white and moving to my right. I looked down to witness a miniature white poodle, shaved and groomed, trotting right by me with cool  and utter confidence. It had emerged from the woods behind me and trotted right on through, between Hopey and me, without looking at us, acknowledging our existence or stopping. Hopey did not growl or bark, which those of you who know her can attest is unheard of. The poodle trotted right on out the driveway and was gone as quickly as it had appeared. It was clearly the strangest animal sighting since I have lived here, and appeared at a most auspicious moment. I live in a very tucked away place, surround by lots of woods, and nowhere near a poodle.

Word travels in a rural community. Dave called Todd who called Greg who called the Mechos and me. I don't know who called Dave. There was an elder woman down on 212 close to Delmus's old store who was pining for her 14 yr old missing poodle and distressed for its safety. Luckily, by the end of the night, the poodle has returned home safely, and the lady was very relieved. I am quick certain that poodle was wore slap out after its lengthy romp around. And somehow, I am quite certain that the apparition bestowed a blessing of some strange sort upon my first crop of Bupleurum.