An Invitation for Connection

A journey into an Appalachian forest

The Sustainable Herbs Initiative’s Wild Plants Working Group has been meeting monthly for a year and a half. Our goal is to share the stories of wild harvesters from around the world and to help find solutions to the challenges they face. We are doing this by conducting interviews with wild harvesters of 14 different species, to see what is unique about these species and also what the patterns and parallels are.

At the heart of this work, we are exploring how any actions we might recommend for addressing the challenges arise from a paradigm that senses the inherent aliveness of the world. And so I thought a good place to begin is with that aliveness, by asking the forest and the plants how they would design a system for harvesting their medicine that better recognized and respected their aliveness.

What follows emerged from the process of writing. I share them because regardless of the source, they offer good advice for any of us harvesting plants from the wild.

I enter a clearing in an Appalachian forest. Everyone is here. Oak. Maple. Birch. Fox. Blue cohosh. Black cohosh. So many more.

I ask black cohosh, “If you could design a system that honored you, your roots in the forest, your roots in community, what you design?”

Without hesitation, black cohosh answers,

“Roots are more than something you weigh. More than something you exchange for profit. Roots ground in a place. They connect you to the community in that place. Rooting as verb. The action I play in the forest is my medicine. Not just what I am. And even what I am is of the forest.”

Oregon grape root, whom I don’t know well, speaks up, bringing along that high western meadow air, just as black cohosh brought the lush Appalachian forest.

“That moment of taking is key. How the taking happens. Are there connections, a weaving of a web, or is it a snap, no thread of connection?

What is the quality of the taking?”

“How does that matter?” I ask.

They all look around, because this is the key. They need to get it right, so I can understand.

A small plant, eyebright?, steps forward.

“Some of what we offer is bounty. A gift for anyone. Some of what we offer is our lives. So, first, in the taking, recognize the difference.

You aren’t the only ones taking. So even with the bounty, be aware of others who also want to partake.

If we don’t grow abundantly, don’t take abundantly.”

Blue cohosh comes forward and adds,

“We have more to do and be than medicine for you. That is one thing, our gift to you. But it isn’t the only thing. See that. Honor that.

The taking can be an invitation for connection.

An invitation to use the harvest to go deeper, to follow the threads of how each of us relates to every other one of us. Use the taking not to leave, but to enter.

To turn towards us.

To remember we are all part of the same world.”