Nibble on Something Wild Every day!
EarthSkills Advice from Luke Cannon
Luke Cannon, ethnobotanist, herbalist, and permaculturalist, loves to share the magic and wonder of the natural world…www.notastelikehome.org
This is what I’d like to share from the 2016 Florida Earth Skills Gathering:
I went on an afternoon plant walk with Luke Cannon and a dozen other folks on a beautiful afternoon. Midway through the walk, we stopped near a Bass Tree and he encouraged everyone to feel it. Touch it. Smell it. Taste it.
Did you know that “Homo Sapien” is derived from a Latin root relating to “Tasting Life?” To be human is to taste — To only taste food that is prepared for us is not living.
This was the greatest lesson I took away from Earth Skills.
Luke told us this: He could speak to us for hours and days — But, talking and listening will not enable any of us to be better botanists.
We need to experience for ourselves.
I didn’t record him, so I won’t put quotes around these concepts, I’ll simply try to convey the essence of his spectacular sentiments:
Luke described how important the practice of tasting something wild every day is.
Your food is your biology. Think about what it means for you to introduce something into your system that is wild. Something that wasn’t cultivated. These are plants that propagated themselves. They didn’t need irrigation or protection. They fend for themselves. They persevere.
When considering the implications, it is amazing to realize that there was a point when everything that fed a human was wild. Now, how many people have tasted a wild plant? 100% to 0%? I’m not attempting to inflate a simple concept. I believe this concept is a spectacular illustration of some much greater truths about existence.
To taste. To engage with these plants, even if they have no nutritional value, is to return yourself to a place where you have a relationship with your environment. To think twice. To contemplate. To dare. To experience.
This practice is a simple act with amazing significance
How can you know it if you do not taste it?
You might feel initial frustration at your inability to discern the taste of one plant from another.
Do not be disheartened. This is not a fundamental failure of your biology. This is simply an indicator of your atrophied senses. The only way to develop and invigorate this inherent ability is through practice.
Imagine if we only processed visually that which was cultivated. How effective would our vision be? Film, images, stages… How keen would our observation ability be? How equipped for reality is a person who has only digested that which was predigested for them?
This is the amazing lesson provided to me by Luke.
“If you don’t know the name — it doesn’t matter! What matters is your personal relationship with your environment. If you don’t take the time to develop that relationship, all the taxonomical classifications in the world will do you no good.”
It won’t just happen with one taste. You won’t learn everything on one day walking through the woods and licking things.
This is a lifelong practice.
Building relationships — “Networking”. This is not just something for humans to do with other humans.
This is our responsibility to our entire world.
Take the time for intimate acquaintances over time. Some things are poisonous, some things are magical. You can let a book tell you this. But, if you practice, you can learn how to let the plants tell you this themselves.
The responsibility is not to eat. But, to develop relationships. To connect ourselves with the natural world. There are a million ways to do this.
