Thoughts While Waiting (Impatiently). A Bout of Gratitude & Observation (turned prayer).

This week my husband suggested that we "might have to give up on the idea of mushrooms this season..." to which I squirmed & balked & grumbled & subsequently chose to ignore.

But there is a dearth of fungi here this season. It is true. 

In a way, maybe this is a good thing. Sort of. I guess. 
It is in the sense that we have had to turn our attention to other things. Things overlooked, but things that also fill our hearts & imaginations. They are not fungi, but still, as I reflect, I am grateful.

When we turn our eyes from the duff, what more is there to discover?

The World. (In no particular Order.)

Just allow me open spaces to roam, please.

And Mysteries to solve...
A stone left at Hubby's workplace. Turns out this is
Norwegian translated to runic, it says, roughly,
"There is no cake served in hell."

And flowers to Learn, Know & Nurture...
Wild ones, like the Twinflowers (Linnaea borealis)

And Buttercup (Ranuculus, spp.)

Or Yarrow (Achillea millefolium L. var. borealis),
white & pink varieties.

And Strawberry Blite (Blitum capitatum) -- coated with
 insect reproductive activity of some sort, I suspect.

A Foxglove (Digitalis spp.) at the front doorstep

A Fuchsia, "Blackie" (Fuchsia, spp., one of many) in back.

And Poppies (Papaver, spp.)
everywhere in between.

Show me other folks' creations to
discover, admire, emulate... 

And allow me to indulge in their
creative Secrets, Free Play & Art...

Always remembering that everything, everything
from eating to breathing to sleeping is an Art...
(especially if there is a basil sorbet involved...)

(...or a local rhubarb-infused vodka, paired with
friendship & sacred choreography planning)

And may I always be an open witness...
Witches' Altar. Lammas 2015.

Labyrinth, Anchorage, July 2015.

Laybrinth, Kasilof, August 2015.

Especially to Play.

And more Play.

Let me look to the Earth & the Sea & the Sky...

And everything in between.

And moreover...

Please let me recognize & embrace
the aesthetic of every human moment...

Let me respect my own mortality,
(Also let me know my allies: wounds packed 
with Yarrow & bound with Plantain)

And that of others...
Shrew (Sorex, spp.)

Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) remains.

And please, let me laugh, 
(Thank you Llewellyn.)

experience Joy, 

and Love.

Wandering: Among the Ancients (With a lesson in one-at-a-time.)

Fiddleheads unfurling toward the Sun. 

This one is for the files.

Our mycophile clan has been slowly working on establishing relationships with other members of the boreal forest -- the plant life in particular (probably in part because they don't run away when you approach them!) In mid May, we spent a day with our eyes to the Ancients. It was a relatively warm Sproing afternoon in the Alaskan boreal forest, slanted sunlight dappling trees, soil & the emerging leafy ground cover. We were in search of three plants in particular, ancient plants, food plants. 

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Horsetail, Equisetum spp.

I once described them thusly: "...ancient, self-possessed, horsetails of the Paleozoic..." I would say that this characterization stands justified, particularly the self-possessed part. There is something imperturbable & untroubled about them. They can mingle with the roadside weeds & invasive plants of disturbed sites just as easily as they thrive among the native plants of the forest floor.

Horsetail, Equisetum, spp. 

The window for collecting horsetails as a food plant is small. Only while they are spring budding shoots with branches pointing skyward are they viable for consumption. At this time they can also be gathered for tea. But once they begin to develop oxalate crystals on their outer surfaces they are only safe for external uses such as hair tonic. I like gazing down onto their sunburst-like branch-pattern. It is a bit hypnotic & I find myself wondering what there is to discover at the end of their tiny green ladders.

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Fiddleheads, nonspecific (or, more specifically [honestly], I haven't keyed them out yet)

Cretaceous, perhaps even Devonian critters. Just what have they witnessed over the millennia? 

Fiddlehead fern.
Like the nautilus & Time itself, a sacred spiral.

I have always felt that ferns are a bit like cats. The youthful fiddle heads emerge lively, cheery & sociable while the mature fern plants grow more reserved, quiet & self-contained. Always soft & magickal are the ferns, but their approachability shifts with age. 

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Devil's Club, Oplopanax horridus

"Make sure you take a deep breath of its intoxicating ginseng scent. Make friends with this plant as I have and you will delight in it rather than fearing it." -- Tom Heutte, from the USDA Forest Service website

Devil's Club leaf bud,
Oplopanax horridus

Like so many things, this pervasive, rugged beauty is terribly misunderstood. While the Devil's Club (aka "Alaskan Ginseng," but it is not a ginseng) plants are indeed foreboding in their maturity, in early spring when their delicate green buds & shoots appear, they exude an unexpected vulnerability. And indeed, these plants are vulnerable -- to human impact. Taking the ground shoots from Devil's Club plants can seriously compromise their slow reproduction. Instead, we choose to focus on a small number of leaf buds instead. Taking a walk in a sea of Devil's Club is like traveling through time, pure magic. 

"Don't bite off more than you can chew."

A recurrent lesson in foraging, as in Life. That evening we made some sublime Devil's Club sauté, lightly cooked with some sweet onions. They have a gentle, surprisingly pine-like flavour. But the fiddleheads & the horsetail remained in their refrigerator containers for a long time, strangely never spoiling, but certainly losing their vibrance. Enthusiasm must remain checked. I have always maintained a policy of deeply learning only one or two fungi species a season & never harvesting more than we can clean & prepare within adequate time time. I see how this translates to the plant kingdom as well. This is a lifetime endeavour & there is no reward at the end of the quick road or the overly abundant harvest. 

Lesson (review) noted. 

Devil's Club, Oplopanax horridus leaf shoots sautéed with sweet onion.

Poetry for the Esbat: SPROING! Moon. 2015

Tonight's Moon. Placidly watching the SPROING from a distance.

The Sun's sweeping arc shifts rapidly, severely --
it will make mayhem for as long as this lasts.
The Night has taken to dragging her starry cloak elsewhere,
while Lady Moon slides about in the pallid sky, ever patient, 
I like to think she is smoothing creases in her shift,
awaiting her turn...


The days are long, long, long. SPROING! The winding-up of crazed Alaskan summer antics begins NOW (or perhaps yesterday, while you were distracted). Human kind is frenetic. The signs are clear: two neighbor's trucks totaled in as many days. Countless other accidents in the nearby streets. You might think there was snow, but nay, it is Spring! that has sprung in the Last Frontier & the people are already quite mad. The same applies to the rest of the lot -- children of Flora & Fauna -- as well. Everyone clamoring under the Sun.

Now the birds, they continue their songs past the witching hour.
Soon, the plants will grow at night. 

We are thrumming -- a hive, alive!


Which is why I get SO much glee from knowing there is this flower out there somewhere who dances to the beat of the subtler Lunar rhythm... Ephedra foeminia.

"Two researchers from Stockholm University accidentally discovered that pollination in a species of Ephedra – the gymnosperm Ephedra foeminea is correlated with the full moon. The finding is a first for the plant world. No other plant has been found to wait for the full moon to activate pollinators, including Ephedra distachya, a very close relative, which relies on wind to carry its pollen.

The plant is pollinated by nocturnal flies and moths, and these insects may utilize the moon to navigate in the dark. Further, the spectacular reflection of the full moon’s light in the pollination drops glistening at the top of the plant probably attracts the insects to the cones." -- Plant’s pollination synchronized with full moon, EarthSky

Pollination in the Gnetales. E. feminine at right.
Image credit: Rydin & Bolinder,
Moonlight pollination in the gymnosperm Ephedra (Gnetales)

(If you are a source material kind of critter, see their paper in Biology Letters: Moonlight pollination in the gymnosperm Ephedra (Gnetales).)

I prefer this approach -- courting moths & harmonizing with a gentle, nocturnal rhythm. Not that I dismiss the unwavering heat of the summer Sun. Oh, I do relish every moment under those rays! (And if they find me in a yawning desert, even better.) But there is a stillness, a mindfulness that arrives with the Moon & this is the sacred-secret (also the secret-sacred). Quiet, it is much more than the absence of sound. 

This brings me to the poetry for this Esbat, a quiet-flower-Moon poem by performer, writer, director, poet, and artist Bernard Bragg. In the video below, Bragg translates the poem “Flowers and Moonlight on the Spring Water” into what he has coined “Rarefied ASL.” This piece is simply brilliant. It includes an introduction by Mr. Bragg & subtitles, not that one would need them given his unambiguous & sincere rendering. 

To read the original inspiration for this work, an ancient poem by Zhang Ruoxw Chang Jo-Hsü (c. 660-c.720), visit here: "Spring, River, and Flowers on a Moonlit Night." 

Blessings to you this Esbat, my friends.

Spring 2012: Let the Foraging Begin!

I have so much I want to document, but I have so little time to myself. How so many mothers do it alone full time & year round without going mad is beyond me. I have been working diligently on Tennessee's "Spiritual Warfare" remediation. Somehow, I let it get out of hand -- I think I need to give myself a word count limit or something. I also have at least ten other projects in progress -- it is no wonder I cannot concentrate. 

This Thursday's prompt at Pagan Blog Prompts (a worthy project, but one in which I rarely get to participate) is "Foraging." Since I have wanted to write a bit about what we have been up to, I decided to preempt the remediation program (yet again) & write some notes on what the Wee Ones & I have been finding. 

In the "Dreaded 'Guru Board'" post I made this assertion about foraging: 

"As I learn more about food & foraging (& do more of it) I realize that the act of searching for & procuring food, for myself, for my family, for friends or for barter is a rich & deeply spiritual process. (The same applies to recreational fungi hunting.) It requires a shift in mindset, an opening up to your immediate surroundings in a way we don't generally do in the day-to-day. It requires an awareness -- a mindfulness similar to what we seek through meditation. Perhaps this is part of what I find so entrancing about it. It also requires a certain amount of magick & I am pleased to have found affirmation of this from another mycophile. In her book Mycophilia, Eugenia Bone has this to say about the foraging experience: '...I felt like finding mushrooms was a kind of conjuring: If I concentrated hard enough, if I longed to find one deeply enough, the mushroom would reveal itself to me...' Exactly."

As I wrote that passage, I realized how much I wanted to make foraging a more significant, year-round part of my life & also share it with my family. I wasn't sure how to begin here during the high desert's spring, especially since all my foraging activities up until now have revolved around Alaska's autumn season. I opted to set about with that which I know & is close to home.

Keeping it Simple & Close to Home: Dandelions, Dryland Fish & Devil's Eyelashes


Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale)


One of new favourite haunts is Forageporage's Blog. I think I might have found it in connection with my Now, Forager fetish. I really cannot begin to cover the scope of this blog here, so I suggest you just go see it yourself but I will give you a taste of her take on foraging:

"Foraging is work. It’s a lot of work. Foraging is fun work, dirty work, long, tiring work; albeit ultimately satisfying work. It will take you further than than you thought possible. Foraging is a time thief. Hours dissappear. Months fly by. It’s consuming and addictive! Foraging begins with a question; as in: 'Hey, what’s that weed?'" -- Forageporage

Sometimes just starting simply is best, especially when one has children in tow. When "Porage" offered up a tutorial & her recipe for Liquid Sunshine, I knew it was something that would work for all of us -- even The Changeling. 

Dandelion petals (Taraxacum officinale)

I don't think it is necessary to get into the details of dandelion foraging, health benefits, etc. here because it has been so beautifully done over at Forageporage's Blog. Why be redundant? However, I will mention that because dandelions are found close to home, aren't prickly, don't have poisonous parts & don't stain anything too terribly, they are great for foraging with kids. Also, like Amanita muscaria, they love schoolyards, so if you have an in with the groundskeeper like I do, you can convince him to delay mowing for a few days while you gather up your bounty. My other piece of advice is don't forget them in the car on a hot afternoon. I know this from experience. Saggy, shriveled, tragedy is what you'll get for all that time spent picking. 

Dried dandelion petals.

So far, we have filled & dried three baking dishes worth of petals & filled one old fashioned Mason jar with them -- we have yet to make the tea. It has been fun & we figured out a couple of tricks: 1) To quickly remove the petals from the bracts, pinch the base of the bract & roll it between your forefinger & thumb. If done properly, the petals should just fall out of the bract. 2) If you live in a dry area, a hot attic or black car (decrepit Volvos are nice for this) with the windows cracked will work wonders as a dehydrator. Since I began writing this, Porage has posted a recipe for Dandelion Rice Pudding, so more flower picking is clearly compulsory.

Dryland Fish (Morchella spp.)

"Dryland Fish" is a clever name for the Morel mushroom & it just happened to allow me to indulge in alliteration, a literary device I find simultaneously annoying & irresistible. The Morel is among the most beloved of mushrooms. I personally find them slightly unsettling, but I have yet to figure out why. Morels do whatever they want. They follow no rules. Just when you think you have them figured out, they appear in the last place you would ever expect to find them. For several years I have made trips up a certain canyon after the rainstorms to check burn sites for these beasties & have never, ever found any. But go check my lawn under the Siberian Elm trees & there you will find them. Are Morels known for loitering under such trees? Absolutely not.

Our surviving 2012 Morel (Morchella spp.)

In 2010, the first of these mushrooms arrived in our yard. Weird, I thought. But I did not expect them to return. In 2011, The Changeling arrived & I was unable to water. No Morels. This year, we got an irrigation share & I have watered like a maniac (comparatively speaking). Six Morels have seen fit to line up in a row in the lawn. Awesome. But before we realized it, the lawnmower crushed them. Not awesome. Is this foraging? I don't know. Can Morels be cultivated? Yes, but I didn't do this intentionally. So is it really cultivation, or very, very local foraging? 

2012 Morel (Morchella spp.)
Ready for some heat & pasture butter.

Last year, The Godfather took a trip up north & came back with an enormous bin of morels which he gave to me because he likes collecting, but hates mushrooms. Sadly, The Changeling weighed about 4 pounds & was attached to an oxygen tank & various monitors. There was no way in Helvella I could be cleaning & prepping those babies, so they shriveled & some even rotted. But I kept the bin because it was too painful to give up. Without much hope for results, we tossed them about the yard a few months ago in the hopes of seeing some opportunistically appear in the future. We shall see. I was encouraged by a recent post at the Mushroom Blog entitled, "Growing Morels by Accident":

"...morels spontaneously grow in the yard where he used to clean them. They just grow in the grass. There are lots of fruit trees in the yard, and more of them grow under a sugar pear tree than anywhere else, but I am not sure if that has to do with the tree or because that is the place he most often stood to clean them..."

Excellent. If it works, I won't call it "very, very local foraging" anymore, I'll call it incidental agriculture.  


Devil's Eyelashes (Tribulus terrestris)

If I was a believer, I would call these plants "Hellspawn." But since I am not, I call them "Goatsheads." (I used Devil's Eyelashes purely for the alliteration.) Other folks may call them Puncturevine, Tackweed, Devil's Thorn, among many other monikers. By any name, it is still a daemon in plantform.  

Goatshead plant & flower (Tribulus terrestris)
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Goatshead plant looks innocent enough & even produces diminutive, somewhat attractive flowers & fernlike leaves. What makes them so contemptible is their seeds, or "nutlets" which bear a remarkable resemblance to the heads of tiny, malevolent, sharp-horned, pointy-chinned creatures. The plants produce these nutlets in droves. Anywhere these seeds are present, all fleshy parts, inflated objects & anything capable of being impaled, are at risk. Kudzu is a menace, but this plant is downright mean. In our town, if you see a dog, cat, human, llama, or anyone else limping along the road, there is an easy explanation: Goatsheads. If you see someone picking at their feet, their dog's feet, a friend's feet, they are picking out Goatsheads. Folks with blowtorches on the right-of-way, in their yards, in their neighbor's yards? Goatsheads. Sudden bouts of profuse cursing among the bare & stocking-footed? Probably Goatsheads.

So why on Earth am I collecting these vile little nutlets? 

Goatsheads (Tribulus terrestris) nutlets

Well, I am not gathering them for the plant's traditional medicinal uses which generally revolve around increasing testosterone levels. Intrestingly, recent studies have shown that extracts from this plant administered to animal subjects do in fact effectively increase testosterone (& other related hormone levels) which in turn, produces aphrodisiacal effects. Interesting, but really not my angle.

I am collecting them for Sciento-Magick, of course. I have a theory I am working with which stems from the thoughts I wrote in the "Sciento-Magick: Re-thinking Correspondences I" post. It follows this reasoning:

"Authenticity of the present lore, symbolism & correspondences aside, I have been developing a different approach... by combining the discoveries from personal connection... with knowledge of its role in mythologies, its occurrence/importance throughout history & (here we get Sciento) the knowledge (as applicable) we have of its biology, physiology, chemistry, etc. combined with its role within ecological systems, we can develop a comprehensive set of associations that truly reflect a thing's rich, complex nature." 

So I'm onto these punks & I think they can have a place in certain types of sympathetic magick. 

Besides, the fewer there are to germinate, the happier everyone in my neighborhood will be. Community service, right?

A Final Note: There is a fantastic professional forager's (how does one get that job?!?!) blog called Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager. I highly recommend it -- for a variety of reasons including its striking images, novel ideas & wonderful, innovative recipes.