Goodbye Vermont!

In my case Pilgrim's Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.

-Carl G. Jung

So it's Monday morning, here in the luscious green mountains, and I'm [insert tongue firmly into cheek] About to Embark on An Epic Adventure. I've been planning this for months, in a haphazard, practical dreaming sort of way, and when people ask me why - why do I want to leave all of this comfort behind to sleep on the ground and eat weeds for four months? - I have my standard pat answers as to why. "I'll never be more free than I am now," I tell them, or "I want to explore the landscape before it all looks the same." Really, I'm not sure what I'll find, or why it really is time to go. I just know that it is.

And since there's no point in resisting walking one's path, as chock-a-block full of learnable moments and blessedly, painfully, beautifully Real experiences as it's bound to be - for if there's one thing I've learned from studying all those myths and archetypes, it's this - I might as well go and live out my story, as best as I'm able.

All of which leads me to the present moment, typing these last few words and watching as the sweetest eight-year-old in the world attempts to cure her hiccups by pinching her nose and holding her breath. She's all bright sparrow-eyes and white blond chaos and soft, glowing skin in the morning lamp-light.

"I can hold my breath for twenty seconds," she informs me. There's a pause. "Twenty-two!" Another pause, and then,"Twenty-nine -pant, pant- that's almost thirty." Higher and higher and higher.

...If you'll excuse me, I have some children to snuggle before going outside to pour champagne on my front fender and sallying forth into the brightening day. Adventures ho!

Wild Carrot

So I first posted this as a response to (holy smokes) my first blog question ever (!!), but then realized it was important enough to turn into an actual entry, since I don't want folks confusing me with some sort of actual plant-based authority figure.

Well, ok, I do, but lucky for all of us, in the vast rock-paper-scissors game that is my prefrontal cortex, liability concerns trump ego any day of the week. And thus, the caveats emerge. Ahem:

Re: "can you eat Queen Anne's Lace [aka wild carrot]?", you sure can, but there are several toxic lookalikes (most notably poison hemlock and wild parsnip), so please follow these two tests before harvesting:

First, LOOK -don't touch!- to make sure the stem is hairy and has NO purple spots: if it's smooth and/or spotted, don't touch it! Second, once you're sure that the stem is hairy and totally green, rub the leaves and roots; they should smell exactly like carrots, while other toxic plants smell yucky.

Now for the fun part: food and medicine!

Wild carrot roots get tough quick, so pick them in spring, wash &/or peel (I hardly ever peel anything, but some folks are picky), then boil or pressure cook them until tender and season with dill and butter, or any other way you'd serve carrots - they're great in soups and stews. I've also read that they can be dried and ground to make a coffee-like substitute.

In the summer, you can batter and fry the white flowers to make a really yummy treat (pick the entire umbel so the flowers stay together), or even make jelly with them.

Finally, in fall, you can harvest the seeds from the curled and dried umbel, and use them like caraway seeds on top of breads, or to make tea with, though NOT IF YOU'RE TRYING TO GET PREGNANT, and that's because...

Wild carrot, like most of our wonderful plant-friends, has some great medicinal properties. The seeds specifically are diuretic (helps one urinate, relieves kidney stones, helps lower blood pressure), carminative (prevents and relieves gas & indigestion), antiseptic (reduces/prevents infection), antiparasitic (removes worms), emmenagogual (brings on moontime, whether delayed due to hormonal imbalance, stress, oligomenorrhea, etc.), contraceptive (prevents pregnancy by blocking implantation of fertilized egg), and abortifacient (dislodges fertilized egg from uterus). In both ancient and modern times it's been effectively used as an herbal 'morning-after pill'.

In addition to the seeds, the whole plant has a reputation for treating urinary stones, cystitis, jaundice, gout, edema, and hormone imbalance in both men and women. The oil is used for its skin-softening, healing, and 'anti-aging' properties. And I hear that out west, the root is used for dying yarn, though all the wild carrot sources I've cross-referenced refer to the root as being white, so perhaps that's a different strain/species.

The last word of caution -and I'm only being so specific here because I'd hate for somebody to read something on this blog and then go out and try it w/o properly researching it- is that people who have very photosensitive skin frequently have reactions to the juice of the leaves, so I recommend those folks use caution.

For everybody else, use your eyes, your nose, and your BRAIN when learning about/harvesting wild plants, and for Pete's sake, do your research or find an expert to go foraging with you!

(Confidential to the SH parents - I kept looking, but have yet to find either hemlock or wild parsnip growing on the grounds, at least where we explored, which is why I was down with the kiddos tearing up said greenery willy-nilly. That's not to say it'll stay that way, though - you never know where those pesky seeds will land. I once found a coconut washed up on a beach at least 80 miles from the nearest coconut palm. It was delicious.)

Wildly Yours,

Blackbird's Daughter

South Burlington, VT

I love the view from the office windows, particularly the one to the right of the computer: perfectly framed by the wooden trim, a stately locust holds its own amidst a gloriously swaying and bobbing yard of wild flowers. Wild grape, thistle (the one open bloom closest to the building is absolutely magenta right now), goldenrod and yellow wild indigo, the ocher seed-spike of a curly dock, at least 5 different kinds of tall grasses, and of course the creamy open blossoms and witchy, tumble-weed heads of Queen Anne's Lace, which all the children know as wild carrot, and vigorously uprooted to show to me every time we went on nature walks at the beginning of summer. And I mean every, single time.
"Look, wild carrot!" (rip!).
"Hey, wild carrot!" (rip!).
"Here, smell - wild carrot!" (rip!).
Did we actually cook any of this wild carrot, even once, this whole summer? Nope. Too busy harvesting St. John's Wort and plantain and cooking up mint tea and clover fritters and steamed day lily buds with butter.
Luckily, all of this wanton admiration has done nothing but enhance the Queen Anne's Lace population, disturbing the ground and leaving room for new plants to take hold. (I didn't tell them this, of course. If I had, I think they'd have torn out every taproot they could grab, in the hopes of an even better harvest. If there're two things kids excel at, its over-the-top optimism and vigorous destruction).

Right now, the five o'clock sunlight is shining through the grape leaves and illuminating everything that isn't bathed in sighing, tender shadow. Every so often, milkweed seeds float by with a silly, up-and-down motion, and when the wind gusts, everybody else dances and scuttles around like boats at the end of their moorings or dogs on a leash, testing the strength of their tethers.
They remind me of adolescents; literally rooted in summer's bounty, yet so attuned to the season's upcoming change that they can't help but test their limits with every breeze.
Soak it up now, kiddos!

The Lover of Earth Cannot Help Herself, by Mary Oliver

In summer,
through the fields
of wild mustard,
then goldenrod,
I walk brushing
the wicks
of their bodies
and the bright hair
of their heads-
and in fact
I lie down
that the little weightless
pieces of gold
may float over me,
shining in the air,
falling in my hair,
touching my face-
ah, sweet-smelling,
glossy and
colorful world,
I say,
even as I begin
to feel
my left eye then the right eye
begin to burn
and twitch
and grow very large-
even as I begin
to weep,
to sneeze
in this irrepressible
seizure
of summerlove.

(Hmm, Mary Oliver, maybe if you don't lie down in the ragweed...) I empathize though, really, I do.

Peonies and Poems

And then the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin

South Burlington, VT

The end of another work-day, and I'm struck again by how incredibly blessed this little patch of land feels. The kids have all left, the counselors are gone, and as the cooling air traces patterns through the tall grasses and wraps itself around our building, the day feels - full. Gentle. Complete.

I feel complete.

All summer long, I've closed these doors with gratitude, sending up prayers of contentment and humility at the way the universe provided me with this time of respite. My days have been filled -sometimes overly so - with games and lessons, songs and gentle interventions, the small frustrations and gloriously spontaneous moments of ridiculous, absurd perfection that only children can create. It's hard to comprehend generosity of this magnitude; hard to imagine that taking on just one little role in such a seemingly small community can bring about such richness, or to believe that one smiling red-roofed building, ringed on all sides by ponds and plants and endless clouds, can be the hub of such a vital, vibrant web. But it does, and it is.

And so I spend my days teaching and tickling, and come evening, I turn out the lights and walk out into rich sunlight or the gentle, purple dusk. And each time, I feel my heart splay open anew with such intense humility and gratitude, it feels as though giant, magnificently gentle hands are sinking their fingers into my chest and pulling the hardened, weathered shell apart. And so I've walked through this summer, beating and exposed, with no recourse but to absorb all the beauty and grace and reality that I can see.

It's hard to imagine that a few days from now, all of this will be over, and I'll be leaving this job, this state, this simple, easy lifestyle, in favor of something so much less secure and ill-defined. From brunch bag to baby to the brass key I wear around my neck; this has been such a silly, sweet progression. I have been, and continue to be, so very blessed.

Truly, "my cup overfloweth..."

I am so grateful.

Williston, VT

It's 11 o'clock, and I'm sitting in the comfortable darkness, listening to the crickets and frogs and other chirpy creatures whose names I don't yet know. It's been a sticky day, filled with humid air and over-ripe vegetables from the garden, the kids briefly content to sit in front of a movie with smoothies in hand before leaving for camp, the cats mostly content to lay low, and the rabbit alternating her long naps with brief, aerobatic maneuverings before flopping back down under her favorite chair.

Last night, a grey squirrel got caught in the trap that hangs outside the near corner of my cabin, his neck entrapped between the thinly rusting bars, his feet braced -or stuck- against the bottom of the wire and spring device. I thought the quick, infrequent sound of his struggling was the wind, or some tromping animal among the woods, and stayed half-focused on my book for longer than I care to admit, before curiosity led me outside to find him, curled and dangling, tail hanging, from my eaves.

Unsure if he was dead, I threw a pebble high against the wall, near his head, but he didn't move. I watched his still form for a moment, then went to find my landlord and tell him that the trap (installed to stop the pesky red squirrels from continuing to nest in and chew through the boards above my loft bed) had finally netted something. (We had the trap put up at the beginning of summer, when the red squirrels left off cavorting on the corrugated tin roof and began gnawing through the insulation, doing their best to join the rabbit and me inside. The first night after the man came to hang it, I came home to find the trap, sprung and broken on the forest floor, and the squirrels, gleeful and gloating, mere inches above my bed, judging from the sounds of their fervored scrabbling. I took to sticking dropperfuls of peppermint oil through the cracks in the ceiling and hammering epithets and warnings back at them with my fists, but the invasion continued.)

Now that the trap had finally worked, I thought we should cut the squirrel down and eat it; the least we could do to make use of its now-lifeless body, but Richard reminded me of the rat poison he'd thrown in when the first trap didn't work, so I left it there, a grim warning to the other four-leggeds until the pest control man could come to take it down.

That is, I left it there until early this afternoon, when after yet another brief bit of noise from the eaves, I went outside and saw its tail sinking down, and its chest moving, and realized with sinking heart that it - no, he, for in life creatures claim gender as no food-corpse does - was a) still alive, and b) in need of swift removal. So.

There followed a sweaty, ridiculous twenty minutes involving: an expandable ladder, 2 pairs of ski-gloves, an old sweatshirt, a crowbar, two humans, and one very scared, very trapped, and suddenly very alert squirrel. Fortunately for the squirrel, the angle of the trap meant that I couldn't snap his neck (my original plan), and doubly fortunate, it also meant that somehow he wasn't noticeably injured by the trap, only stuck like a kid with her head caught between two fence posts. Though, when the trap finally released, he landed with a thump on the ground before scuttling under the cabin and then away through the bushes.

Richard returned with the rat poison, we dusted our sweaty selves off, and I returned the ladder and went back inside to contemplate the bizarre and seemingly vain exercise we'd all been through. Perhaps it'll serve as a warning to the other squirrels, or perhaps they'll go back inside, eat the poison, and die that way (probably a quicker way to go, if today's efforts were any sign). I just hope that the pest control man returns quickly enough to cover the hole, before somebody dies and stinks inside the walls.

And, as I finish writing this, the strong stench of skunk comes in thickly through the open window. Ah, nature. Time to close up shop, admit my not-so-lofty position among the local critters of Vermont, and go to bed.