thinking that just one more handful would be enough for another patient's daily medicine.
As human beings we learn foraging quickly. We have an aptitude for it.
Gathering is deeply ingrained within us, and it is a beautiful thing to connect with, but things have changed since we were hunter-gatherers. As modern human beings, many of us have grown up with cultural messages of entitlement over the natural world, as opposed to those of a deep respect and connection to it. We retain a strong attraction to the process of wild harvesting, but we may have lost the knowledge, confidence or opportunity to make good use of the herbs once we have gathered them. Herbs deserve to be valued and respected. If we gather them and then waste them, we are behaving disrespectfully. To avoid waste, we should at least have an outline plan for how we plan to use the herbs that we harvest. Perhaps we intend to make a tincture or an infused oil. Perhaps we wish to dry some of the leaves so that we can use them for infusions throughout the year ahead. By having a plan, we can review the quantity that we would like to harvest. We can aim to harvest just what we need and avoid the wastage caused by harvesting too much. If we do not have a plan, we may need to do a little research and come up with one. We can always return another day to harvest.
It is also really important to be aware of our wider intentions when we are foraging. By ‘wider intentions’ I mean our motivation. Is our motivation to share the healing properties of the herbs we are gathering for the benefit of those who need them, or is it to exploit a ‘free resource’ with the primary intention of making money? In the Vajrayana Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is emphasized that having a positive and selfless intention is considered to make any act sacred and potent. Before we gather any wild herb, then, it is very positive to ask ourselves whether we have a broader aim, which makes use of the special qualities offered to us by the herbs that we are gathering. We all have our own relationship with herbs and our own reasons for gathering. It is not for me to say which intention is ‘right’ and which is ‘wrong’, but I think we should all check in with ourselves and reaffirm our intentions each time before gathering a herb. That way we will develop a habit of mindfulness about our intentions, and we will be able to say, hand on heart, that we have made peace with them.
Once we feel comfortable with our intention for gathering, we need to bring to mind a sense of gratitude and respect towards the plants we wish to wild-harvest.
Once we feel comfortable with our intention for gathering, we need to bring to mind a sense of gratitude and respect towards the plants we wish to wild-harvest. A good way of achieving this is to always ask their permission before starting to gather them. There are lots of different ways of doing this. You could pause, sit for a while, and inwardly explain how you intend to make use of their precious healing qualities, asking whether they would be prepared to give up some of themselves in order for you to do that. You could make a symbolic offering, such as of Tobacco or tea, to show respect and to demonstrate that you understand our interconnectedness. You could say a prayer, recite mantras, or visualize a healing archetype such as the Medicine Buddha. Each one of us will be drawn to our own way of asking permission and sensing the answer. If you are not sure about the answer, just relax, be still, and listen. At first you may find that you feel self-conscious and do not fully trust what you are feeling, but as your connection and confidence grows, you will learn to trust your perceptions.
Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria)
Plants do not always give permission. You will know very clearly when you have been refused. It just feels plain wrong. On the other side of the coin, sometimes it can feel as though particular plants summon us, repeatedly appearing in our dreams or thoughts until we find them. This happens most often when a herb that we gather regularly is at the right stage to harvest and we know exactly where it is on our foraging patch. In cases like this we may explain away the experience by telling ourselves it is a subconscious tracking of the seasons, rather than a process of communication between plant and human. Sometimes it feels much more profound than that, though.
Take my recent experience with attempting to gather Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria). I had not so far harvested this mushroom but had formed the intention to work with it after reading herbalist Henriette Kress's account of using it to ease the pain of sciatica. I had been keeping an eye out in the locality for a couple years but so far had not seen any growing. When autumn came around again, I started to think about my plan to harvest some. I visited some potentially suitable woodlands, finding plenty of Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) and other beautiful fungi, but not a single Fly Agaric. After a few more unsuccessful expeditions, I woke up one Sunday morning with a strong feeling that I should go to a particular woodland to search. This woodland was further afield than my normal foraging range, but I had an insistent feeling about it, and there was no way that I was going to ignore it. I was sure that this was going to be the day that I would actually find Fly Agaric. To get to the woodland, I had to drive for about an hour. When I arrived, I half expected to find some almost immediately, but I did not. There was no one else around, and I walked around for an hour or so, looking for glimpses of the iconic red caps under the trees, but there were none in sight. I was disappointed and decided that I had been completely deluded to believe that I had in some way been summoned to this place. My ‘strong feeling’ must have been my over-active imagination. I was just about to give up when I paused and checked in with myself. I realized that my intense desire to find the mushroom had made me forget my usual foraging attitude. I had arrived full of expectation. I needed to slow down and bring to mind my positive intentions about how I wanted to work with this medicine. I sat down by a tree and surveyed my surroundings. The dampness of the moss began to seep through my jeans, but it felt good to be there, totally alone and away from the time scales and schedules of modern human life. I began to see everything around me from a different perspective. I could see just how much all life in this woodland was deeply interconnected. Sitting there, I felt as though I was part of it rather than just an observer of it. I got up and started walking into a stand of mature conifers. There was no beaten track, and I had to twist this way and that through the trees. I had no idea where I was going, but I carried on walking. It was totally silent, the only sound being the snap of a twig when I stepped on one, something that I tried to avoid after the first time it happened. Despite my feeling of connectedness, this place felt more than a little eerie. I remember a thought popping into my head that I could be lost in these woods for days, but I immediately dismissed it. It is impossible to be lost in a wood for days in Southern England. I walked on. Suddenly I crested a small rise, and ahead of me under the trees in the soft, green stillness was a large colony of shining red-and-white-spotted Fly Agaric mushrooms. They exuded magic and mystery and intense power. It took my breath away to see them like that. These mushroom beings were definitely not to be trifled with or taken advantage of. Was it my imagination, or was the stillness more intense in this area? It felt as though I had wandered into another dimension. Oblivious of the damp, I sat down on the ground to take it all in. After some time, I sensed that the mushroom colony was prepared to allow me to harvest a few of their number. I carefully placed a few in my basket, thanked them profusely for the lesson and their medicine, and then set off to find my way out of the woodland.
Off the beaten track in a silent woodland.
In order to make the most of any precious plant medicines that we gather from the wild, we need to harvest them with care. You could say that harvesting herbs is a simple and natural activity and there is no need to over-complicate it; however, there are some useful techniques that are worth considering in order to make the process easier and to ensure that the quality of the plant material is preserved. The practicalities of harvesting different types of herbs are covered in chapter
