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Follow me down to the river, my friend; so wild and so free, til the Summer ends...
Inland California: Oaks like land-locked octopuses, striking poses against a clear blue sky. California girl: Oak silhouettes imprinted behind my eyelids like tattoos. Windy, twisty Oaks were the first trees I knew. Shading me as a baby on a picnic blanket; scraping my eight-year-old knees as pulled myself up through their branches to reach the highest lookout; sheltering me as a teenager on my wild and secret missions in the hills. Each one a mystery; sculpted from wind, rain, drought and the Milky Way. Each one familiar; many-armed, welcoming.
Inland California, late Summer. The smell of bleached white grass and pungent Artemesia; the musky damp of the creeklet which winds through impentetrable Blackberry vine shade. A winding path that snakes over boulders and forest duff, turning to soft sand as it approaches the riverbed.
The first trees are turning, evidence of the cooler, longer nights. Blinding white July mellowed to golden August, the long shadows playfully hinting at the darker days to come. But not yet: Not just yet.
The Yuba River is a swift blue ribbon of snowmelt, hurrying from the High Sierras to the Sacramento Valley. It cascades through steep canyons, pausing in an occasional pool before squeezing its way through elephant-sized blue granite boulders, galloping to the lowlands in white waterfalls, a firehose full-blast.
In Bridgeport, the steep mountain canyons soften to sinuous, rolling hills; the roaring torrent becoming a purring kitten. The river here is wide, shallow, the long flat beach filled with picnickers and toddlers in water wings.
In a wet winter, the river may swallow the beach and become hundreds of feet wide. By summertime, the receding waters have left whole worlds in the sand. The foliage goes to work reclaiming its turf, and the Summer Girls go to work exploring.
My feet wear proud callouses; tough skin that can clamber up scorching boulders fast as a billy goat, transform into powerful flippers in the strong current. Walking by the river in the oven-hot afternoon, I am out of time, a sum of every summer inside of me. My shadow is my only reflection; a long-legged stilt walker, a horse-girl on the moon. My shadow body stretches, bends, becomes a Willow.
Where the foliage is dense, I climb in green canopies, tendrils reaching a thousand directions. I am lush, green, succulent; Wild Grape, dappled in sunlight and shadow.
Whether this is a tangle of weeds or a Medicine Garden really depends on your perspective. The birds twitter and debate in their tree apartments above, utterly content with their bounty of berries and bugs. I try to be still in the blue half-shadow. I want to gaze deeper into the Riparian Jungle; so many layers get lost when I am Rushing and Supposing about. As I slow down, the useful plants begin to appear everywhere. Even in the spaces between, there is a certain extra magic, gauzy and fine like spidersilk. A slightly different quality of light. The hallmark of a healing place.
This scene did not look the same two summers ago. Record-breaking rains turned the Yuba into a monster that devoured everything in its path. When I came to explore in the spring, I found a tableau of destruction: the State Park bathroom uprooted and lying upside down 200 feet from its foundations, the Willow garden a flattened, mangled mess. My special, secret place had been leveled.
Today I am filled with awe at the regenerative powers of Nature. Only two summers later, almost all evidence of the destruction has been erased. Here and there a memento, but even these are disappearing back into the earth, enfolding back into the larger cycle.
Exploring the Bridgeport Medicine Garden: Willow
Here are my sweet green-grey friends, flexible and undaunted by the thrashing they took in the flood of the winters past. Willow contains salicylic acid, the precursor to the pain-relieving ingredient in aspirin. For thousands of years, the inner bark has been used for relief from headaches and arthritis. Salicylic acid is also used as an ingredient in skin care products, where its ability to make the epidermis shed more rapidly comes in handy when dealing with conditions like acne, psoriasis, calluses, corns, and warts. Beauty potions made from Willow itself will work much more gently than over-the-counter products, sweetly softening and toning the skin.
Wild Grape
If you can beat the birds to these dark purple jewels, you will get a sweet and juicy mouthful of fruit that is bursting with anti-oxidants. The color in dark red, blue, and purple fruits comes from a class of flavonoids called anthocyanidins. These potent anti-oxidants are like superfood for our cells, and the extra boost to cell integrity is seen long-term in the reduction of heart disease, and immediately in the reduction of wrinkles. Not that I would be so terribly vain as to worry about that... (yeah, right!)
Grape leaves may also be steamed and eaten (think dolmas!), and they are used medicinally to cool off inflamed conditions. The fabulous herbalist Kiva Rose has a great post about Wild Grape over here.
Mugwort
I remember very average-sized Mugwort growing here pre-flood, but something seems to have changed for the better after the great Pummeling of 2006-- these specimens are nearly six feet tall, among the biggest I've ever seen! I am glad they are so darn happy.
Mugwort is used as a bitter to move stagnant energy in the digestive and reproductive systems. It is useful after a meal that refuses to digest-- for example that Weird Potluck feeling (when you've had peanut-butter-chocolate-melon-salad followed by Brie and sardines, ahem). Mugwort's strong bitter taste (and you have to TASTE it, no popping capsules) can help set things right again; try a tincture or a tea.
Mugwort is a beloved Moon ally for the ladies, since it brings on and regulates the menstrual cycle-- especially for young women just starting to bleed, or women getting off of birth control pills. Its strong clearing energy also makes it a popular ingredient in smudge sticks. It is also a psychic enhancer, hence its appearance in Dream Teas. Be aware, however, that Mugwort's powers of enhancing visions and bringing prophetic insight can send you flying around the Dreamworld all night long on Important Missions, and you may wake up feeling more exhausted than refreshed!
A plant of many uses, Mugwort is also used topically (as a wash-- try a strong tea or a vinegar) AND internally as an antidote to Poison Oak. If you do end up touching Poison Oak, wash the area of contact with cold water and soap and start a Mugwort regime IMMEDIATELY. I've seen it stop and/or temper the effects in a dramatic fashion.
Elder Flowers
Elder has been used by Native Americans and Europeans since the dawn of civilization-- even its name speaks to its reputation for enhancing and lengthening life. In times when flu epidemics could mean the decimation of entire villages, the flowers and berries of Elder have been beloved allies of the people. Modern research supports what folk tradition has known for centuries: Elder is strongly anti-viral, stimulating to the immune system, and specifically supportive to the respiratory system. Another dark purple berry, it also has high levels of those anthocynanidins so crucial to the integrity of cells and their ability to effectively hunt down and capture the dreaded Free Radicals. (I am referring to the bad Free Radicals, now, notthe interesting kind with goatees and Che Guevara posters). I am putting up a ton of Elderberry tincture this year; I'm so excited to try it in different combinations (with Ginger? Echinacea? Red Root? Osha?) for immune support.
Elder Berries
Late Summer makes me into a nostalgic creature, I admit; there is something about the disappearance of the Light that makes me yearn for days and people of my past. The gift of this keening feeling is a re-emergence of my creative powers-- in Summer's indolence, music served as a soundtrack, books as entertainment; now everything my senses take in becomes immediate fuel for my own songwriting and dreaming. Though I do not grow my own food garden (beyond a few tomatoes and herbs), I have a real sense that I am cresting towards Harvest right along with the Earth energies. Riding this wave of the seasons grows more poignant and more intense every time I round the wheel; an utterly unexpected boon of aging. I hope I use it well. Happy Late Summer to all of you!
Port Costa, California, August 8th
I think it was back in May that me and my husband looked at our busy calender of musical engagements (we have TWO bands, he plays drums in mine, I play Omnichord in his), and we said "let's take August off".
Well, as they say, We Plan, God/dess Laughs! August has been the busiest month YET! ...and it's not over...
With that in mind, I am just dropping in briefly to share news about our friend Vervain-- the beautiful purple flowering spires have finally burst forth!-- and to share a few funny pics from my wacky August life...
By the way, while I was doing some research for my post on Vervain, I came across some interesting information attributed to the Druids: "harvest Vervain at a time when there is no Moon and no Sun in the sky..." I couldn't resist, naturally-- I had to give it a go! Me and ZouZou went out to the Vervain patch on the night of a New Moon and put up a huge jar of Vervain. It was a very intense experience, with a very deep and strong earth energy infusing the medicine-gathering process. This fall, I plan to launch a little Etsy shop, and I will be sure to have my "Druid's Vervain" for sale! Meanwhile...
Nevada County Fair, August 7th
Davis, CA, August 9th
Port Costa, CA, August 8th
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Hope your late summer is a real bounty of inspiration and fun!
The other day, my hunny and I have to share a car because his is in the shop. Since he goes to work an hour before I do, when I drop him off I find myself both A. Up early and B. Out and About (a rare combination, I tell you)... with nothing to do.
My impulse, out of habit, is to go into work early and wade through my inbox. Luckily I catch myself, and realize that there is actually no pressing reason to start staring into the Electronic Eye this early in the morning. I recall an exercise out of the book The Artists Way by Julia Margaret Cameron-- the book which helped pull me out of my decade-long Stage Fright/ Writer's Block/ General Jammed-Up-Inside-ness slump-- an appeal to look at your day a new way, to walk home on a different street, to eat something new for lunch, to stop and actually SMELL those flowers. Something, anything, to break the spell of same-ness and routine that can become a self-made prison.
Everyday I take a shortcut to work on a stretch of windy, wild road beside Wolf Creek, and a million times I pass the tempting turnouts and have no time to stop. Why not today?
Now I could never resist a path or a road that goes winding back mysteriously into the underbrush. I even have some scars from tangling with barbed wire fences, as the result of my boundless curiosity... but don't let me set the Example for you, or you'll have a pretty weird life! Anyhow, today there is no fence and no sign saying No Trespassing, though I have the vague feeling that my behavior isn't exactly encouraged. I also know that no one zooming to work on this road gives a damn or will even notice.
Just feet from the road is a jungle of Blackberry Vine, Sweet Pea, Hawthorne, Mugwort, Willow, Wild Grape, Chicory, and assorted Cheery Wildflowers. By the rushing creek it is a little cooler, the underbrush too thick to penetrate; a glorious secret kingdom. A hummingbird sings (okay, squeaks, but I love the sound) in the treetop above.
Chicory is one of my favorite wild flowers. She is only open early, and each flower only lasts for just one day-- so although I catch her out of the corner of my eye on my way to work, when my day is done her flower is already spent. It is so nice to spend time with her in her prime, in the morning with it's clean light and succulent air.
Chicory appears in "New Orleans Coffee", incidentally-- when times were lean, her roasted root was combined half and half with the more pricey coffeebeans. The taste is divine, and it stuck. Chicory is also good for stimulating the appetite, and supposedly as a treatment for gallstones, though I have no experience with this. Her flower essence is used to mitigate the need to selfishly possess someone or something.
Here she is with Star Thistle- a much-maligned plant, but beautiful in her way. These days, with the ever-shrinking open space in California and the ailing bee population, you don't see huge, inexpensive jars of Starthistle honey that you used to. To bad, cause it is so good on toast!
There is nothing more satisfying to me then a huge bouquet of wildflowers. My half an hour in the morning got to stay with me all day.
I hope this post inspires you to look at today in a new way. Sometimes the sweetest diversions are merely a few feet from our well-traveled road... almost like an alternate, parallel universe.
Dive on in.
