After a long, cold winter in Idaho, summer has
arrived. As far as I can tell, the wild flowers are all singing and dancing with
joy in the hot sun and occasional afternoon thunderstorms. The world of plants
is always on time, but by the roman calendar the root season is coming late.
After the Narayar'ndo
(Round Dance) Jaime and I headed south for the middle of Nevada, where we found
that the coush seeds were still very green. The baby cones on the Piñon
pines were very small. We met with Johnny Bob from the nearby Yamba reservation,
who told us that the pine cones were usually much more developed by that time of
the year. He suspected the nut harvest would not be very bountiful this fall.
Most of those coming to root festival were here by
the 21st of June. As soon as a slew of people came in, six of us left for a
three-day excursion at huddle’s hole. Everyone in camp gave us a hand in hauling
water and leading three goats into the abandoned windowless shack in the middle
of the hole. Huddle’s hole is an amazing patch of living desert out in the
middle of a bed of lavas. For many years, nobody grazed their cattle in this
protected spot. About fifty years ago, a road was built into the hole and now
this orb of green in a sea of black is owned by cattle ranchers. Thankfully,
these ranchers don’t put their cattle out to graze until August, after the
natives have gone to seed and reproduced. They also gave us permission to tend
the wild garden on their property. Huddle’s hole stands in sharp contrast to the
dessert surrounding it. Outside of the protection of the lavas the cattle have
been grazed in the early spring for nearly 150 years. This prevents the plants
the cattle eat from reproducing, which eventually means there isn’t much for
wildlife, humans or cattle to eat. The amount of diversity left in huddle’s
hole, in the same ecosystem, shows quite clearly how damaged the surrounding
land is now. That hole is a rare and precious place.
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While out at the hole for three days we butchered
and jerked out those goats, and sought out a vision of a hoop and ourselves on
it. In my seeking of personal vision in such a naturally diverse place, I
learned that there is no one right way to do this healing work, nor is there one
right location. Truly, the more places and ways we tend wild gardens, the
better.
Since then we’ve been gathering wild onions and
bitterroot from places where they are abundant but abused. Wild onions are
numerous right where several new houses are to be built. The bitterroot are
being stomped to death by cattle ranching along the Big Lost River. We filled
many buckets and boxes with plants to transplant to locations where they can
find sanctuary from ignorant abuse and neglect.
Finally the breadroot seeds are ripe, and we can
fill burlap bags with seeds for this year. Hopefully we will find good places to
plant them all by the Fall, so they can sprout next spring and start growing!
I want to thank you all for your help in this. All of us who are out here share
the cost of this work - none of us are rich. With this outside financial support
we can keep rewilding the west rather than joining the work-a-day world that, by
and large doesn’t care much about plants and animals. Thank you, thank you,
thank you! Love and praise to fellow re-wilders on the winding path. may our
trails be a blessing to those that come after us.
