Today I had the wonderful opportunity to meet a new friend: Medicine Club.  Otherwise known as Devil's Club or Oplopanax horridum, Medicine club I have heard of, seen, and studied, but untill today we didn't really have a relationship*.  

This last fall, Medicine Club has been the plant that I did an in-depth study of.  We did a rather thorough monograph utilizing the layout that Marja created.  However, I did not go out into the field and collect plant material for making medicine this quarter.  It didn't feel right, I was busy, whatever.  It didn't happen.  Things happen in their own time, and I believe that events have their own modivation for existence, jostling around the various alternate universes like peoples modivation jostle around in ours.  

Whatever the case, I was led to a very special place that I have heard about for a while but hadn't ventured to, to collect the body of a plant friend I hadn't used before.  

The Eagle Tree.  Have you heard of such a place?  If you wander with your friends in the woods you might have heard about it.  Some places like this wander in and out of the consiousness of the students of this place.  Does anyone remember the Elephant tree?  Or the Bong Tree?  Or the sphere?   The Elephant tree lost its trunk the year before I came here. 

It was raining with a persist ency that was aided by conversation.  Michael, a friend who was leading me there, had been shown how to harvest Medicine Club by David Sansome (the forest gardener who visited Evergreen for Synergy last year).  I had done so much reading I had many overlapping and conflicting ways in my head about how to collect, prepare and use Medicine Club.  Which is the best way?  The way that gets you out there, I suppose.  The tall spine covered stalks were devoid of their prickly maple like lobed leaves, but had an imposing and eery presence as they reached toward the sky.  Their colony reached out beyond our site.  Old.  Re-remembered.  

I gave the grove an offering, and didn't collect very much.  I have worked with enough herbs to know that oftentimes the first time you gather or collect something it ends up a disaster if you aren't taught first hand (I made a wonderful and soothing lotion for a bunch of members of my family which is separating into its component parts of water, herbal oils and wax as we speak!).  I was conscious of the civilized part of my brain that urged me to get a good amount, enough to make a tincture of.  Enough to make teas an help my mom, and myself etc.  I am learning that it is the healthy relationship with the plant that really helps your family and friends and yourself and your environment.  Not a greedy or sloppy attitude.  Not an ego of how good you are at knowing the plants or treating yourself or others.  Not an attitude that thinks of plants around us like resources, like the gas that goes into our car, or the milk in the carton from the store. 

It is dirty fingernails and the love of earth time that teach.  I am a slow learner.  Learning the language of earth time (or Kairos in ancient Greek) when already fluent and indoctrinated in chronological time (or Chronos).  

We walked back to Michael's house and Michael showed me how to shave the bark off.  I have shaved bark off of Oregon Grape (Mahonia nervosa) but their is just something about being shown in person.  I asked him if it is harder to shave the bark off when it is dried, as I learned about Oregon Grape the hard way.  He said very much so.  He uses the shaved stems for drum sticks.  A teacher of his makes drums.  I like to keep such things in mind when I gather.  To use something if I can.  If I can't, I probably haven't researched enough.  

He said that Medicine Club and Ginger are very good friends, and you know, I had been thinking about ginger just at that second.  Ying to the Yang I suppose...  He told me that about two heaping handfuls of the large strips of bark would make a large (6 quart) pot of tea.  Bring the water to a boil and then simmer it for about an hour. 

I am looking forward to having my first taste tonight at a Red Cedar Circle, or Si.Si.Wiss ceremony ("Sacred Heart, Sacred Breath").