Body:

Lauren McPhun

Week 9 March 7^th 2007

Writing Reflections

Sweet Breathing of Plants

In our introduction to this book, Marja put it perfectly; The Sweet Breathing of Plants is a beautiful companion to tea, blankets and cold evening. Many nights I spent reading this book, bundled up in two pairs of long johns, a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, a pair of socks and a hot water bottle at my feet. My head peeked out of the covers just high enough so my eyes could read the words but my mouth stayed under because my breath was my heater underneath the bed covers.

To me this book is like a quilt. There are many colorful stories wrapped in one book, from historical accounts of witch trials, to lessons learned from grandfathers, grandmothers, from daughters and sons, friends and sisters. There are many green stories, stories that describe intimate relationships with a plant, just one. How that plants or even a microscopic living culture (I am thinking about the sourdough story) brought a history to one woman. A plant brought her strength, motivating her roots to continue to grow, reach, quench, nourish. Plants remind us of our own tenacity, our own connection to the earth, our desire to move and live in cycles: to fruit, to release, to lie still, to quicken, to reach and to blossom.

The thread that wove together these stories was a shared feeling of connection to a world that speaks a language without words- a world of intuition, of feeling. This is such a strong powerful tie that binds all people who listen to plants and the wisdom of nature, to be silent and listen we learn to smile in recognition of the power we all possess, the power of life.

Lauren McPhun

Week #8  Feb 27th 2007

Weekly Reflections

The conclusion of Keeping It Living, to no surprise, described that western colonizers were unaware of the types of farming practices used by the Native Peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Use to the rows of crop farms in Europe and centralized settlements, the Europeans did not recognize the system of cultivation and stewardship undertaken by the Pacific Northwest Peoples which included berry patches, red cedar stands and salmon spawning grounds. This misunderstanding spawned a complete overtaking of the land in order for the Europeans to deem it’s as useful to human beings. The disrespect for the traditional ways of living in the Pacific Northwest leads to cultural extinction. The conclusion of Keeping It Living believes that most of these cultivation practices should be looked at more in depth in order to finally dispel these misunderstandings between European and Native communities and to also to begin to credit and respect the cultural differences between the two groups.

Personal Presentation:

I have had a hard time with the idea of identity and defining who I am. I have certain unchangeable parts like where I was born, my family members, my physical attributes, everything else seems to change and the minute I define who I believe that I am I change my mind. So what really is identity? Is it a way for other people to relate to you? I feel like it is all words, and what really matters in my life are the things that I do. I can leave the words for someone else to use. The meanings I have made this quarter are many. I feel a more definite sense of direction, that I have finally opened a book and now it is my time to read the pages and to follow exorcises to make the information come alive for me. I want most of these topics that we have discussed in this class to be a part of my life indefinably and what better way to do that than with plants, to understand and be in harmony with living things whose purpose is clear. My garden this year is going to be a movable garden. I plan of sprouting seeds to take with me when I leave Olympia, WA for the summer sun and far off places. I want to have herbs growing to learn about them and to really initiate a relationship and a knowledge base with them.

 

Lauren McPhun

Weekly Reflections #7
Feb. 20th 2007
Free Write-

As I find myself secluded to my room with a sore throat and fever I can't help but think that I tricked
myself into believing that spring had come. Two weeks prior to my bed-ridden bug, I was buzzing with
activity and a need to be engaging in plans for the future had over taken me. Like the rain storm and
bitter cold that cut through the sunny skies of last week, now I am reminded that Winter is not yet over.
I lay in bed with tea and watch the rain come down outside. My body is thankful for the rest. I had
moved too soon. A lesson learned and one that is probably going to be relearned year and year again.
For the last week I have seen the life of the plants altering, growing more rapidly- petals and buds
reaching for the sunlight and I myself, was handed over the energy of that change, of the new life of
spring. I again look at the buds today and laugh to myself as snot drips down my nose. I say to myself,
right, that's why you are still a bud, just waiting for the perfect time to open yourself to the season.
I have so much to learn from these plants that surround me.
Being sick, however has given me lots of time to plan and do research for my spring garden. When
feeling like my cold was eminent and my throat had begun to scratch I pulled out a Rosemary Gladstar�s
book and looked up herbs that would help my raw throat and aching body. I traveled to Radiance and picked
out sage, licorice, slippery elm, and some Echinacea tincture. I went home and made a triple strong
infusion of sage and licorice. I mixed in a couple droppers full of Echinacea and some tea tree essential
oil and placed the concoction into a dark brown glass jar with a spray nozzle. I retired to bed and sprayed
my throat while drinking more licorice and slippery elm tea. I have been sleeping for 13 hours or more in
the past 4 days. I cannot get enough rest, but my dreams have been filled with horror and magic. I
don't understand why they have become so vivid- perhaps the empty moon, or the less physical energy I
expend the more magical energy I conjure up in my sleepy unconscious.
I have chosen the chapter in Keeping It Living that describes the horticulture practices of the Tlingits.
It is really fascinating to me, as when I leave Olympia in June I plan on moving to Haines, Alaska.
About 20 miles up the road is the last fully functioning Tlingit village (so I hear) called Klukwaan. My friend and I have been coming up with
garden plans for the springtime there. He lives In Haines currently and plans to start a garden in the
community spaces available- hopefully things will be starting to thrust their roots into the soil and
growing tall by the time I arrive. It has been so exciting to read about the native plants that the
Tlingits had foraged and how those plants have been used in the past centuries. I can only picture myself
and other friends looking for the same plants in the months to come, to relish in their beauty and gather
them for their sustenance.

Yesterday I even bought my first bag of seeds, Echinacea. I know that Echinacea grow well in
Southeast Alaska. So perhaps I can save few seeds for a transportable pot that I can take on the three day
long ferry ride with me. That plant can be my heritage- an ode to Olympia and the lessons I have
learned here, it can be my companion for the long ride north and it can be my healer in the years to come.

 

Lauren McPhun

Healing Gardens

February 12th 2007

Weekly Reflections #5

Chapter Five: “A Fine Line Between Two Nations”- Ownership Patterns for Plant Resources Amongst the Northwest Coast Indigenous Peoples

What I felt to be the heart of the ownership conversation in chapter five of Keeping It Living came in the first couple of sentences when the author wrote of a Saanich elder. The author had made the mistake of alluding to the ownership of the Saanich Peninsula by the Saanich people, Gabe Bartleman (The Saanich Elder) promptly interrupted them and said “ No, we didn’t own the land; we just lived on it and used it and looked after it. There’s a difference!” Chapter five discusses the tactics used by Indigenous people to steward the land or in other words simultaneously use and conserve the land in which they inhabited. Gabe Bartleman points to the most pertinent points made within the chapter: indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest do not have the same concepts of Ownership or of Property rights as conceived of now or by the Western Europeans who later came to explore and exploit this area.

The authors give a brief introduction of the differences between ownership ideologies of the Europeans and the Peoples of the Pacific Northwest before going into greater detail as to the particular protocol and territory definitions of each group of language sharing Native Pacific Northwesters. There were many concepts of ownership discussed. Some were defined by seasonal movements of the tribe, some groups labeled specific resources as private to an individual, to a family or to an entire tribe. It could be as specific as this group of the tribe has the jurisdiction over the roots of these bushes, or the clams in this tidal zone, this section of stream belonged to this family etc. I believe through this way of organization most individual felt responsible for the maintenance of a particular resource (i.e. to make sure that the berries weren’t over harvested, to clear streams to enable the salmon to run smoothly etc.) Another important aspect of most tribes was that most often the Indigenous’ Peoples view of ownership was not exclusive. If by chance, your berry bush did not create a high enough yield then you would be able to ask another family for access to their patch- the access most often, would never be denied. Yet specific families were chosen to watch over patches to ensure the patch’s health- to make sure that the berries were not picked too early or over picked etc. In most cases, the territory given to a family based on their lineage or next of kin and the specific family was chosen according to their creation stories or important spiritual experiences.

 

When reading chapter five, I found the use of language and the ideologies inherent within specific words like resource and ownership to created a strain for the reader to understand the essence of the beliefs behind specific cultures ties to the land. It became quite clear to me that the language and concepts we use today (and what is written in this book) derives from the Europeans who colonized this land. The idea of ownership or the word itself embodies an entire set of beliefs. Privatized property for the profit and elevation of the individual or small group of chosen individuals is the basic and modern idea of ownership. But this is not so for the Indigenous People of the Pacific Northwest. So can we truly use the word without bringing along the baggage of its modern conceptualization? The notion of resource seems to abstract something that was seen as vitalizing to the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Particular berries were such an integral part of a culture that an entire village would celebrate with ceremonies and feasts because their time of year to bloom and fruit had arrived. Can we call that berry, so revered and precious, a resource? We could but it seems that something is lost in translation. Perhaps the essence of stewardship is so far from how our society today and how the early European cultures who came to these lands to exploit them, function that our languages to even talk about these ideas have been influenced by the dominating culture. Perhaps there must be an experiential element when trying to understand the concepts discussed in this chapter, the concepts which create a vast rift in modern culture with those of the Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific Northwest.

In part, I feel like in this class there is room for every student to shut the books, and just to sit in themselves, in the world around them, in the plants around them to try and understand that there are many different ways in which to see the world. That books and knowledge given to us in classrooms is but one way to understand but our experiences and connection to the living things is another. Most importantly, one is not more valuable (well at least when speaking in terms outside of the marketplace) than the other. This is where all of the ideas discussed in chapter five begin to relate to my own experiences here in the classroom and in the Longhouse Garden Project. In the Garden we are expected to spend at least 5 hours a week to seek out what it is that is important features to explore. There is an emphasis placed on just being with the plants being outside with our raingear on or in our clothes, soaking wet. This emphasis is so important. It addresses the idea that what is valuable in life cannot always be quantified into papers, books, or even language- an idea that causes us trouble, through no fault of our own, when we as harbingers for the modern era come to view and begin to understand the culture that existed here pre-European civilization.

Weekly Reflections #4- Week Five
Feb. 7^th 2007

This winter I have finally accepted my bodily inclinations towards solitude and reflection. My days have been spent rising and making porridge, tea, reading in bed, lighting candles, getting bundled and riding or running outside in the dreary grey rain sodden days. It brings new appreciation to hot showers, warm hot water bottles that rest near my belly when I sleep, and calming teas. I had always hid from winters in the past. Living in Southern California I wanted it to be sunny and hot all of time, winter became a time of resentment and not one of reflection. I had a deep seated need to be calm when the seasons started to change this year. This is my first year where I could see and feel the seasons changing daily and I began to feel settled only when in congruence with the seasons. Winter, this year, has been magnificent. I have begun to listen to myself, ultimately listening to nature through myself. I have wanted to sleep longer, stay in more, read, and write letters to friends and families. Most often I have found myself going through things that have happened in the past, processing, learning, realizing, and accepting. I have fed myself well, paying attention to my body and what makes me feel nourished and well. I ran under the falling leaves of the Big Leaf Maples in October, and stopped to look at the long orange catkins of the Western Beaked Hazelnut in January. I have noticed the earth sleeping, going underground and deep and I have felt that need for rest and warmth myself. I have become elated when I see the buds of the Salmonberries along a much frequented trail growing larger and larger as the days become longer and longer. I notice my thoughts begin to move towards spring and the activities of summer.

My journal is something I wish to explore more in words. I seem to have just drawn pictures or plants that I see around my neighborhood, on bike rides or in my site. But as I write this reflection I am beginning to realize the roles my emotions and thoughts are connected to the growth, movement and change of the plants I am drawing in my journal. I wish to make the pages reek of the plants I love and respect- but to make these pages my own. I want to make my journal a little more personal so that it can be an extension of how I see the world around me.

Medicine has come to have a broad definition in the past few years. I have come to believe that medicine can be anything done with the intention to heal. Whether is be tea, food, thoughts, prayers, kind words to yourself or others- anything that promotes healing. Most often I find that it is something in our minds that undermines our own bodily health- negative thoughts, stressful relationships can make us physically ill, so perhaps reflecting on the influences of our relationships to the world and each other can be considered healing and medicinal.

Gardens represent growth, nurture, tending, and care. I think gardens are the outcome of wellness. The blossoming of fruit comes with the right care, but also the act contributes to our health. Medicine and gardens seem to operate in a reciprocal fashion. Each giving to the other something needed to survive. A garden generates the foods and herbs that we consider as healing while the meditation and commitment of keeping a garden has the power to cure depression, it can keep people alive! That’s a symbiotic relationship.

 

Weekly Reflections #3 Week Four-
January 31st, 2007

I have been grateful for the balance this class brings to our experience of the world and of education. I’ve been able to step outside and breath in between readings, to watch the world turn from light to dark back to light again. To dig in the dirt has been enriching and hands on but to go out with an intention to get to know and understand the green things instead of just rip them out because our memory of their use is lost to the compost pile of no named and unidentified weeds.

The integration of botany and ethnography has been what I have been looking for in a class. A mergence of scientific and cultural understanding of the natural world attempts to bridge the gap created at the collision course of western exploration and the inevitable exploitation of native peoples. I still continue to enrich my knowledge with the life of plants but I know that it will take time and patients to procure a relationship and to gain the much due respect. I look forward to the road (that should be blooming soon) ahead.

Weekly Reflections #2 Week Three-

January 24th, 2007

1. Discuss your understanding of relationships between natural systems and cultural systems in the Northwest, but add to the mix your new understanding of the roles you might play as an agent of healing, that is, of your “identity” in relationship to your understandings.

 

I have felt for a while that I must in some ways funnel my reverence for indigenous peoples into my life in a real way. But I had always been confused because the life I have been raised in does not have a solid cultural connection at the core of the natural world that I so much love. The path has never been clear, as my roots seem to have been severed leaving me and my passions for the outdoors to be blown about the concrete jungles I’ve grown up in. Slowly I have realized that the life I want to lead is one closer to the earth. When reading The Herbalist’s Way I suddenly became aware of how I can make my passion of being connected to the plant life stay rooted and alive in our world today- whether it be a grower, a wildcrafter, or medicine maker or some of each.

 

1. The plants that I can identify (not including the plants I listed last week)

Red Huckleberry

Red Flowering Current

Yarrow

Wild Ginger

Sword fern

1. List two or three new ideas you’ve gained through this weeks readings that you could apply to your Longhouse Garden project work.

 

 

I was most affected by the readings in The Herbalist’s Way so all I can think about now is planting more Oregon grape and gathering its roots to make tinctures. I defiantly want to be able to identify and know how to use the plants in my bioregion and the section in my Longhouse Garden section is a great place to start. Perhaps our group can gather this information and make a pamphlet for people walking through the garden. What I was really struck by also was how it is really important to focus on all of the plants that are native- as they easily regenerate and are not in danger of becoming extinct like Osha, for example.

 

Another idea that I have thought about is the acceptance of knowledge and the time it takes to acquire it. To be more specific, I read in the Sweet Breathing of Plants, about a story of a woman who didn’t understand what a “plantwoman” was- she didn’t know if that meant she had a certain amount of knowledge or if she needed to have more to call herself a “plantwoman”. I have thought a lot about this, as I feel like I am just beginning to learn the nature of plants and see them as allies. What I have learned most is that it takes time and attentiveness, a sort of communing or communication with the plants to start to feel a connection. This makes sitting in the Longhouse Garden a more understandable. I don’t need to do much at this point other than just get acquainted with the plants there, and that this is the most I could hope for, for new people first experiencing the Longhouse garden. Reading this story in the Sweet Breathing of Plants, was a reminder for me to slow down and just sit with plants and that it is through this connection that everything else comes, the names, the uses, the soil types etc.

 

Lauren McPhun

Weekly Reflections #1

1. Compare the descriptions of ecosystems or zones in each text.

I noticed a large similarity between the zones described in Natural History of Puget Sound and In Keeping It Living. Each defined by the predominant conifer in the zone. However in the Natural History of Puget Sound I noticed that there were two schemes of vegetative zones. One described as Merriam's Life Zones and the other described as a vegetative zone. Merriam's Life Zone is divided into four categories- Arctic-Alpine, Hudsonian, Canadian, and the Humid Transition. These were not specific to the Puget Sound are but can be used when looking at a much larger area like the North American Continent as a whole. The later description was more beneficial to me. It described a zonal difference by elevation. This zone or ecosystems definition was similar to that in Keeping it Living. In the Natural History of Puget Sound, there are three subdivisions. The first sub-divisions is the upper sub-zone defined by the prominent Mountain Hemlock, next- the lower sub-zone defined by the Pacific Silver Fir, and the lastly the low sub-zone or the coastal zone defined by the
Western Hemlock and Sitka Spruce. Keeping It Living does something very similar, dividing the zones by altitude and assigning it a dominant conifer to head the zone except that these divinations include the moisture of the area and specific bioregion or land mass. There are also four instead of three in the later text. Here there are the Coastal Doug Fir Zone- a relatively warm and dry zone where mostly Doug Firs, Grand Firs, Pacific Madrone, Broad-leaved Maples, and Western Redcedars grow; The Coastal Western Hemlock Zone- low to mild elevations, relatively mild temperatures because of maritime location with Western Hemlock, Pacific Silver Fir, Western Redcedar, and Sitka Spruce; The Mountain Hemlock Zone ranges from
mid to high elevations where there are sub-alpine forests and colder winters; Mountain Hemlocks, Yellow cedars and Sub-Alpine Fir exists and thrive here; and lastly the Alpine Tundra Biogeoclimatic zone which did not go into much detail because it is not seen much in the Puget Sound Area.

2. Discuss your understanding of relationships between natural systems and cultural systems in the Northwest.

The Natural systems of the Pacific Northwest are the defining aspects of cultural systems in this area because the native culture, as described in Keeping It Living, is grounded in and on the earth. During the summer months the people would divide into different bands going to different locations to gather different things needed for the rest of the year. Only certain things were found in certain areas because of the different ecosystems prevalent in the Northwest. Tha is some would go to the waters to collect shellfish, some would go to collect Salal berries, some would go to redcedar stands to gather bark. The culture was in a direct relationship to the natural system because they depended on the natural environment for sustenance and survival.

3. List plants in both texts that you can identify:

Being new to the name games I can only identify a Doug Fir, Western Redcedar, sometimes a western hemlock, Big- Leafed maple, Licorice fern, sword fern, Pacific Madrone, Red Alder.

4. List two or three ideas you have gained through the reading and Saturday's activities that you could apply to work on a habitat area in the Longhouse Garden.
While reading I noticed the plant association that took place between the western Hemlock and the Sword fern, the Big Leafed Maple and the Licorice Fern. Knowing these plant allies will be helpful in placing plants in favorable groupings in the Longhouse garden.
We talked on Saturday about clustering plants together instead of placing one alone and then another 5 feet away. This will be useful in my work in the garden as well.