Foragers at the end of the world

This piece first appeared in the summer issue of Gravy quarterly from the Southern Foodways Alliance guest edited by Rough Draft s Beth McKibben You can purchase the issue of Gravy here for Read this story and others from the issue online at Gravy Turkey tail mushrooms at Arabia Mountain in Georgia in February Courtesy of Bita Honarvar My first impression of food foraging was that it s expensive Two tickets for a Saturday morning mushroom hike at Arabia Mountain were more than a hundred bucks I wasn t paying for mushrooms I reasoned It was for time with Ranger Darling Ngoh a content scientist and expert mushroom hunter This guided ramble in a -acre nature preserve thirty minutes east of Atlanta promised to teach me how to forage like a pro while allowing me to escape into the woods for the day Foraging may be free but tuition isn t cheap Maybe more valuable to me was getting my thirteen-year-old son off his laptop for the morning Guy is accustomed to my forays into agritourism having spent Saturdays in orchards and berry patches all over the South since the pandemic It was a useful diversion from doomscrolling for me too The morning was warm for early February a muggy sixty degrees and climbing A noisy chorus of frogs greeted us from the woods that ringed the gravel parking lot at Davidson-Arabia Mountain Nature Center Was this the sound of early spring or situation change Related Story Above the Waterline Swimming in the South Ranger Ngoh met us at the front door of the nature center with a cardboard box of dry mushroom specimens and a brief lecture on the kingdom Fungi Despite his goatee and abundant knowledge he looked closer to my son s age than mine He notified us that his name was pronounced like go and that he was inspired by how mycelial networks these complex underground fungal root systems with the power to share nutrients information and even memory mirrored his studies in input science We ve had chosen rain he noted so we should be lucky nowadays Ranger Darling Ngoh shows Hannah Palmer pear-shaped puffballs at Arabia Mountain in Georgia in February Courtesy of Bita Honarvar What was I doing out here attempting to forage for mushrooms It clearly wasn t going to provide lunch at least not this early in the season From the media coverage I had seen about food foraging it struck me as either the rarefied hobby of intellectual foodies or the survival tactic of preppers two groups of White people I tend to avoid at parties What does this practice offer everyone else Particularly in a time of political whiplash when even the terms environment change and environmental justice are being scrubbed from the national discourse what can foraging teach us about abundance about reconnecting to place to our communities to our own bodies I required to know so I spent the spring foraging for foragers We ventured down an old quarry road into the woods My son proved surprisingly fast at spotting the yellow orange and red of tiny mushrooms hiding in the gray-brown forest Ngoh was like a kid in a candy shop bursting with knowledge about each discovery He rattled off the Latin names for the mushrooms their medicinal benefits immune backing anti-inflammatory properties dendritic connections He explained the basics of foraging etiquette take no more than percent and how to scatter the spores of the Apioperdon pyriforme or pear-shaped puffball patting the sides of an old log as if it were a Labrador retriever We determined a half-dozen different species of fungi in the first hour from the nontoxic nonedible Phyllotopsis nidulans or orange oyster on a pine log to the extremely toxic Galerina marginata or deadly galerina As we hiked through the granite-block ruins of selected outbuilding of the Davidson Granite Company I marveled how this old industrial site quarried for almost eighty years had been reclaimed by nature and the populace Donated in it was now a thriving citizens park well-traveled by an ethnically diverse mix of hikers cyclists birders and roaming naturalists We certainly uncovered certain turkey tail our first edible mushroom We took turns gathering the indigo-striped frills and precisely placing them in baggies like the medicine they are Wash air dry pulverize Ngoh instructed then mix into tea or coffee I don t go more than two weeks without getting selected form of turkey tail he mentioned The tails have increased my ability to stay healthy Growing up on the western coast of Africa Ngoh foraged guavas passionfruit mangos and bananas for fun but rarely fungi I realized early on it was usually the adults that foraged for mushrooms because there still was that stigma even in Cameroon These things were deadly So they did it responsibly I did go a couple times with my dad to go foraging for mushrooms and that was cool but the majority of the time was spent with other kids and my brothers foraging for fruits and plants If mushrooms are unfailingly in season I appealed Ngoh does environment change affect the practice of foraging Foragers are individuals who are aware of their native ecosystems he explained They notice when things change Mushrooms serve as great bioindicators They are the underlying infrastructure you could say or connectors that facilitate ecosystem robustness rehabilitation and general sustainability Foraging is just a quick feedback loop that allows me to test certain concepts understandings and knowledge Ranger Darling Ngoh pats pear-shaped puffballs on an old log releasing spores at Arabia Mountain in Georgia in February Courtesy of Bita Honarvar Toward the end of our hike as we trooped across the pitted moonscape of the monadnock I spotted a cluster of flat cactus petals growing in one of the mossy depressions I stopped the hike continued Nopales I carelessly plucked one of the fleshy pads and was holding it out for a photo before I noticed the fine needles stinging my palm The clouds broke and we stripped off our hoodies It was nearly seventy-five degrees My son petitioned to go to McDonalds I was tired hot and happy so I announced okay As we left Ranger Ngoh I realized that for the entire morning I had been thinking about mushrooms Not politics not what was for lunch I was entirely tuned into studying the logs branches rocky surfaces of this wild place hands in the soil sniffing the branches observing and curious For a half day it didn t feel like the world was falling apart What I bought wasn t tuition it was therapy At home I washed my turkey tail bits and arranged them with the lone nopal on a blue plate on my windowsill a little offering to keep that pleasant feeling going through the week Serviceberries Via Wikimedia Commons Serviceberries Two weeks later when I planned to go back to Arabia Mountain for a sunset hike with Ranger Robby Astrove an arctic blast chilled the South The forecasted high temperature was below freezing and I wimped out Instead we met at his house in Grant Park A well-known environmental educator and arborist Astrove has earned a reputation as a forager and supplier to chefs and bartenders in Atlanta s restaurant scene His spring offerings include local delicacies like Japanese knotweed smilax shoots Nanking cherries green plums and serviceberries In Astrove and his friend now wife Jess Pfeffer organized their first Serviceberry Fest a one-day celebration of the native Georgia fruit Often planted as ornamental street trees the white flowers of serviceberries bloom all over Atlanta in the spring on roadsides from Freedom Park to the Georgia Tech campus The berries ripen from red to deep purple by mid-May It s hard to think of anyone in Atlanta who has done more to introduce Atlanta food enthusiasts to serviceberries and other as he put it ingredients that grow in our zip code I left my boots by the front door and settled on a bean bag while Astrove squeezed lemon over mugs of hot herbal tea He established me a well-worn notebook that contained his log of more than ten years of foraging expeditions This is context change evidence he revealed tapping the cover There s trees that I used to hit that were like jackpots that have died or they re gone I can see the handwritten columns date plant location customer pounds harvested Even in my span of years there s these waves and I m convinced I was on a wave when I started Now I look and I can see the ebb and flow of poundage with weather change and freezes and frost I mean sometimes I might not go as hard but there s certain crops that I know for a fact I could say with great accuracy the trends because I m there I m watching them I explained him about my introduction to foraging with Ranger Darling Ngoh He s like a living mycorrhizal framework disclosed Astrove His brain is beautiful What about the other hungers I requested Was foraging an intellectual pursuit or a way to eat I exposed specific turkey tail which eventually I will drink I announced It s not like I determined something I can saut with butter He smiled This is altogether a leisure activity But it s also the the greater part basic survival activity There s lessons for everybody when it comes to foraging and it doesn t have to be just about feeding themselves he explained Just the art of paying attention and being based in a place It really makes you think about home as Earth And then the benefit is like yeah you get a nice snack out of it too Robby Astrove with a big batch of serviceberries Courtesy of Robby Astrove I pulled a copy of British architect and writer Carolyn Steel s book Sitopia How Food Can Save the World out of my backpack so I could read him this highlighted passage While supermarkets are all about blurring time and place the year-round availability of kumquats foraging is all about the here and now Convenience has nothing to do with it but rather the subject gathering of food and knowledge It turns out Astrove had an emotional connection to year-round citrus too When I requested about his earliest foraging memories he spoke fondly of the ruby red grapefruit and Key lime trees growing in his childhood yard in south Florida Sometime in the s and we might have to go back and research it there was a citrus canker he recalled His mother tried to explain why the state Department of Agriculture required them to destroy their trees as part of a years-long canker eradication operation but he couldn t understand it It seemed that their healthy trees were sacrificed to protect the citrus industry He was upset then and still sounded a bit heartbroken as he recounted the story Maybe that s buried somewhere he mused Maybe all my fruit planting is like revenge from that time I ll call my mom tonight The room grew dim as the late-winter light faded Astrove switched on various twinkly lights I requested to hear how it feels to forage how putting yourself in the right place at the right time adds to the flavor the experience and the value of food I remembered the thrill of discovering pawpaws for the first time one October Astrove described the act of foraging as somewhat mystical like this very weird superpower When I m in the tree gorging on serviceberries it s pure contentment and bliss I constantly feel such appreciation for the plant that s nourishing my body I have this moment of extreme reverence that I m the recipient of these nutrients In Astrove and Pfeffer cancelled Serviceberry Fest because he couldn t harvest enough berries That March a late frost destroyed the serviceberries along with greater part of the state s iconic peach crop A festival that depends on abundant foraging was a bust he advised me It was like witnessing our world fall out of equilibrium Why had I never tasted Georgia s super fruit After tea with Astrove I felt like I was missing out I also demanded to test my own idea that part of what makes wild foods so special is that money can t buy them at Whole Foods Related Story What the heck is a serviceberry A week or so later I received six pounds of frozen Saskatoon berries also known as Juneberries or serviceberries It cost fifty-five dollars to have them packed in dry ice and shipped from Washington Unlike the transcendent experience of eating from a tree I felt silly about the expense and the carbon footprint of buying something that will be falling off Atlanta trees by June I made Guy a purple smoothie with frozen serviceberries bananas Nutella and milk and he sucked it down without noticing the fruit The serviceberries slippery amaretto-flavored seeds survived the blender and the feeling of drinking while chewing them reminded me of Boba tea The next afternoon I baked a simple serviceberry dessert using the apple crisp recipe from my old faithful Betty Crocker cookbook I went for nutmeg instead of cinnamon in the topping and as the scent of toasted butter and spice filled the kitchen I deemed this a wholesome breakfast for the next day too Despite being frozen then baked the berries stayed firm and chewy reminding me of cherries This is a close description but not quite right in the way that gooey pawpaw flesh resembles banana but tastes like nothing else Both fruits have a unique texture and flavor and it s worth watching the trees and the weather for the day they grow ripe and fall Nopales detected on Arabia Mountain Courtesy of Hannah Palmer Nopales M Soto notified me about nopales a couple of years ago We met leading a hike for Trees Atlanta where I talked about the history of the nature preserve and Soto a Mexican American ethnobotanist and the one of the founders of Atlanta Planting Cooperative talked about the plants Afterwards Soto pointed out a spiky ornamental cactus in the front yard of a house across from the park They re really good for your skin and your hair they disclosed I had no idea that this Dr Seuss looking plant was edible even delicious I forgot about that until I had my own prickly specimen in the kitchen I tracked down Soto who uses they them pronouns in Lilburn where they helped organize a tree giveaway for D a del Arbol at a huge shopping mall called Plaza las Americas Soto explained why Georgia s Arbor Day was in late February When the trees are still dormant they experience less transplant shock and have more time to acclimate to their habitat Inspired by my visit with Astrove I picked up two little elderberry saplings to plant along the city-owned strip of grass by my mailbox While I waited for the event to wind down I wandered into the food court for a cheesy arepa and a caf con leche Soto and their colleague Vicki Mendez a forest restoration expert joined me at a table outside of the food court There s no specific term for foraging in Spanish Soto communicated me So I petitioned how do they talk about it Related Story In my garden Adapting taste to the changing situation I don t say forage I just say go outside revealed Soto My mom is the one who taught us first getting mint flowers berries things that were growing along Buford Highway especially things that our neighbors planted Foraging is just picking from people s gardens or yards Soto recounted a story about unearthing potatoes as a small child from under the stairs at the Tempo Cabana apartments on Buford Highway At first their mother was angry about the mess then delighted by the unexpected harvest She made French fries And mind you we re immigrants We don t have a lot of money so the only time that we eat American food like French fries is if we get a special treat to go to McDonald s So to have revealed potatoes that became French fries that was a treat It just made me realize like there are so various wonders and that feeling never went away I could see how that kind of discovery would change a kid forever just like Astrove s lost ruby red grapefruit tree or Ngoh s father s careful mushroom hunting All of them mentioned their parents as guides Will Guy remember me dragging him out to pick peaches in and celebrating the abundance because percent of the crop was killed by frost the year before Mendez talked about her mom s childhood in Mexico She lived in a mountain region They were poor so they could not afford food all the time so they ha d to constantly rely on the climate around them M Soto points out an Eastern redbud at a Grateful Gathering workshop in April Courtesy of Heather Bird Harris I suddenly ached for my grandparents who grew up in the mountains of western North Carolina during the Great Depression They could name every tree sprout and blossom in the Nantahala Valley They knew how to cook poke sallet and process sorghum The concentration and time required was labor not meditation When you say foraging Mendez continued You kind of think about it as an activity you know To chosen people it s not that it s a way of life exactly it s a way to survive Soto described foraging as reciprocal relationship of listening to the Earth For me it really is like being at the right place at the right time and being open to receiving That is how I treat foraging is when I m out there like the little things that call my attention That s Mother Nature s gift to me for being there with them As night fell and the plaza grew colder we talked about how crazy the weather had been from summery hot to freezing with tornado watches in between How did they see circumstances change affecting foraging Mendez was very careful You re going to forage from a lot of native species and the native species cannot keep up with conditions change You can t just extract you have to also protect you have to give back you have to be a steward argued Soto So if you know that these plants are limited in number they re facing a lot of like climate-change stressors maybe now it s not the time to forage It s time to adapt and to change Foraging is different from other outdoorsy pursuits like camping hiking hunting fishing birding or wildlife photography because there s no gear required In fact foraging is more like a spontaneous magic trick you can perform while you re doing all those other initiatives All you need are your nose eyes hands and the knowledge that you ve foraged from your friends and ancestors That knowledge grows over the years with the experience of your senses with the changing weather and seasons I sought about the Arabia Mountain prickly pear on my windowsill Mendez endorsed that they are native to Georgia that she s foraged them all her life She indicated me how her mom removes the spines and slices them into strips Soto stated me that nopales could be slimy like okra but to just keep cooking them They recommended simmering them with fresh chicharr n in tomato or tomatillo sauce Soto and Mendez learned about foraging from their mothers both of whom were newcomers to Georgia No wonder this sprawling highway lined with international grocery stores and restaurants from around the world has a reputation as the epicurean capital of the South Their Buford Highway foraging menu yerba buena spearmint tunas prickly pear fruit surprise papas fritas and blackberries made me realize I was wrong to think of foraging as various bougie inaccessible hobby Maybe I assumed one had to have privileged access to wilderness or specialized knowledge to make it work Mendez foraged blackberries with her cousins on the side of a concrete barrier Soto proved me nopales in a yard in southeast Atlanta How did I forget that I foraged for blackberries as a child on the side of the road with only the instruction of my dad and my granny I don t know all the berries of Georgia but I can identify our sweet native dewberries every time I recognize the briars the pointy little leaves the hard green berries that turn rusty red then black with sweetness I was trained to beware of the snakes that wait for the birds that wait for the berries They are as unmistakable as a pecan or a muscadine or a honeysuckle blossom I have routinely stopped on the side of a soccer field or under a bridge to fill a Chick-fil-A cup or an upturned Frisbee with free fruit They unfailingly grow in the margins in disturbed areas along creeks and roads My kids will think about me when they see the tiny white flowers and they ll decide how to use this tether to their family to the land and to their hungry bodies The post Foragers at the end of the world appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta