Stinging Nettles!

Springing, Stinging Nettles! It's spring time for sure. Matt and Matia and Nick and Sarah and I went to a secret location near to our homes. Someone had already been there for certain (Drew!) But we gave some thanks to the land and to the natural world and then embarked on an adventure.

We played a couple rounds of Hide (even as adults it is a FUN game!) and then found a sweet patch of Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica). On a hillside, in a drainage, the mosquitoes were out too... pretty early I feel.

I'm not making any sense. So, lemme start over. We harvested a bunch of stinging nettles. After I collected some, I steamed them at home and then put them on pizza last night! Boy are they delicious! Despite being stung a couple of times and having achy hands, I got enough for the night. And I look forward to more pain and more nettles in my diet.

Here is some information about the nettle. Anyone who has encountered this plant has a story... but it is really an important source of vitamins and food for us humans. Pojar says it had also been referred to as, Indian Spinach, and it's good in the spring time before it gets to be taller than a foot. Otherwise, excess Formic acid forms and we don't garner as much nutrition. That acid is stored in the hollow needles and is delivered when one of us accidentally (or purposefully) grabs the stems, branches, or underside of leaves and breaks the tips of the needles. It often gives us a rash or irritation.

Rumor has it that we can make a spit salve with Sword Fern sori (spores, pronounced "Sore-eye") and apply the paste to remedy the rashes. Nature is a funny world too... the heart of a Stinging Nettles thicket was surrounded by tons of sword fern with sori ready to go! For every danger we find in the environment there is almost always a cure... and they are often growing adjacent or very close to one another (ironic or designed).

Later in the year, we can harvest the long stalks. Not for eating but for cordage. We can dry and peel in such a way that we can fashion rope... once (and still) used for snares, fishnets, and other rope.

What a great plant. It should be respected. And harvested. And not over-harvested! It humbled us with its intense sting. But it provides for us too. Mmmm...

And this blog post was really poorly written. I hope you got the point!

Deer walking with Nick

Instead of going to my spot like normal, Nick and I went into the woods for a walk. We had no expectations, but let our curiosity guide the way. I had the hankering to look at mosses and lichens while he was exploring plants. We found our respective tasks challenging and we certainly learned a lot through the struggles of "unclarity." I do think we found and properly identified the Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens) [p176] along the edge of the trail. The three leaflets were lobed and toothed, as described in Pojar and MacKinnon's  Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Suddenly a game trail appeared and we felt the urge to follow it. Nick first wanted to look at a Bigleaf Maple (Acer Macrophyllum) while I went to the ground to sift through the mossy base of a Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera). And after an interlude of tasting and subsequently identifying and a not-so-licorice-tasting Licorice Fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza) rhizome, we embraced the Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus colombianus) which we assume made the path.

Sure enough... deer sign on the ground in the form of a pile of "Raisinettes!" And then another and another as we tracked its path for about a quarter mile. Though we may have strayed from the exact steps, hand it to us to look like deer and think like deer:
What is the path of least resistance? Where is a good place to take a break under shelter? What is there to eat right here? Where is the potable water?
We tracked it around a small patch of forest littered with tightly knit groves of Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) and tons of mosses. We explored the medicinal uses of Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus) while observing its new buds just breaking the surface of the branches.

Nick analyzed an approach of how one might climb a particularly huge Bigleaf Maple while i got back into the tiny moss forest world. In the end, I saw more capsules, operculum and peristomes... correctly noticing subtle differences between species. I made a go at trying to identify one and think I got it right: Fan Moss or Large Leafy Moss (Rhizomnium glabrescens).

Then we headed home because I was getting cold and we were both a little hungry. We tracked out using a path we found and picked up a lot of OLD trash along the way... One Mountain Dew can must have been sitting there since the 80's; it had logos I've never seen. We filled up a paint container (that we found in a clearing) with debris and brought it to the trailhead.

We decided to leave it there, perhaps as a small trash recepticle for others who might want to contribute to cleaning up our forest... In fact, we left it right next to the crap that some "Hippier-than-thou" Bellinghamster "didn't see" while s/he was riding a bike as his/her righteous dog deposited it so neatly. Yes, I have coined this phrase and will accordingly pursue putting the phrase onto bumper stickers.