Nourishment

Eating the Wild

~ Nicholas Tippins
Photo by Daniel Beilinson
Photo by Daniel Beilinson

The following is an excerpt from Stephen Harrod Buhner’s The Secret Teachings of Plants.

One of our greatest fears is to eat the wildness of the world.

Our mothers intuitively understood something essential: the green is poisonous to civilization. If we eat the wild, it begins to work inside us, altering us, changing us. Soon, if we eat too much, we will no longer fit the suit that has been made for us. Our hair will begin to grow long and ragged. Our gait and how we hold our body will change. A wild light begins to gleam in our eyes. Our words start to sound strange, nonlinear, emotional. Unpractical. Poetic.

Once we have tasted this wildness, we begin to hunger for a food long denied us, and the more we eat of it the more we will awaken.

It is no wonder that we are taught to close off our senses to Nature.

Through these channels, the green paws of Nature enter into us, climb over us, search within us, find all our hiding places, burst us open, and blind the intellectual eye with hanging tendrils of green.

The terror is an illusion, of course. For most of our million years on this planet human beings have daily eaten the wild. It’s just that the linear mind knows what will happen if you eat it now.

But we’ve gone astray with this, distracted from our task. Still, it’s a good reminder. When your hair begins to grow long and you think strange thoughts, sometimes you will wonder what is happening and will become afraid.

In Nature, human markers fade, lose significance. It takes awhile to learn the old markers again, to see the path that ancient humans took before us. In kindness, learn how to comfort yourself, to hold yourself as you would a child that is afraid of the light. (I suppose you could learn the poisonous plants first if you need to; there aren’t very many.) For on this journey, you mostly have yourself for company.

It helps if you become your own best friend
and find out what is true about all this for yourself.
Open the door and take a look around outside.
The air is shining there,
and there are wonders,
more wonderful than words can tell.

Food Nannying For the Poor? Restrictions on Organic and Healthy Food in Food Assistance

~ Nicholas Tippins ~ 2 Comments
wisconsin organic food choices restricted for WIC and food assistance.
Food assistance program. Photo by USDA.

Wisconsin’s Women, Infants and Children’s Program “Approved Foods” brochure is cheerfully decorated with stock photos of vegetables and smiling children. Inside is a well-intentioned (or well lobbied) and utterly misguided attempt to… what? Help people? Make sure those in food assistance programs eat healthy food? Or cheaper food? Continue reading →

Wild Food for Busy People: Easy Ways To Include Wild Food In Your Diet

~ Nicholas Tippins

Walking into the field with a shovel. Cold hands on the smooth wooden handle. You are warmed by the smell of earth as you dig. Hands plunge into chill earth, searching with strong fingers. Finally, you clutch the wise burdock root, and you feel somehow compelled to bow.

Easy Ways to Add Wild Food to Your Diet
Salad of Romaine lettuce and wild Toothwort, Purple Dead Nettle and Redbud flowers. Photo by Jay Sturner.

There is something to be said for taking one’s time with plants. They offer so much more to our psyches than most of us living a modern lifestyle can comprehend. Watching a plant through all of its seasons, befriending the little star lady Chickweed and allying yourself with Burdock’s ancient wisdom. There is nothing to describe the joy. It is something like coming home.

But not everyone is up for harvesting burdock, or even devoting much of their busy lives to foraging. Continue reading →

Misleading Food Labels and Their Villainous Henchmen

~ Nicholas Tippins ~ 3 Comments
Photo by Mike Mozart. Misleading food labels.
Misleading Food Labels. Photo by Mike Mozart

The food industry uses all sorts of chemicals in the pursuit of cleanliness. Isn’t it a little ironic that their way of misleading consumers is, well, dirty? Words that mean one thing to the general public often mean something very different to food producers and the USDA. These differences have been deliberately exploited to get you to believe you are making a healthier or more ethical choice by buying a more expensive food product that was made no differently from the rest. Enter misleading food labels. Let’s uncover a few. Continue reading →

The World is Alive!

~ Nicholas Tippins

            “Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.” 

–Derrick Jensen

The World is Alive! Photo by Michael Fertig.

Isn’t it interesting that as we become more civilized, we surround ourselves with more things that are not alive? Continue reading →

Stop Dieting, Start Nourishing

~ Nicholas Tippins ~ 1 Comment

One of my guilty pleasures on the internet is looking at a particular type of ad.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/130855607@N05/16596216868/in/photolist-rhxX59-7WVpKB-ejbNXs-7wTYFY-egN5vT-egTPSm-egN4fV-egTQ2b-egTQdw-egN626-ej69KV-egTRr7-egN5ik-ej69SH-7wTYFU-egN6KM-egN59e-egTQxL-egTRm5-rXEmtg-egN6Wr-ej6a7F-9AQUnF-ej651X-7RpNqd-86rXCg-pHmBAC-adwaWV-3B9yT8-86v22h-3gpwXi-5MtVey-dzXg6p-dA3JXs-eYVWeE-egTTxU-9uNcaR-7tiHfL-8A8tv6-egN3hi-egTPqQ-egTPxd-6tgHFW-9uRc8Y-99KTGU-egN5Cv-egTNZA-egTPeC-egTQqm-ejbTkA

They’re usually found below news or special-interest articles, and they’re designed to be sensational. I’m sure there’s a guy somewhere whose boss told him, “Say anything you want, just get them to click.”

Continue reading →