Fiddleheads and Stinging Nettle

Somewhere in the depths of the North woods lies a forest teeming with life.  Life is all around us, really, but here it's undisturbed and fresh for the picking.  My companion and I ventured mere yards from camp to discover a vast and lush thicket of ostrich ferns, anywhere between 6 inches to a couple feet tall.  We got to work, pinching the greens a few inches from the bottom up.  Before picking, we made sure to check for a ridge along the stem, a trait that -- along with the lack of white fuzz -- distinguishes ostrich ferns from their semitoxic cousins, interrupted and cinnamon ferns.  These are the beauties in their wild habitat:

My companion has tougher fingers than I, so I let him do the stinging nettle picking.  Amazingly, with twenty or so leaves collected he returned with only a small sting on his wrist, a product of distracted picking.  Always watch your arms when picking stinging nettle!

This is our full harvest: about fifty fiddleheads and a few handfuls of stinging nettle leaves.  The group of leaves in the bottom of the lower pot was improperly identified and had to be thrown out.

Three tablespoons of butter, a pinch of minced garlic, and 1 Tsp. of salt later...

We later realized that the entire fern can be utilized -- don't waste the stems like we did!  They provide a tasty crunch.  Fiddleheads are reminiscent of green beans, celery, and potato chips all in one.  By far they are the best wild food I've ever tasted...

Second only to this.  Stinging nettles, source of the highest protein of all green vegetables, are delicious brewed in tea.  You can even eat the cooked leaves; even brief cooking destroys the nettles' sting.

It's impossible to describe wild food until you've tried it.  Get your body outside in the fresh air and harvest yourself some food.

By the way,

I forgot to post a picture of these before I ate them (thanks, Google).  So maybe that tells you something.
Anyway I liked them.  With butter and salt they tasted kind of soft and earthy.  Next up: giant puffballs.  Or maybe some completely new plant.  Time will tell.

Marsh Marigolds

Feeling free,

we set aside our sweaters and ran into the warm air.  I could taste the budding flowers, smell the sunshine from the heart of my lungs.  The ride to the park was short, but there were cars in the parking lot, meaning that this would be an extra-undercover operation.  Harvesting non-invasive wild plants is illegal in state parks, so we had to pretend we were merely appreciating the beauty of the Marsh Marigolds as we peered over the dock at them.
This

is what Marsh Marigolds look like in the early spring, before they bloom.  See those little buds?  That's where the flowers will come out, but the leaves are what is most commonly eaten, often boiled like spinach.


This is what we were up against, a foreign beauty with an acidic taste.  My partner took a leaf right off the stem and ate it raw, something the guidebook warns explicitly against.  Marsh marigolds are mildly toxic until cooked.  His face went sour and he spit the green into the swampy ground.  He later told me he felt "a little funny" several minutes after eating it, and that perhaps he'd gotten slightly high.  I giggled.


Here we were.  We didn't have much time, so we made a quick trip off the beaten trail to explore some downed wood piles: prime mushroom harvesting ground.  The forest was sparse; the deer had probably gotten to most of it before we had.  However, a few oysters 
and puffballs remained from the previous year.  The mushrooms ready for us, but we had a fanny pack full of marsh marigolds to sample when we got home.

A Brief Exploration of Undiscovered Territory: Part 2

I returned from whence I came, this time with a companion by my side.  Barely three feet into the clearing and a flash of white; a family of deer galloped into the woods out of sight.  I looked at my dad and smiled.

We found some hunting stands.  Amidst the broken limbs and decomposing foliage they stood out, not quite as sore thumbs, but strangers to the land.  One was spray-painted in some god-awful neon orange color.  It overlooked the swampy lake in front of us, and I imagined what it would look like when all the water evaporated.  Another world.

A hiding hole.  Some animal was safe and sound, tucked away from meddling humans.  I found a stick jammed into its home and I removed it.  A sigh and more steps.

At last we found a giant puffball, big enough to feast upon.  It was last year's harvest, decayed and rotted from rain and animal munching.  So many things to see and hear and smell and, hopefully in a few months' time, taste.

Charting Undiscovered Territory: Part 1

Ripped jeans, hiking boots.  I took off running from my house and didn't stop to care who saw me.  Making my way to a place I'd never been before wasn't as easy as I thought it'd be.  I had to tiptoe property lines, crunching dead wood and leaping among unstable rocks.  I stood in front of a retention pond, tree limbs sprawling from it and lively residue caked beneath it.  I spotted an unnatural color; when I looked closer, I saw it was a piece of paper.  The letters had worn off from the rain.  I ripped it up and cast it into the water in hopes of speeding its decomposition.  Another flyer; this time, a Pridemore ad.  I chuckled and took extra joy in ripping that one up.

I looked beyond the pond and saw a forest unexplored.  To my right, a newly-constructed suburban home; to my left, a 50-some-year-old one-story.  I was surrounded by the future, by the present, by the invaders, by my friends.  I took a step forward.

The woods were darker than the street, but some sunlight managed to stream in through the leaves.  It was still dry, and deer scat littered the ground.  I wondered if I might see one, but I never did.  Before long I came to a cleared trail; had people hiked here before?  I saw the small signs and the melting snow and realized with chagrin that it was a snowmobiling trail.  I progressed into the forest with a creeping feeling that I was being watched.

The further in I got, the slushier it became.  So much snow and ice had accumulated that a giant pond had formed in the heart of the woods.  I walked towards it, wondering if I could find a way around or through it.  A speck of white caught my eye; a deer,or several, had picked at a giant puffball mushroom.  I examined it and found it covered in blackened decay.  I supposed I had to eat grocery store food tonight.

I found a mossy rock and hunched down on it.  As I closed my eyes, the sounds of the forest fell over me.  Robins chirped and crows cawed.  It was too early for the insects, but I still felt myself in a fully enriched ecosystem.  One could sit and hear everything and nothing, all at once.

I sat on that rock for about fifteen minutes, just thinking about why I was there and who else had been.  At last I stood up and returned to the snowmobiling trail, hoping to find a path to the highway.  From afar I spotted two figures heading the same direction I was.  How strange, I thought, in such an undisturbed place.  I traipsed after them for awhile before they turned back into the forest.

One of the figures froze.  "Hi."