Several years ago I was in a car accident. It was minor but I still remember it because it happened to be Easter Sunday. In my time as a driver I’ve been involved in three car accidents (none of which were my fault – just sayin) but this was the only one where I had a police officer as a witness. On this particular morning there was a paid duty officer directing traffic out of a church parking lot. The specific details aren’t relevant but I remember that as I was standing roadside and getting/giving info to the constable I said I was sorry. He immediately told me that the accident had not been my fault. I said I knew it wasn’t but I was still sorry (oh Canada). Without missing a beat the officer said “Well, it’s Easter. Forgiveness and redemption right?”
I don’t think I have ever heard the themes of Easter elucidated quite so clearly. I think that this cop may have missed his true calling; perhaps justice needs warriors with the souls of priests. What does this have to do with herbalism? Where am I going with this? I have have been struggling with this post for over a month. I started from a place of recrimination and retribution. Lately I have been keeping that constable in mind and trying to hang on to the idea of redemption. It will be hard for anyone to appreciate the points I am making if they are worried for their safety because I am foaming at the mouth.
This is a lady’s slipper. To be specific it’s Cypripedium acaule (aka moccasin flower). Herbalists do not use lady’s slipper anymore (great nervine) because in the mid 1900s folks went crazy for it and just dug them up until now they are endangered and far far too rare to be used. This is also complicated by the fact that orchids (lady’s slippers a member of this family) are notoriously challenged when it comes to reproduction. There’s a good chance that in twenty years there will be no more frankincense. There will be no more ghost pipe. There will be no more ____________ fill in the blank. We humans will have been the cause. We and our grasping greedy inability to say no to ourselves.
“We live in a culture that has objectified and commodified everything. And in which the sense of our entitlement is magnified and the sense of our impact on the living world is diminished.” Sean Donahue
Over the years I have interacted with a lot of folks who remind me of no one so much as Tolkien’s Gollum.
“We wants it. We needs it. Must have the Precious.”
They have become fixated on a certain herb. They are positive that it is the answer to their problems. They have to have it, they deserve to have it. If there are any sustainability issues – well they are “special” and those concerns do not apply to them. I am here to tell you that 100% of zero is still zero. A 1000 people ethically wildcrafting an herb can be enough people to decimate a population. Sometimes the only ethical wildcrafting is NO WILDCRAFTING.
Are we the top of the food chain? Apex predators who deserve to have whatever we want whenever we want it? I think our grasping grasping selfishness is motivated by our culture’s dirty secret. It isn’t actually a secret but boy do we wish it was and we do everything we can to forget that we do know the truth.
We are going to die.
Let’s do a thought problem. Purely hypothetical. There’s a plant that has been proven to cure early onset dementia. You choose your personal benchmark for proven and I am telling you this herb is there. Proven – beyond a shadow of a doubt. Trouble is there is only a single specimen of this herb left in the world. It is living out its days in a greenhouse at the New York Botanical Garden. With me so far? Now imagine that your husband or your son or your best friend has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. What do you do? Do you head on down to New York and go all Mission Impossible on the greenhouse? Harvest that root? That leaf? That seed? Is it too late for me to get a masters in philosophy? How do we weigh the value of human life against the survival of an entire species? There are currently 7.6 billion people on the earth. Far too many of us for us to carry on with our wise-woman fantasies of harvesting herbs with a woven basket by the light of the full moon.
We need to think about this now. Compromises will have to be made. We need to switch to growing the herbs that we want to rely on. Growing herbs does not always work. Plants that have been grown in a pampered monoculture are often not as fierce as their wild friends. Many of the plant constituents that are responsible for the medicinal effect of herbs are what we call secondary metabolites. Plants make these metabolites in response to stress. So how will we stress our debutantes? Growers have had some success growing medicinal mushrooms on different mediums. The challenge though is that if the betulinc acid content of chaga is playing a role in the medicinal activity of the mushroom then what happens if you are not growing it on birch trees?
I started down the path of recrimination after I read a ridiculous Facebook post by a woman who was using magical thinking to justify her ongoing use of chaga. It is great that you know your supplier. Does not matter. Contributing to the mass popularization of a hard to grow herb means contributing to its death. I was so angry I wanted to set fire to the internet. Sticking our heads in the sand will not help anything. Is the earth as a whole resilient? Maybe. The planet will, most likely, survive an extinction level event that takes out mankind. The real question is how many species will we take with us before we go? We humans aren’t exactly known for our ability to engage in long term thinking. We stand outside smoking in our twenties and cannot see down the years to our sixty year old self suffering from COPD. If we know that our ankles are weak we buy shoes with extra support. We need to develop our critical thinking skills instead of convincing ourselves that if we do it – it’s ok.
I attended a lecture on chaga. There were about 11 people there I think. I was keenly interested on the speaker’s thoughts on the exploitation of chaga. This was long before chaga had even became the “it” herb of the mushroom movement. He never mentioned it. I failed to speak up and speak out. Those 11 people wild harvesting chaga in and around Ottawa would be enough to decimate the local growth of this plant. When I put the words “chaga, buy” into the search engine I get 729,000 results. But sure – there’s no problem. These conversations aren’t easy; they are complicated and full of shades of grey. For herbalism and healing to carry forward into the future we need to have them. It is essential that we have them.
“We are stewards of the earth, and we live in most integrity when we are protectors of these plants, not vehicles of their exploitation. If we don’t have ethics and integrity, we have nothing.” Renee Davis.