The Magic of Weeds

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” I have no words for how true that is, or how powerful the knowledge of that has been in my life.

My first memories of learning about plants were on walks with my mom when I was very young.  We would often take long strolls on dirt roads or along the edges of the woods, where she would point out certain plants and talk about what they were. She didn’t tell me much about plant medicine but would usually just show me edible things or tell me what a particular flower meant spiritually. If my dad was around with his pocketknife, he would cut me off a piece of black birch bark to chew on while mom would whisper to me about the legend of the dogwood or some other magic story that grew from the ground.

It was in those moments that I found out seasonal sprigs of green were so much more than decoration for our world. They were, in fact, magical life forces that were here to help and support us.

Those little outings lit a spark in me that has been burning ever since. From that point on, as a child at play, I was forever picking “weeds” and making magical concoctions to feed the fairies or heal some injury of a friend. The latter usually ended with my friends going home with their scratched-up knees covered in a grass and mud plaster.

I had one favorite place in the woods that opened into a circle beneath the trees where much of the ground was covered in moss. Some days I would drag my little table and chairs out there and set up housekeeping. I would make beds from the moss-covered dips between the large tree branches so that all the sprites in the forest could live in my make-shift cottage and have tea parties with me from all my foraged goods.

It was simply magical…and I never grew out of it.

Now, with all the troubles in the world, as soon as spring starts to show itself and the plants start to come alive, I just sigh and think, “finally, its real life again.” That’s just a basic truth for me. The world is big and problematic, and people are sometimes off the rails, and it always feels a bit made up to me.

Real life is found in the quiet moments where the earth comes alive and turns green, and we can always find what we need to get by, even if everything else falls away. That’s something solid, something you can count on. It’s not political or sensational or worrisome or expensive, it’s just real.