It’s Great Peak Oil Is Here

Many people are angry about the escalating prices of oil. I am heartened by it, and hope it continues to skyrocket. You see, humans have proven historically that–as a whole–they will do whatever gives them what they want for the least effort, and damn the consequences. So, we entered peak oil some years ago. The world’s primary resources of oil–shallow water and land-based wells–are about tapped out. We can make gas through the biofuel method, but that is very expensive and is a lose-lose situation as it consumes vast quantities of food. A 20 acre field of grain converted to biofuel wouldn’t power America for 10 seconds. And the land it was grown on wouldn’t sustain the production year after year. So, mostly now we get fuel from deep sea sites which is enormously dangerous to very sensitive ecosystems, and we get it from fracking shale and filthy tar sands which pollutes vast quantities of pure water with carcinogenic chemicals. All these methods are costly, hence the high gas prices today, and they are grossly toxic to the environment.

We are in peak oil; the world is out of gas. Given the amount of carbon pollution that is in the atmosphere that everyone is choosing to ignore just now (the highest in millions of years), I am glad that we are out. It will force us to revise how we live and come again to know what our ancestors knew–a day’s travel was 20 miles at sustainable methods. Maybe that will bring about some reason and balance–a concept none too popular in this *I want it now!* era of global self-entitlement.

The Dryad’s Saddle

The dryad’s saddle polypore: edible and tasty, if harvested young, like this one.

Continuing with my early season wild food foraging, today I found a half dozen of these lovely dryad’s saddles, a.k.a., polyporous squamosus.  This polypore is a bracket or shelf mushroom that grows on the sides of hardwoods.  It grows on deadwood attached to live trees, and I found these on two mature sugar maples near a river, growing out of cracks in the trees where old wood had died and turned yellow-black.

The back of the dryad’s saddle. There are no gills, of course–rather, a dense collection of pores. Ergo, polypore.

The dryad’s saddle grows huge and is edible but quickly becomes too tough–even woody–to be enjoyable.  But when found young, with pliant, rubbery flesh, it can be cut into thin strips and fried in bacon grease to be quite delectable.  All told, I harvested about five pounds today, so we will have plenty to enjoy for several meals.

There are old mushroomers and there are bold mushroomers.  I intend to be an old mushroomer, and only ever hunt those that are safe, easily identified and have only non-lethal lookalikes.  In fact, I strongly prefer those mushrooms that are easy to tell from anything else.  And one of the beauties of the polypore family of mushrooms is they are easy to distinguish and have no known toxic species.  If one isn’t edible, it will simply taste foul, or be woody or tough as old leather.  This is a mushroom a novice can gather safely.

The Riddle of “Enough”

A rainy forest brings peace, music and deep contemplation.

Back from another day of wild food foraging in the forest. I found the grand cache of ostrich ferns and filled sacks, which Daphne is now blanching and freezing. That will supplement our asparagus nicely while our snow peas and Swiss chard grow in the gardens. The forest never lets us do without.

But what came to mind is while I was foraging through the ostrich ferns, I hit a point where something inside me said, “That’s enough.” Two words. Two implicitly simple words that seem so very lost in the contemporary mindset. I could have filled sacks and sacks with the delectable fiddleheads. I could have filled so many bags by sundown that we could have had them twice a day for a year, till they were coming out of our ears. But my goal was to harvest only enough to see us through till our garden greens and other wild greens began to emerge in earnest, with maybe a little surplus to enjoy now and then next winter.

So came a moment when it was enough. Leave the rest to the wildlife, to the land spirits, and plenty and to spare to ensure the fern patch remains strong and vigorous for next year.

In this modern world, we barely seem to be able to wrap our minds around that simple concept–”enough!” We want, and we expect to have. So we rob one another. We tear from the sacred land. We push beyond the limits of reason and pat ourselves on the back and call it ambition. But this is not Nature’s Way. It will never be the Way of Nature. There can be no harmony, no real care for the environment, without the acceptance of that simple fact–”enough”.

Indeed, there can be no real peace with ourselves unless we learn to recognize just when is “enough”. Understanding that concept allows us to supersede the base impetus of unbridled ambition and go to some spiritual place far better: contentment.

O, humans, just when is it *enough*?

Ostriches & Wildwood Foraging

Ostrich fern with last year’s spore stalk still attached.

Earth is sacred, and if you live well with her, she will look after you.  And with that philosophy, Daphne and I set out into the wildwood yesterday to do a little springtime wild food foraging.  There were a lot of things on our shopping list: morel mushrooms, black horns and devil’s urns (also mushrooms), dandelions, dock, amaranth  feral rhubarb, wild asparagus, and ostrich ferns (a.k.a. fiddleheads).  We trekked from the lowest points to the heights of the mountain and found a good deal, not least of which was an abundance of tasty ostriches.  We steamed some last night.  The taste was much like asparagus.  In other words–delicious!  If you would like to learn how to identify and where to find the ostrich fern, just look up the “Island of the Ostrich . . . Ferns”, under the heading: Naturalist Lore.

Or follow this link: http://cliffseruntine.wordpress.com/naturalist-lore/island-of-the-ostrich-ferns/

Daphne prepares to set off with me on another wildwood adventure. The season of foraging has arrived!

New Gardens’ Bounty

Here in Nova Scotia, halfway between the equator and the North Pole, and at our altitude, spring has only just begun a couple weeks ago, but already the gardens and forests are providing.

An asparagus crown–one of many in two gardens–sends up eager shoots. We’ve already had our first harvest.

At left, we see it’s time to start selective harvesting of asparagus from both the old and new  beds, which are now both mature and can sustain harvesting all the way to late summer.

Rhubarb and garlic in a raised garden that will be ready for first harvest in a week or two.

At right middle, we see domestic rhubarb and accompanying spring garlic, both halfway to harvest, in one of the raised gardens.

Wild onions are below right, well emerged in a large patch about 20 feet long and a couple yards wide. We’ve been sustainably harvesting from this patch for years. It is ready to start contributing to our meals now, and will fill in for onions till our domestic onions are ready for harvest in the nearby Old Garden.

Wild onions are vigorous and one of the first things to emerge. Patches stick around for years and are prolific if not over harvested.

Where Myths Are Born . . .

Discover Faerie as it was known in the elder world.

From “An Ogham Wood”, by Cliff Seruntine, published by Avalonia Esoterica Press:

Published by Avalonia Esoterica Press.

It seemed, when he stepped across the threshold, the night held its breath. The crickets ceased their chorus, the night birds their symphony. For an instant, only a single instant, the leaves did not even rustle with the new breeze just beginning to build in the south. The only sound there was in that moment came low from the north, where a grove of aged apple trees descended from the Cottage right down to the crumbling wooden fence that demarcated the boundary between grounds and woods. It was the sound of steps lightly taken. He turned slowly, expecting perhaps a deer mincing beneath the boughs. What met his eyes was a pale figure wearing a gown of white. Half concealed in shadow, the form was unmistakably feminine even though it was illuminated only by the light of spring stars. The woman passed beneath aged apple trees budding tender new leaves. She ghosted from trunk to trunk, flowing as she went in the liquid way of a dancer. And then she began to sing as she went, the notes sounding as if they spilled from a flute of crystal. His ears caught the lyrics:

In green glens where flower
herbs of bluebell and shrubs of rose,
the Lady in her summer bower
suffers ne’er when the cold wind blows.

The Lady in her summer bower,
where a wildwood of black oak grows,
conducts from her vasty tower
the land no chill zephyr knows.

So luminous is her estival dower
many a courting laird comes from afar,
but Ellidurydd in her summer bower
bides but summer breath and summer star.

The notes fit no scale of Western music, some seeming to land just beneath where C should be, and some well beyond A, yet others fell precisely into place, familiar Bs and Gs and bittersweet Fs. The melody was the most beautiful he had ever heard, and it made his heart ache to hear it, though the girl was distant, the strains of her song coming to him like pollen drifting on a summer’s breath. But the music called to him and he took a single step off the path, only to hear her better. All he could see of her in the starlight was a gauzy gown of white contrasting hair black as the night itself, spilling over a willowy frame.

And then she too seemed to become aware of his presence, for she froze like a doe caught in a spill of light. And he swore he saw her eyes glow, just as a doe’s might have. Then she turned and fled into the darkness of the trees, gliding over the ground as smoothly as a boat slips over glassy water, with no other sound but the brief rustle of fabric over leaf fall.

And then she was gone.

And it was dark.

And the crickets fiddled and the night birds composed, and he stood alone and lonely, a shattered man in the many shades of twilight, with the moment of perfect stillness ended. The tune echoed in his mind, bits of pieces, scintillating like dust of shattered diamond, but with the damsel’s passing he could not wrap his mind around the whole of it. Only fragments of the lyrics remained, emblazoned in his memory, a small salve for bittersweet recollections.

Otherworldly Forest

The character of the wood changes with the coming of the night, becoming a place of a whole different range of creatures, and the demesne of spirits.

Nightfall comes to the wildwood. Now, the gloaming spirits awaken, and we enter a different world.

Peacocks of the Kingdom of the Fungi

Growing in clusters of hundreds and thousands, the little T. versicolor is always a welcomed sight in the forest.

This dead wood-loving shelf mushroom grows in clusters. This small, beautiful bluish-gray fungus–Tramates Versicolor–is especially fond of fallen maples. The one shown in this image is an outlier among thousands growing on a fallen log.

In the Forest of Stories

Every forest is full of stories. One must simply know how to read them.

Every forest contains stories, and they are written in the parchment of the very Earth. Yet an experienced eye can read them as clear as any novel. From the long, slow tale of the life of a tree to the secret mysteries of mushrooms and elusive wildcats. Here is the tale of wandering deer, several mighty bucks and more than one harem of does. Can you see the trail? A place where bucks have often clashed during the rut lies just yards westerly.