Dancing the Round in the Merry Month of May

An hawthorn hedge in the Snoqualmie Valley, WA

What a luscious May week. Rain and sun, hot and cold, perfect in every way, so reminiscent of maiden energy! Long underwear on one day, barefoot the next! 

This week, I followed blooming hawthorn up and down the Snoqualmie Valley. Seeing the persistence of remnant hedges brings to mind a once thriving agricultural activity that prospered people here. After years of agricultural decline, it is uplifting to see a return of vibrant young farmers and hungry eaters eagerly growing a new world from the ground up. This enthusiasm is a heartfelt match for the bounty and medicine of the many crataegus gowing in our valley. Although the week was filled with rainy days, one fine, sun filled day opened to the possibility of harvest. After morning rounds, I put my kit together and set off for a ramble in the hedge.

Over the years, I’ve found much medicine in visits and tendings of trees, shrubs and perennial wild herbs engaged in my rounds. Over time, I’ve found visiting plants as deeply nourishing, if not more so, as their constituents. These plants are friends, when we see one another after a long spell, there is mutual greeting and sweet remembrance of who we are. Some offer themselves in harvest, others offer solace and comfort just in their presence, some give shape and form, color and fragrance to life which feeds a deep place; a place reflecting the same beauty the plants offer in the practice of a lemniscate life. I’ve come to know this way of plants as the order and flow of an ever changing, growing universe and am reassured through these long term relationships, that, “all is well in this world”.

Local Diversity in Hawthorns

Haw Thorns, Serious!

This week I was amazed by the diversity in the hawthorn trees I met along the way. A wide range of leaf forms from serrate to deeply lobed, resembling mittens or paws. So many different flower clustering habits. And, unique thorn forms from short 1/2” piercing mechanisms to thorns over 1 1/2” in length. Thorns, those sharp, woody spines, modified branches, function mechanically as a deterrent to herbivory, which, I admit, I was wont to do! Even the shapes of hawthorn trees differed greatly. 

Many years ago I read about this in a book by Alan Watts. A sameness enough to recognize the trees as their genus, yet, seeing each tree’s individual difference referred to as li, ‘“the underlying reason and order of nature as reflected in its organic forms.” Zhu Xi, in the Neo-Confucian period in China “held that li, together with qi, or vital material force, depend on each other to create structures of nature and matter”.  It was during this period of history that Buddhism became more integrated into Confucianism. Some now embrace a further philosophical shifting as seen in a westernized version of tao, or watercourse way and recognize patterns of li as patterns of flowing water. I was so moved by the possibility this perspective offered, my youngest son carries the name Li.

What, you ask, does this have to do with hawthorn, medicine, or you? Given the engaging transitions our world is currently experiencing set me on a quest through space and time looking for patterns and morphologies of culture that may currently serve our personal and collective transitions.  

Hawthorn: Keynote Heart Remedy

Crataegus monogyna, Snoqualmie Valley, WA

Hawthorn stands out as a keynote medicine for strengthening heart and is a perfect tonic for the times. Crataegus spp. is a genus comprising some 200-300 species worldwide, being used in many cultures through centuries for a variety of therapeutic purposes. The World Heath Organization, WHO, lists cardiovascular disease as globally the number one cause of death and the American Heart Association cites heart disease as the number one killer of American adults. Personally, my father had 3 open heart surgeries in the last 30 years of his life. I have experienced the toll a troubled heart can have on a family’s well-being in many ways. I’m sure his experience spurred me toward a better understanding of natural health, herbal remedies and spirit healing in matters of the heart. 

We live in challenging times. In keeping with the wise tradition of using hands-on accessible medicine, I am delighted to see so many Hawthorn in our NW region, along with its global distribution and long term use. Various species of hawthorn are found locally on roadsides, in hedges, in public and private gardens and in the wild. You might find Crataegus monogyna, C. oxycantha, C. douglasii, C. laviegata and frisky as these trees are at calling in their allies, i.e. the birds and the bees, the squirrels and the breeze, you’ll find innumerable natural hybrids! Again, perfect medicine for our times and abundantly available.

Rambling with Hawthorn

"Enjoy the day a bit," they intoned.

While on my Hawthorn ramble, I had the good fortune to visit a dignified group of old trees in a remnant hedge. As I began to harvest, they encouraged me to pause and sit a spell. “Enjoy the day a bit”, they intoned! The cool, tall grass was a tad more than slightly damp and smelled fresh and green as I settled in under the trees. I felt tension held in my body give way, melting into earth. Simultaneously, I felt earth energy moving up into the empty space recharging my body with a refreshing vitality. 

So many connections weave a life

The clear blue sky marked with wispy, white clouds made a brilliant, saturated backdrop for the profuse white blossoms adorning the trees. An energetic hum filled my ears as honey bees busily burdened themselves with bluging saddle bags of pollen. A butterfly slowly opened her wings and then just as slowly closed them. A fragrance, somewhere between earthy and heavenly, rich and fertile, filled the air wafting into my nose and settling down into deep consciousness. It is easy to imagine why she is called Mayflower and how it happens that fertility rites are part of this season in the northern hemisphere. Birds flitted and darted around the trees, chasing one another in the reckless abandon of the season. Recharged from my dreamy, restful meander, I picked up the loppers and began the harvest. So many flowers, so few needed to abundantly fill the tea cupboard at home for a winter of nourishing infusions. 

Health Benefits

Knowing each leaf and flower is filled with antioxidants, bioflavonoids, vasorelaxants and vitamins which increase blood flow to the heart and brain, strengthen the contractions of the heart, tone the circulatory system by strengthening cell walls in arteries, normalize blood pressure, improve exercise capacity and duration and reduce the need for the body to create plaque on arteries brings great impetus to get to know this herb well. We are now beginning to recognize the health building value of bee-song, butterfly whispers and myriad unknown constituents that will be released into densely nutritive infusions brewed from the flowers and leaves of the simply amazing hawthorn as well.

Harvest 

Harvest by removing 3’ long pieces of branches with a pair of strong loppers. Remove crossed branches to open the canopy for air flow, ones hanging too low and, generally, use the pruning/harvest to improve the structure and health of the tree. Over time trees improve in vigor and health with careful tending. Heap onto a cloth for transport back to the car. 

Ready for transport

Occasionally, branches are still filled with the hum of a hitchhiking bee, enjoy! At home, flower and leaf clusters are deftly plucked by hand from the short spurs, mind the thorns or they’ll mind you! 

Plucked branches and drying baskets

Then, flowers and leaves are laid out on cloths and in baskets to air dry. Depending on humidity the herb may take from a few days to over a week to completely dry. Dried flowers and leaves are then placed in paper bags, put in the freezer 3-5 days to inhibit unwanted larva lingering in the material from hatching in storage and, finally, store bags in a dark, dry closet or cupboard.

Making Hawthorn Herbal Vinegar

Hawthorn vinegar basking in the sun

1. Fill any size jar with fresh hawthorn flowers and leaves lightly packed, you know, so a fairy jumping in neither bounces out or sinks to the bottom

2. Now, fill the jar again with apple cider vinegar, watch out for decoys labeled as apple cider flavored vinegar, which is distilled vinegar flavored like apple cider vinegar, no apples no health benefits!

3. Enjoy this earthy vinegar in any recipe calling for a sour taste, on salads, as a condiment on beans, greens or grains 
It delivers flavor and a stiff dose of heart health with a side of courage! 

Can You Find a Hawthorn Close to You?

Hawthorn tree alive with honey bees and a butterfly!

Now, go outside, take a look around. What kind of  trees are blooming in your neighborhood right now?  Find the nearest hawthorn to your home. If you miss leaf and flower harvest, watch for the berries, which are botanically pomes, like apples, both being in the grand family of Roses and prepare for another harvest come fall. Please note! A possible side effect of an increasing awareness of plant life around you is a condition known as 55 MPH botany. Bee warned! 

Stay Tuned...

There’s more coming on this delightful hedge medicine ally. More remedies and recipes, folklore, cultural uses, magick and crafts! 

And, if you will, comment with your natural discoveries, rambles and recipes in search of the ubiquitous hawthorn.

Until next time... Be Well, go outside often, enjoy the meander...

A hybrid cross between Hawthorn and Mtn. Ash in the S. hedge at RavenCroft

Tacamahac

EagleSong E. Gardener

Tack-a-ma-hack. Tac-a-ma-hac  Tacamahac

I love the word’s sound in my ears; it’s stacatto feel on my tongue.

Tacamahac. Tacamahac. Tacamahac

 Murmuring, I slip away; to other places, other times.

Tacamahac Hack-ma-tack. Tacamahac

“Nobody will know what it is or what you mean if you call the oil Tacamahac!” they said. They were right but this understanding deepened my sadness, it did not relieve it. “Maybe if more people were just to say, Tacamahac or Hackmatack, we might remember something!” I muttered. And so it has been over the years, private and public, my love affair with the tree called Black Cottonwood, Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa, balsam poplar, Balm of Gilead, Tacamahac by the Eastern native tribes, the Menominees and Forest Potowatomis, the Ojibwas. Gigantic member of the willow or Salicaceae family of plants, she is chief of all the trees in the Northwest and resides beside North American rivers across the continent. She is the tree of life; cut her down and she spawns 1000 children.

October 8, 1998. The first wind of fall is gusting, blowing this way and then that.  Daily temperatures are in a state of flux 72…58…67…63… Hot, cold…dry, wet signals to the great queen tree in the hedgerow behind RavenCroft, to button up her overcoat. All of a sudden, a great gust blows through her branches and she lets loose! Not just leaves, branches and twigs plummet to the ground as well. Some plunge with enough velocity to impale themselves 3 to 4 inches into the earth. I stand clear watching, amazed and grateful at this forthright offering!

This one, this great tall old woman, will leave us sometime soon. She will give way to new houses. Bulldozers will wrench from the earth the web of roots holding this tree intertwined with her alder and maple neighbors. Even if we could get a reprieve for the queen herself, without that tangled mass of roots, she wouldn’t make it through any wind of consequence.

 At over 80 feet, she towers above every living thing on top of this hill. Her trunk, 20 feet in circumference at the base, pushes up from the earth. First to the southwest, then realizing the extent of her lean, she corrects and pulls herself back to the northeast in a sweeping curvaceous arch. Three human homes are within the strike zone of her full crown. Countless creatures live in her spreading branches and endless root system. It is estimated that she drinks several hundred gallons of water each day from the earth she stands rooted within.

Her leaves sing a new song each season. The bursting song initiates early spring, when warming temperatures of the vernal equinox raise enough energy for her to shatter the tight casings of her sweetly held leaves. Fairies use the scented bud casings littering the ground as hats to stay dry while dancing in the rains of spring. Next comes the unfurling song. A quiet, almost silent voice, it requires meditative repose to hear. Enter such a state beneath her spreading limbs and you will hear a sensuous chorus, a million voices opening their throats to the sky. Vibrating in pulses of life, they perform the dance of unfurling, with it comes the song… Listen… Leaves opening, preparing the task, soon to be theirs, of photosynthesis. That holy meeting ground where leaves use sunlight’s energy to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water in such a way that this cottonwood tree is the only possible result.

With summer comes fullness; the sound in the leaves sated and moist. Warm breezes ruffle them in passing, setting the song free. The great mother exhales warm with satisfaction as the job of growing is realized. Gently, a midsummer breeze caresses a plume filled with seed and releases it from the branch. Ever so joyously one fuzzy puff of summer snow is joined by myriad more until the air is a swirl with millions of Tacamahac yet to be! Tranquilly falling to earth and tumbling together in great fluffy billows, clouds of cottonwood seed fill gutters and scamper across roadways.

 This song, too, is brief. Fullness soon passes. A raspy song, a scratchy song begins. She holds this sound through the beauty and stillness of Indian summer until that day when the gusts come. Those blustery winds of fall initiate the leaving song. It is sung until the last leaf falls to the sweet earth below to begin the journey anew. Dissolving, percolating, nutrient rich, seeping down to the roots to be drunk up, it will feed new leaves the strains of the bursting song in Spring.

November 23, 1998. Temperatures fluctuate from low 30’s to mid 50’s. Four days of strong winds and torrential rains bring the leaves down and the rivers up to nearly flood stage! A handful of golden heart-shaped leaves defy the season, laugh in the face of the raucous wind and hold fast to her crown.

Last week, on the sunny day, we raked golden leaves from the grass. Leathery leaves hid children; bamboo rakes worked in circles gathering piles; piles moved to chickens, scratching, hastening, otherwise, slow disintegration. Yet, just beyond the hedgerow leaf resins slow the organisms that transform these leaves to soil. There, a carpet of golden leaves melts into blackness undisturbed; singing the soggy song, the dark and decomposing melody of metamorphosis.

I have picked Balm of Gilead buds nearly every winter for 31 years. I have picked them from young trees along the banks of Washington rivers on both sides of the Cascades; my young sons acting as weights held limbs within reach. I have picked them from giant trees toppled by the hungry teeth of chain saws. I have picked them from a solitary ancient cottonwood standing in the middle of a hayfield in the Highlands of the Okanogan.  I have picked them from gnarly old trees beside Palmer Lake, while sharp, cracking retorts of breaking ice heralded Spring’s return. This year, my companion and guardian of the hill on which I live shed her limbs, a parting gift I will treasure.

We picked up the broken, scattered limbs of that October blow and heaped them onto a sheet in the living room. A few days later we picked the buds, the truly given buds, from the brittle branches. Next year’s leaf buds formed and tightly wrapped in their resinous coating to wait out winter storms. The unfurling song tucked inside each one. Tacky, propolis scented golden pitch clung to our coated fingers.

In a gallon jar filled with olive oil, the buds now steep, their yearlong maceration begun. A cotton cloth rubber-banded over the opening let’s the moist breath of the buds exhale. (Cover too tightly, the moist exhale sours the oil.) The long, slow marriage of oil and resin is underway. A daily stir the first 2 weeks (remember the beginning of marriage?), then the oil-bud mixture rests and matures in a cool, dark place. Occasionally, I check it, like I check a sleeping child, placing my hand gently on it’s back to feel the breathing. I smell it’s luxuriant, sonorous aroma. I tend its transformation through the dark months of winter. I listen to the songs in the naked; snow covered branches, the ancestors’ voices and dreams.

If, on your journey, you should have occasion to pick buds from the tree called Balm of Gilead and infuse them into oil, remember:

Tacamahac, Tacamahac, Tacamahac

Anoint your skin lavishly.

Breathe deep the rich and resinous oil!

Savor its warmth and resonant scent

To ease your daily toil.

Tacamahac, Tacamahac, Tacamahac

 Anoint your friends and family.

Sing songs of transformation.

Feel seasons dancing ‘round the wheel.

Join heartfelt restoration.

   Tacamahac, Tacamahac, Tacamahac.