Euell Gibbons: Author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

GIBBONS: Well, I don't always change water. Greens that are mild in flavor don't need it at all. I only change water with extremely bitter plants like dandelion and milkweed.

I look at it this way: palatability is very, very important . . . the amount of vitamins in a plant won't help you at all if they don't get into your stomach. Our tests at Penn State showed that you only lose—at most—35% of the vitamin C and none of the vitamin A (the two things we tested for) when you cook a wild vegetable in three waters. If you start with a plant that was maybe twice as nutritious as the comparable garden variety to begin with, you still have a better vegetable. Then too, not everyone prefers their food as bland as I do. One man wrote me asking, "Why did you say milkweed had to be boiled three times? I like it just cooked and eaten."

PLOWBOY: What do you think of the sudden popular interest in ecology? Are people really changing their attitudes toward nature?

GIBBONS: Yes, I think so and it's very definitely a part of the general youth revolution. There's a generation growing up that's genuinely different, although the difference may not be as drastic or as original as some of them think. I was smoking pot in 1932 and was arrested for inciting to riot in 1934.

PLOWBOY: You've had some experience with intentional communities. Why do they interest you?

GIBBONS: They've interested me for a long time, though I've done a lot more of almost-becoming-a-member than of actually joining. When we left Hawaii, we were thinking of joining a community some Quakers—largely to get away from the draft—set up in Monte Verde, Costa Rica. We thought about another one, Macedonia, which used to be in Georgia and we even considered the Bruderhoff in Paraguay for a while . . . when they started near here we were pulled to them more than any other group. The Bruderhoff bunch is awfully hard to think of arguments against when you're around them . . . there's so much love and brotherhood in the community. But our theological differences were such that I didn't think I could become a member without either drastically changing my beliefs or lying about them. And I don't know how to change my beliefs... I have no technique for that.

PLOWBOY: Why were you first attracted to intentional communities

GIBBONS: Because I used to say the only way a person could serve God was in community, though now I can't even remember why I thought that. I've become very disillusioned with communes, mainly because of the amount of time you have to spend on the glue needed to hold one together. After a group reaches a certain size diminishing returns set in and it's no longer efficient at anything.

I was part of an intentional community in Indiana for a year. I couldn't see any community in the place and I never did find out what its intentions were. It looked to me like what they were doing was raising more corn to buy more machinery to raise more corn to buy more machinery. The government bought the corn, stored it in grain houses till it rotted and then bought some more. So I couldn't see that I was doing anything worthwhile. And the people I was with couldn't see anyone taking time off to go out and pick some berries. I didn't want to live my life that way.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print