Euell Gibbons: Author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus

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PLOWBOY: But what about the folks in the middle . . . the people who feel that the "hate nature" idea is wrong and who would love to know how to forage . . . but who have no "wise uncle" to instruct them in the ways of the wilds. Can such individuals learn to forage from a book?

GIBBONS: Some of them can't. People have become so estranged from nature that a great many don't know how to go about recognizing a plant. They don't know how a plant is formed, what its essential parts are. Such people ask, "How can I tell the edible ones from the poisonous?" They want a shortcut so they don't have to learn anything . . . but there isn't any shortcut, other than growing up with or acquiring the knowledge firsthand.

Think of it this way: it would be extremely difficult—in a book—to teach someone to distinguish between a head of cabbage and a head of lettuce. Yet anyone who's raised a gardep. orhas become acquainted with supermarket produce recognizes the difference quite easily. It's the same with wild foods. A book can only present information. It's up to the individual to absorb that knowledge and put it to use . . . and that takes some effort and firsthand living.

Unfortunately, many of us don't seem to want to expend the necessary energy. It's easier for a parent to just tell a child that some wild plants are poisonous and, therefore, the child should never touch a volunteer plant, look at one, get close to one, etc., etc. The parent doesn't have to learn a damn thing and the child is robbed of a tremendous heritage. As a result, we get more alienated from nature every minute. We don't even understand "The Barefoot Boy " these days because Whittier was talking about a relationship with nature that we don't have anymore.

A boy who lives near here came over once and got so excited when he found me out in the orchard gathering wild strawberries. He'd lived here all his life and never even knew they were there. My God, when I was a boy the idea of letting wild berries get past you . . . I mean, we didn't have a Coke machine at our little country school but we knew exactly where every wild nut—every wild berry—was growing and when recess came we were right out after them. To me it's a damn shame that today's kids aren't getting what's coming to them.

PLOWBOY: Which brings us back to the way we relate and interrelate with nature . . .

GIBBONS: Right.

PLOWBOY:. . . and the question of how we should approach nature.

GIBBONS: We need to develop an attitude of loving cooperation with no idea of "conquest". It's much easier to learn about a thing you love than a thing you intend to conquer or dominate. We're thinking of domination if we say "weeds", "brush" or "briars" when we're really talking about lamb's-quarters, blackhaws or blackberries. Emerson's definition was, "A weed is a plant whose virtues we have not yet discovered."

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