In the spring I like to put the kettle on and leave the house with an empty porcelain teacup. I walk along the footpath until I reach a wooden bridge spanning a shallow draw often flooded with rain during this season. On the banks are a smattering of stinging nettle, the cantankerous European plant I have come to love as an allergy cure and spring tonic. The nettles are young enough that with a gentle touch I can harvest a few leaves from each without fear of being stung, even with my fingers bared to their long, waspish hairs. Nettle is like a crotchety person with a heart of gold. You have to play by her rules and respect her boundaries, but she will care for you if you’re brave enough to get close.
When my cup is half full, I walk back to my house and top it off with water that has boiled in my absence. The result is a vibrant green tea that tastes like freshly mowed lawn. As I sip it, I try to connect to what I am taking in: the sunshine, the soil, the rains. It is a small ritual of connection to place.
This is Emeshe by the way, and it’s funny to think about how the forest plants used to be anonymous to me; a nameless crowd of green. I was like a person at a party where I didn’t know anyone. Being a transplant from an arid climate, the lush foliage here was beautiful and captivating, but my appreciation for them was like the love you feel for the stranger on the subway; based more on aesthetics than substance. These days I am feeling that beginning to shift.
With my third spring in Missouri well under way, I feel I’m deepening friendships not just with the humans around me, but also with the other life forms that I see, smell, and hear each day. Just as I’ve come to know the history, quirks, and rhythms of my community mates (don’t talk to her before her morning coffee, he’s always forgetting his coat everywhere, etc.) I’ve started to know the history, quirks, and rhythms of the plants; which ones came from overseas and which are native, which are delicate and which are hardy, which are food and which are poisonous. Many members of this community have deep knowledge about the local plants and I am grateful for moments when they have taken the time to share their knowledge with me.
I often name the reason I moved to DR as a craving for depth over breadth. I wanted to know and be known, see and be seen. In a world where shallow connection is available everywhere, I wanted to know what it was like to have deeper roots and stronger foundations. What I didn’t realize was how that connection was not just about the human relationships I cherished, but also about the non-human relationships. The sea of green is becoming a landscape of familiar faces, a place of beings whose names I know and habits I understand, and I feel my community is growing beyond just the 50 or so people I share my life with. As the woods around my house fill in with leaves, and the garden begins to take off, I wonder which new plants I will get to meet this growing season and what they will teach me.
Emeshe Amade is co-leader of Dancing Rabbit’s nonprofit, the Center for Sustainable and Cooperative Culture. She is a regular contributing writer to this publication.