wild onion
So the botanical research and place-based exploratory portion of the Ground Shot Project is finally taking the work out on foot for a few months hiking the Colorado Trail this summer.
But, this walk, which will include forager and wild-tender Gabe Crawford (a recent Ground Shots Podcast guest) will be slower than the kinds of walks gung-ho thru-hikers are planning for with their ultra-lite gear and aim to conquer. Both of us are interested in ethnobotany and plants, and both of us have also completed thru-hikes in the past.
I walked the Camino de Santiago back in 2008, as well as pranced on sections of the Appalachian Trail, and Gabe completed the Colorado Trail a few years ago. Both of our experiences with thru-hiking, or pilgrimages, felt much too rushed. Even with our attempts at going a lot slower this time around on our walk, I’m sure we’ll still be wishing we had more time in some areas. The thing is— we can decide how long we want to take in certain areas, as we are overly allotting ourselves food at resupplies for this possibility, and aren’t attached to ‘finishing’ the entire route of the trail. Our goal isn’t about completing an arbitrary route, but to fully experience the land we walk through as best we can.
Contrary to the advice of ultra-lighters who won’t even bring a stove to cook on (nor will they cook on fire) we are bringing a plant guide book relevant to the area, binoculars for birding, notebooks to take notes, a smart-phone macro lens for plant photography and other video gear, and most importantly— native first food seeds for planting along the trails creating or adding to the diversity of pre-existing wild gardens planting in the past by indigenous peoples. The Colorado Trail specifically is based on old Ute trails, so is not actually a newly created trail —though supposedly it was ‘created’ in the last few decades, a group of nature-loving citizens figured out how to traverse this through public and private land designations. It would make sense that these trails would also contain stands of wild gardens tended long ago by the Utes. Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t wild gardens be tended, planted and taken care of? When people question me on if this was possible, I think to ask them— what do you think people ate? Random plants they just happened upon?
Our resupplies contain caches of seeds and their planting is our primary goal for the walk: to disperse them and attempt to be a little more reciprocal in our human-land relations.
Too, on the podcast this past Spring, we have been visiting themes with our guests around the topics of ‘wilderness’ and defining ‘wild’ and ‘cultivated’ and diving into the history of agriculture and human interaction with the land.
Particularly the episodes with Kollibri terre Sonnenblume and Zach Elfers are scholarly and insightful dialogues surrounding these subjects.
a kind of Dogwood
Walking for me has also always been a meditation, a kind of journey where some moments feel hard, others blissful and putting one foot in front of the other is a metaphor for the inner journey and also our other journeys in life. To simply walk, traverse, take things at a slower human pace, feels significant to me.
me, second from left, with friends, walking the Camino de Santiago in 2008. Photo credit: Mike Zang
me, walking the Camino de Santiago in 2008 - photo credit: Kip Redick
I’ve been facilitating aspects of the Ground Shots Project on the road out of my vintage late 60’s slide in truck camper for the last few years and often find myself chasing people or places for thousands of miles to meet up (not literally chasing in a creepy way but you know what I mean) or taking my body out into the middle of Nevada to hang with the Piñon trees there. I’ve been jumping to and fro sitting in a car all of the time to then land in places where I can be intimate for awhile.
It has been enlightening, rewarding and yet jarring to say the least. Taking it slower, being around less humans (and Covid has also forced this needed slow down on me), and letting my body process information at the speed it is meant to— feels like a worthy goal, and a good thing to do for myself and body/mind. And the land craves our slow, focused and curious attention too.
Fritillaria - Yellow Bell corms being dug for replanting and dividing, as well as eating for dinner!
Gabe and I filmed a short video while cacheing seeds last week, and put it on Youtube, explaining what seeds we are bringing and a little bit on why we want to do an intentional walk engaging wild-tending. You can view it below.
Gabe processing Acorns
Gabe planting Camas bulbs
Gabe planting Wapato
You can follow us along on our walk on Instagram (@goldenberries and @plumsforbums) or on Patreon where we will make occasional updates when we can. We will also be publishing a few audio journal entrees for the Ground Shots Podcast airing through September woven into other podcast episodes.
Wish us luck!
