edible wilderness within

this weekend, I went into the mountains to go wild vegetable picking with a neighbor dad (and then I got heat stroke and vomited and spent a delirious night on the tatami mat floor, but that’s another story). we stopped at seemingly random places along the mountain, where he pointed things out: this giant hole in the dirt is where a wild boar rolled around. here are fresh tracks from the antelope. these purple flowers mean there are edible mountain vegetables nearby. he then, over the course of the morning, showed us five different kinds of vegetables growing amongst the rambles. and I was so amazed.

because to an untrained eye, everything looked the same; it was all just wilderness, just green things growing in a tangled mess. but how do you look at the green things growing, and know what is edible, and what is not? what is poisonous and will kill you — and what will nourish and feed you for dinner?

certainly, it’s traditional mountain knowledge passed down from ancestors. I most definitely want those wilderness skills.

but this experience raised another question that interested me on a metaphorical level. I often use the metaphor of wilderness to understand my inner world — my psyche, sources of creativity, and my subconscious. building on this metaphor, I ask myself the question:

how do we learn the art of deciphering the wilderness within ourselves?

how do we learn what is edible, and what is poisonous? (in the form of thoughts, urges, feelings, emotional and psychic patterns) how do we know what will nourish us for dinner, and what will kill us, slowly? how do we come to a place of fine tuned awareness of all the green things growing inside — which appear just like a tangled mess, but, if you look closer, can be identified (with or without names) into edible and non-edible, medicinal and toxic plants, weeds and parasitic plants?

I think the answer is always the same:

careful awareness, attentive observation. maybe, documentation. understanding the complex inner dynamics of this ecosystem which is the whole self. and certainly, our ancestors have records of what is edible and what is not edible. the wise men (and women) wrote about it in ancient texts, in more or less precise words.

the creative instinct is edible. love is very edible, and medicinal. anxious, paralyzing thoughts and worries are not only non-edible, they’re also parasitic.

but I think for each person, it’s still an individual process of discovery, and self-understanding. it happens by simply noticing. observing the self, without judgement - like a naturalist, on a moment to moment basis. and we get immediate feedback — from our bodies, from our emotions. when something feels good or bad: all of that is information. and good thing we live in the mountains already, so the journey there can happen in a single moment. a single breath. right now.