Let the desert gather you

Nabhan, G.P. 1990. Desert Plants as Calories, Cures, and Characters; & The Creosote Bush is Our Drugstore. pg. 2-19 in Gathering the Desert. Univ. Of Arizona Press.

I love the desert. 
I love the desert we're in here, and I love the desert in Arizona. I've spent only brief moments of time in the Sonoran, with more experience further north in Arizona around Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon, Prescott and Sedona. 
Oh, Sedona.

Reading this reminds me, a little.

I'm not familiar with most of the plants mentioned in this reading, and so it's hard to keep enraptured, the way I would normally reading about plants. Greasewood or creosote, is however great to know about. When I meet it, I'll feel a reverence, a knowledge and a familiarity. I'd like to smell its branches and leaves, know the scent.

 Here are some pictures of creosote, or Larrea tridentata.  Latin names are awesome.  Weird in that they slice up the world and categorize it, but awesome in that they allow identification of particular plants that may have multiple names over space and time.

I found a few points in the reading of particular interest. “The surest way of discovering a family's ethnic origins is to look into its kitchen. Long after dress, manners, and speech have become indistinguishable from those of the majority, the old food habits continue as the last vestiges of the previous culture.” Cool. That's really interesting. Food is such a part of us, a part of our bodies, its tastes, its nutrition, and its links to plants, sometimes right nearby, and sometimes far, far away. The importance of this can be seen in all the 'ethnic' supermarkets and speciality stores that spring up to allow immigrant cultures access to their traditional cultural foods. It's interesting to note that part of some official definitions of food security include provisions for culturally-appropriate food. Food sovereignty, which goes further to say that communities have the right to determine processes of food production free from neocolonial influence, certainly holds culturally-appropriate food at its centre of concern.

In the first section of the reading Gary Nabhan quotes Nicholas Hildyard saying that the world hunger problem's solution lies in reestablishing cultures rather than destroying them. This ties in closely. “Nutritionists are needed in precisely those societies whose culture has broken down,” he writes. This is a great illustration of the systemic nature of ecologies and why it's difficult to solve problems piecemeal, out of context. Ecologies have a logic unto themselves, having found a relatively static balance, at least for periods of time, amongst the relationships within them.

It's interesting to note later on in the second section when Nabhan writes about the scientists who balk at greasewood's healing abilities. He goes on to describe how different chemical compounds of the greasewood plant are slowly being isolated and proven to be applicable to different things. No offence but I think sometimes science really cannot see the forest for the trees. Sure, science is a good and reliable way of knowing some things, but when people feel the need to isolate everything and prove it via scientific method it just comes off to me as arrogance. There is an inherent disrespect toward other ways of knowing displayed. If cutting things away from their context is the problem in much of technology and modern society's ills, science has much to answer for. Isolation can be useful; it can also be blinding.

There is value to be found in all ways of knowing, and science needs to respect that which is outside of itself rather than trying to dominate the landscape.

“Even if you don't gather the desert, let it gather a feeling in you. Even if you don't swallow it as medicine, meditate upon it: the desert can cure.”