The beautiful and mysterious ‘snakes head fritillary’ was formerly a staple of our stone-age cousins and more recently featured heavily in the diet of the North Western Native American Nations.
These bulbs when cooked taste like rice and the carbohydrates they contain seem to instantly energise the body.
Collecting wild foods creates a living and reciprocal relationship with the land. This is no abstraction or post Arcadian fairy tale – rather it is our natural state of being.
The enjoyment and celebration of wild foods is one of the most intimate ways in which we can come into a relationship with the earth. In doing so, it is possible to sense how much our interactions with the more than human world have become diminished.
This diminishment is epitomised by how much of our innate wildness has been stripped by the commodification and industrialisation of our modern food.
Compare then to the process of the forager; moving through nature, consciously scanning the mountain, the thrill of discovery, the smells of disturbed earth as the gift is revealed, the cleaning and finally the cooking and the eating.
This is a sensorial and ecological loop, a coming back to the source, time and time again. A truly virtuous and sensuous circle.
Free range and organic can only ever be so, if we include ourselves and our behaviour within those definitions.
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Photo: Snakes Head Fritillary casting a shadow of its namesake in Facinas. Courtesy of the author
About Neil Hill
Neil Hill is one of Europe’s top outdoor, wilderness and survival coaches. He believes that our modern disconnect from nature has led to many of our personal, physical and social problems. He has led courses into some of the worlds most hostile and wild environments. His passion is to reconnect people with their aboriginal roots in nature, enabling them to have adventures and experiences that unlock their massive potential, Neil is the founder of Rewilding Bushcraft.
