I am always looking, but in the Fall especially is when I am really keeping an eye open on the natural world looking to see what teaching supplies may be ready for gathering. Many of the materials I use on a regular basis ripen or mature in the Fall and early Winter as we have reached the end the growing season for most plants.
In the last several weeks I have gathered drying, mature, but not mildewed, cattail (Typha latifolia) leaves, newly dropped acorn (Quercus) caps, black walnut (Juglans nigra) shells, willow (Salix) twigs and a few gray pine (Pinus sabiniana) cones for the nuts they possess. I am drying the cattail leaves in straight bundles that I will later soak and use for teaching cordage, rope and making clothes for split cedar plank dolls or perhaps even simple baskets. The acorn caps will be turned into ring and pin games and the acorns will become food and spinning tops, the pine nuts food and beads.
As an offering, wherever I am gathering, I leave plucked strands of my own hair, as a personal acknowledging and giving thanks to the plants and shrubs for the bounty they are sharing with me. In past times I would just throw whatever change I had in my pockets behind me as a “thank you”. Leaving something from my own body feels more personal and correct.
It is the time of year for rains and windstorms. These storms will shake down the acorns and pine cones and will break off some of the lower branches of our foothill gray pines, a self-pruning adaptation that prevents the larger mature trees from being dangerously affected by ground fires.
Along these fallen branches, you will find large blisters of fresh sap and rosin the tree had created as a band aid wherever a pine cone had separated and dropped to the ground. These fist sized balls of sap, when heated and mixed with finely ground charcoal and rabbit dung, will create pitch, a useful mastic with dozens of uses as a glue and sealant.
This time of year, as I travel around my region, I am always on the lookout for the natural resources that I need for my ongoing teaching programs. Roadsides, dry ditches, public open spaces and habitats along creeks and streams can all offer different materials at different times of the year.
Around an old black walnut tree along a busy boulevard, I gathered the empty, critter and bug cleaned nut shells, that will become a traditional dice game once they are filled with the black pine pitch mixture, with a final decoration of tiny abalone chips. The leaves are also coming down forcing me to rake away this covering with my hand to find the treasures beneath.
Once I am on the ground and in the mode of finding and selecting acorns, caps, walnut shells or pine nuts, the adrenaline kicks in and I am on a treasure hunt, with each new discovery another chemical hit. The excitement of finding two big acorn caps still attached to their shared branchlet is a plus. In one movement, my hand has gotten a two for one!
When hiking along local stream banks I am always on the lookout for long straight willow shoots. These will be dried and used for the pointy handles for the ring and pin games, tools used by my students for cleaning out the insides of cane and bone whistles, counting sticks for scoring games and for crafting simple baskets. The fresh green ones will be split and become willow deer figures. The longest, straightest branches usually are growing up from animal or nature coppiced root bases. This nascent growth can be found where beavers are active, these young shoots being part of their food supply.
The beavers in my nearby creek system have also been dropping small oaks along the bank. One young tree, brought down into my gathering reach, had several long straight branches that will be made into digging sticks for my students to gather soaproot (Chlorogalum pomeridianum) and brodiaea bulbs in the spring.
Higher in the foothills, in the late summer and early fall, I knew the manzanita (Arctostaphylos manzanita) berries were dropping, but I already have enough from previous years to make a lot of sweet cider. But the thought of all those un-picked berries was almost irresistible as are the multitude of dropped gray pine cones in the same gathering area, even though I already have plenty of cleaned pine nuts from past years, stored already.
The time for gathering the fruit from blue elderberries (Sambucus mexicana) has long since passed, but now that the leaves are dropping, it is easier to view and harvest the long, straight shoots and branches and to begin to process these versatile materials into whistles, flutes and clapper stick preforms. The larger diameter branches are also gathered to make tubular containers and to use as hearth boards for friction fire making while young strait shoots rising out of the ground make excellent drills for making friction fire.
On recent hikes I have come across once verdant patches of mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana), still standing tall but with their leaves brown and withered, but they are still calling me to gather them. For even in this drying state, once rolled around in the palm, they make a very fine fire tinder. In pre-contact times, these aromatic leaves would be mixed in with gathered acorns in large granaries where the pungent volatile oils would help to keep pests away from this valued food source.
Another native plant that calls to me are the young buckeyes (Aesculus californica) with long straight shoots that are an outstanding drill material for making friction fires. In summer the young shoots are usually hidden by the prolific Poison Oak (Toxicodendron diversilobum) which shares their habitat, but with the leaves gone and the vine on the ground they become easy to locate.
This is also the best time of year to spot new patches of soaproot bulbs. Their flower stalks now stand tall against browning and blown down summer grasses. I usually take time to strip off the dried flowers which are still holding many seeds and then cast them out onto favorable looking areas adjacent, to encourage the growth of more of these versatile plants. I will have a long post highlights the amazing qualities of this versatile California Native in the coming months.
There is something about these wild native resources that keep calling me back to gather them and to share them with my community. Maybe it is an intrinsic Fall, full moon, harvest bounty that is ingrained in all humans if we only give in to that natural, seasonal time scale that guided our ancestors so well, in a time that paying attention to these resources meant comfort or starvation depending on how long the Winter lasted.
It is at the same time frustrating that my modern life leaves too little time to be gathering but also fulfilling that I DO notice these resources and that I am actively appreciating them even if I am not out in the field actively gathering as much as I would like.