Here I am, Nature Girl herself, out in the wilds of Lexington. I followed a trail through conservation land that led me to a small bridge over the creek. The scene there put Monet's garden to shame. Everywhere I looked, the local flora and fauna seemed to be at its peak.
For example, these berries looked downright delicious to me. I grabbed a handful and was poised to throw them down the hatch when a passing hiker stopped me. "Wait! That's pokeweed! It's deadly poison!" she exclaimed, and went on to describe the chromosome damage that would ensue if ingested.
Little did this woman know I was brought up to laugh at danger. The berries tasted just fine to me. Later I found a copperhead snake in the bushes and picked it up to check out its fangs. I spotted some wild mushrooms and nibbled on them. I poked my nose in a bear's den to see if he was home. He wasn't. Then I rounded out the afternoon with a hot cup of tea made from tree bark.Where did I learn such stuff, you might ask? The answer: S•s•c•c•a•t•t•i•c•c•o! Scatico! Scatico!
5 comments:
Hope you make it to post another blog entry. Is Statio the place where you met the "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" gal?
I'm alive! And hardy enough to call and respond with the Camp Scatico cheer, "Squaw, Flying Eagle!"
(The answer, dear reader, is yes.)
Still singing?
Well, you did not get it from me, and that is, no doubt, a good thing. The fact is, pokeweed chewed slowly over the course of an hour affords you boundless energy. And copperheads make for playful,zany domesticated pets if you permit them a reliably temperate climate. (Should you happen to have a flute and a basket laying around, they love to vamp as a spitting cobra!) Would that I had opted for the road not taken.
The Late Ewell Gibbons
The leaves of the Poke weed are what "poke salad" is made from. Remember the song?
"Down in Louisiana
Where the alligators grow so mean
There lived a girl that I swear to the world
Made the alligators look tame
Poke salad Annie, poke salad Annie
Everybody said it was a shame
Cause her mama was working on the chain-gang
A mean, vicious, straight razor totin' woman"
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