A wrong attitude about nature is almost an integral part of our culture, and all the crying we're doing about the environment is going to come to nothing as long as such an attitude persists.--Euell Gibbons, 1972, qtd. in Smith
I'm channeling my Euell Gibbons tonight. Children of the sixties and seventies knew Euell as the craggy naturalist picking cranberries in the snow to add to his GrapeNuts breakfast cereal. We saw him on popular talk and variety shows. And we laughed at Tim Conway's impersonations of him on the Carol Burnett Show.
If you are a child of a different generation, here is a video of one of this iconic forager's commercials to get you up to speed; his cache in popular culture is not greatly diminished today, forty years after his death.
N.B. I was recently scolded by a math professor in my writing group when I insisted that Wikipedia is not a reliable scholarly source. He cited a new academic journal article in which researchers compared the information on the popular free, open-source encyclopedia to more authoritarian sources and claimed Wikipedia is just as accurate as they are. I don't believe it, though I'll often go to the site first to gather information, then verify it with the references given in the text or through my own research. In fact, the pine tree commercial Wikipedia cites is linked to its "source," the video posted above in which cattails are the wild food highlighted. In neither that nor the cranberry commercial is a pine tree mentioned. Ever the librarian and, hopefully, scholar, I maintain that quoting from Wikipedia does not enhance one's credibility whatsoever. That doesn't mean the site is useless; it just doesn't belong in a scholarly bibliography.
See the end of this article for a list of my sources; those providing unique information are also cited within the text of this "episode."
Okay, back on point: I've been reading and rereading Euell's books for many years--two of them, anyway: his breakthrough Stalking the Wild Asparagus, published in 1962, and Stalking the Healthful Herbs, 1966. I get so much new information and enjoyment each time I pick them up that I haven't yet acquired the second in the trilogy, Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop, from 1964. Gibbons published an additional three books I need to read, and I'm immediately going to start acquiring the rest of his oeuvre, Blue-Eyed Scallop first. The other titles are Beachcomber's Handbook, Feast on a Diabetic Diet, and Stalking the Good Life, the latter no doubt an allusion to the (sectarian) Bible on self-sufficient living by Scott and Helen Nearing. Additionally, Gibbons' column, "The Organic Nature Lover," appeared in Organic Gardening magazine and his articles in major publications, including National Geographic. After his death, his family published the Handbook of Edible Wild Plants (with Gordon Tucker) he'd been working on. Several Gibbons biographies are also available.
Though joked about and parodied by comedians even to this day, Gibbons had a great sense of humor. When being presented with a "wooden" plaque on The Sonny and Cher Show, he took a bite; actually, the plaque was an edible prop (Kallas).
But Gibbons was no joke. He was a fabulous writer, with humorous but thoughtful observations not only about plants but also human nature, science, politics, history, society, and himself. Though he doesn't hit anyone over the head with his opinions, a frequent reading of his work makes it clear Gibbons leaned toward the liberal side of politics and, and though rarely mentioned, refers to God as the Author of the wildings he samples, not in a way that is pedantic but rather, I believe, indicative of the sacredness with which he viewed the natural world. Such an attitude might be expected by a man named for the Old English pagan feast Yule and his background as a Quaker.
Gibbons argued that a benefit to using herbal over "modern" medicine is in the caring and concern shown by family members for the patient; however, he consistently recommends going to a medical doctor for anything but common, run-of-the-mill maladies. "Take your choice," the joked-about herbalist joked in a 1972 interview in Plowboy. "'If you treat a cold with herbal medicine, you'll be over it in a week. If you go to a doctor, it will take seven days' (laughter)" (Smith 7).
Euell Theophilus Gibbons (9/14/11-12/29/75)--Theophilus, meanwhile, means "friend of God," grew up in the southwest during the Dust Bowl years and augmented his struggling family's meals--and in some case provided the entire meals--with the wild foods he'd foraged. As an adult, his interests led him from job to job and place to place until publication of that first fateful book. He only had a sixth grade education, but his writing is intelligent, thoughtful, humorous, and filled with beautifully constructed prose, allusions to art, history, science, folklore, literature--you name it.
Gibbons' self-education included listening to his mother's, grandmother's, and others' advice about nature and foraging throughout his childhood, incessantly exploring the environment around him and experimenting with his findings, poring over books in libraries, talking to folks in small towns about their uses of wild plants, and eventually participating with universities studying the chemical and medicinal properties of the products of nature he'd collected, tasted, cooked, eaten, and served to friends and family. The fare at his famous "wild parties" consisted, at least in theory, of only those items he and his family had collected with nature, but he had no qualms about adding butter, seasonings, and other ingredients based on his hours of experimentation, producing dishes any gourmet chef would admire. His was no humorless, holier-than-thou attitude about his hobby, as he called it; he was not a survivalist or ascetic, just a lover of wild foods. Those out there who are survivalists would do well to keep Gibbons' books on hand for their anticipated end of the world; they may, indeed, help us survive a catastrophe that devastates our current way of life.
Indeed, in an apocolypse we won't have the Internet to turn to; our Kindles won't fire up. We will need access to good, old fashioned books. Plummeting funding for libraries all across the U.S. is penny wise and pound foolish. Libraries are an equal-opportunity self-education resource, as described by the man himself:
The wisdom the Indians accumulated wasn't lost, you know. There's hardly a tribe that someone didn't make a report on. Those papers contain invaluable information about the eating habits and the ethno-botany of each tribe and they can all be found in the Library of Congress now. When I began my studies before the Second World War, the old manuscripts were very hard to find. I had to go from library to library to dig them out. That's how I learned much of what I know about wild foods. (Smith, 6)While much of it is distinctly different from my experience, Gibbons' story and mine overlap in ways that endear me even more to this kindred spirit. Like Gibbons, I always wanted to write fiction, but later in life it was the natural world that captured my true passion, and today I'd rather write about it than make up characters and plots. Oh, I have two books of fiction in the works--one a mainstream (I hope) mystery, and the other a novel for tweens featuring fairies and much about the wonders of the still-wild world, what little there is left of it. However, with my limited energy it's difficult for me to turn to those projects and away from my love affair with Appalachia.
Gibbons and his wife finally settled down in central Pennsylvania, a fact I've known for a long time, but yesterday I decided to see exactly where. I knew it couldn't be too far from me since Central PA lies just above my home in one of the three Appalachian counties in Maryland. Beavertown, Pennsylvania, population 870 according to the 2000 Census, is only a three hours' drive from here, so I've decided to take a road trip to see where my hero lived and foraged and visit any attractions in his home town related to this much-admired man, who is named as one of the saints in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Year of the Flood. A fun coincidence is that my earliest crush, British former Monkee Davy Jones, had a seasonal home in Beavertown until he died, so I may be able to make this a double pilgrimage.
I wonder whether Gibbons chose to live out his years in Appalachia because of the abundance, probably the richest in this nation, of forageable food in these mountains. His comments in the Plowboy interview, which took place at his Appalachian home, certainly suggest this: "Some of the best places in the world [for foraging] are right here in this area. Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland are tremendous for wild foods because we have an overlapping of southern and northern flora" (Smith 12). He and his wife moved to an 11-acre farm in 1964, two years after his popular book brought him the wherewithall to purchase such a place--and, of all possible places, they chose Appalachia.
My reasoning for moving here from Washington, DC, was similar; I loved the flora and fauna and scenery of this lush, ancient mountain range. This love naturally (pun intended) led me to study field guides and explore woods and fields for wildflowers, then move on to reading about and identifying medicinal and culinary plants, and finally to become mildly obsessed with this topic. I no longer have as much energy as I need for daily life, so wandering the woods is becoming increasingly rare for me, but I hope I never have to give up my wanderings in the Cathedral. Gibbons thoroughly experimented with his findings and developed recipes after numerous attempts, in many cases--again, a level of attention I no longer can match, though I do cook and eat some wildings and collect them for a variety of uses--"mostly wildflower" bouquets, dream pillows, and tussie mussies, to name a few.
Also like me, Gibbons suffered from a genetic syndrome that negatively affected his health. He died of complications (an aortic aneurysm) from Marfan syndrome at 64. I'm just a decade younger than that, and as viewers know I am increasingly limited by neuromuscular disease, most likely myotonic dystrophy. (I will know for sure soon after seeing a specialist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.) I've no doubt Gibbons remained as active and engaged as he possibly could be until he took his last breath, and I'm determined to do the same.
Euell Gibbons is an inspiration to many, many persons today as he was in life. He is certainly an inspiration to me. Much of what he accomplished came about relatively late in life. His early wanderings and job changes may well have been due to his insatiable curiosity and difficulty in settling down; perhaps he, like me, had ADHD. "He's led a colorful life as cowboy, farmer, hobo, alcoholic, carpenter, Depression-days communist and beachcomber," says biographer John Kallas of Wild Food Adventures. Guy Graybill gives a similar list in a Mother Earth News article: "During the years between [his birth in Texas and settling in central Pennsylvania], he lived--as a hobo, beachcomber, teacher, surveyor, cottonpicker, boat-builder, and more--in the Philadelphia area, Washington state, Indiana, California, New Mexico, Maine, Hawaii, and the South Seas."
Gibbons and I also apparently share similar philosophical outlooks. Though subsequent decades revealed the totalitarian dangers of Communism, his Depression-era interest in an egalitarian society was shared by many intellectuals. I've been a socialist sympathizer (though officially a Democrat) since reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in eighth grade. While I no loner ascribe to any particular faith, I was raised a liberal Christian in the United Church of Christ, attended the Unitarian-Universalist Church with my mother the year she was dying. (My religious history also includes a misguided decade as a Mormon.) After moving to Appalachia partly to assuage my grief after both my parents died in the space of four years before I was thirty years old, I began attending Quaker Meeting with my mentor and friend, Deb Hartman, who'd invited me to a big gathering of Friends in Bedford, Pennsylvania. The year was 1991, so Euell Gibbons would not have been in attendance--but I enjoy this unexpected connection nevertheless. After his early books, Gibbons often referred to Nature rather than God and perhaps always considered the former the Author he refers to early on.
Despite his considerable talents and abilities as well as his industrious nature, Gibbons did not reach financial stability until after the publication of his first book when he was 51 and the fame that followed. I'm just a couple of years older than that and am still waiting for the day when I can easily pay my bills and, perhaps, enjoy an occasional trip away from home or other mild indulgence. Gibbons' late success gives me hope that I might yet improve my circumstances at this late date. I've no longer much interest in getting and spending, really, but so much remains to experience and to know, so many plants remain to be foraged; I can't let my disease slow me down one bit more than it utterly insists upon--and having adequate funds to make daily living as safe, healthful, and rewarding as possible would make the stress of handling debilitating disease so much more tolerable. So thanks for that, Euell.
Another "cosmic" connection I learned today is that the Gibbonses named the home in Pennsylvania Dutch country where they settled "It Wonders Me." Years ago, I named my Appalachian Independent column "Weed or Wonder?"
After I had my first son, my mother gave me the book about toddlers titled The Wonder Years. Euell Gibbons proved that our wonder years do not have to end when we start kindergarten but can continue until we pass into whatever comes after our deaths and then, who knows, maybe never at all.
Gibbons' facility with language, his joy about the natural world, and his wry observations about human society are evident in a charming poem (if you'll pardon the poet's pathetic fallacy)--published after his death by Guy Graybill with permission of Gibbons' second wife and widow, Freda.
THE SNAIL
Come listen to this little tale about the lowly humble snail: While crawling on a rotten log, he isn't putting on the dog. He doesn't think, as on he labors, that he is better than his neighbors, nor that he is a little god — he knows he's just a gastropod.
Though he is host to liver flukes, he doesn't merit our rebukes. He doesn't do as humans do and brag of blood that's really blue. He mentions not his family tree and does not care for pedigree — admits his kin are slugs and whelks and doesn't try to join the Elks.
When Cupid's bow lets fly a dart that strikes the snail's two-chambered heart and he starts out his love to find, he doesn't seek a higher kind. He knows no name in upper crust will help him satisfy his lust, and genealogy can't prevail when he just wants another snail.
False pride is never his asylum. He knows Mollusca is his phylum, and though his gait is very slow, he really has no place to go; with ventral nerve, without a spine, he still thinks life is pretty fine. All arguments are sure to fail; he's satisfied to be a snail.
I thank whatever gods there be that such a fate was not for me — that evolution did not swerve till man had brain and dorsal nerve — that upright stance and flattened face prove mankind is a higher race. I swell my chest with pride — and then — I see the works of these great men.
I look around me, see our land with junk cars piled on every hand — billboards obstructing every view — a parking lot where trees once grew — polluted air — polluted streams — eroded soil and broken dreams — a rising crime rate — crowded jails.
Are humans really as smart as snails?
Keep wondering, friends. And, if you can, keep wandering the fields and woods. Treasures await. If you doubt it, pick up one of Euell Gibbons' stalking guides, and prepare to be amazed.
__________________
Works Cited
Graybill, Guy. "Euell Gibbons' Wild Foraging and Environmental Legacy." Mother Earth News September/October 1982. Reprinted online at http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/wild-foraging-and-environmentalism-zmaz82sozgoe.aspx?PageId=2#ArticleContent.
Kallas, John. "Euell Gibbons: The Father of Modern Wild Foods." Wild Food Adventurer Newsletter November 1998. Reprinted online at http://www.wildfoodadventures.com/euellgibbons.html.
Smith, Hal. Interview: "Euell Gibbons: Author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus." Plowboy, May/June 1972. Reprinted online in Mother Earth News http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/euell-gibbons-zmaz72mjztak.aspx#axzz35oL6HpmS.
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