Enchanted by Squirrel-Corn

It has become my habit over the last few years, to take the third week of May as a holiday.  It is the week of my birthday and May is my favourite month.  I love to watch the leaves emerge on the trees, to plant vegetables and to get onto my hands and knees and see which perennials have survived the winter.  And so the week is my birthday gift to myself.

This year, my friend gave me the perfect book-present to go along with my self-present.  The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of Everyday by Sharon Blackie has been a delight to read, as well as a kind of a map back to a place of wonder.

I haven’t finished the book yet, as it is one to savour and live and there is no whodunnit revealed at the end to speed me along.  It is all about the journey. And I wanted to share a part of that journey with you.

Blackie believes “that the state of enchantment has four major components:

1.   It is founded upon a sense of fully participating in a living world – a feeling of belonging rather than separation.

2.   It incorporates feelings of wonder, and curiosity.  To be enchanted is to be comfortable with the fact that not everything can be explained; to tolerate, even welcome, the presence of mystery.

3.   Enchantment is not all in the head.  It is very much a function of our lived, embodied experience in the world.

4.   Echantment is the emanation of the mythic imagination, and is founded on an acknowledgement of myth and story as living principles in the world.” (p. 38)

After reading this section, I went for a walk in the woods.  A hardwood bush in the spring in Ontario is the perfect remedy for a long winter.  It is like a spring tonic for the spirit and if you can’t find enchantment there, then you are in serious trouble.

Thinking of Blackie’s words, I tried to get out of my head and feel a part of the forest.  I bent over newly emerging plants to see more clearly and tried to feel with my whole body, the feeling of different plants.  

The forest floor was blanketed with white trilliums and the occasional purple and pink ones as well.  Little points of white light, they were like forest floor stars that mostly pointed south towards the arc of the sun. They seemed to twinkle and I could feel an excitement growing inside of me at this abundance that had emerged from beneath the fallen leaves of last autumn.  Where everything seemed dead, suddenly there was an explosion of light and life.

Then in the midst of the sea of white flowers I spied some tiny pink flowers with purple stripes.  After searching my wildflower book later, I discovered they were called Carolina Spring Beauties which seemed an apt name that made me smile.

Looking for patterns in the areas of green, I detected the umbrella shapes of the may apples, the single leaves of wild leeks, the fuzzy heart-shaped leaves of wild ginger and the spotted greens of trout lilies.  It was like meeting old friends after a period of separation.  I welcomed them back and they welcomed me.  Just like Sharon Blackie said, I experienced a feeling of belonging.  I picked one violet leaf, brushed it off and ate it.  Violet leaves are edible as are the flowers and full of vitamin C. It is one of my spring rituals, welcoming new growth and health into my body.

A few days later, my partner and I, on the way to delivering a finished 

instrument, stopped at a provincial park near Mono Mills, Ontario.  We found a forest trail and followed it into another hardwood bush.  Looking for our friends, we found them; violets with purple, mauve, yellow and white flowers, may apples, a few trilliums, trout lilies and wild ginger.  As well got closer to the stream flowing at the bottom of a ravine, we walked through a beautiful grove of blue cohosh. 

They were everywhere with their blue green scalloped leaves.  I tried to feel their presence with my body and a wave of calm, like water, flowed over me.  

Traditionally, the root of this plant was used to begin labour or as an antispasmodic to ease menstrual pains as well as for anti-inflammatory uses.  The plants felt calming to me as I stood surrounded by them.  Later in the week when I felt anxious, I returned in my mind to that blue cohosh glade and the experience of a calm body, and the anxiety and it’s chemical cascade was interrupted.

We followed the path through the forest and came to some stairs up the side of the ravine.  I was carefully watching the stairs and my feet when I suddenly noticed a leaf I had never seen before.  It was elegantly sculpted like an art deco design, like a rounded fern edge but not a fern.  I stopped to look at it and my partner noticed the same plant flowering a little higher on the hill.  

Scrabbling up the muddy slope I came face to face with delicate heart-shaped white flowers suspended over the delicate leaves.  Of course I had forgotten to bring my camera, so I had to try to memorize the shape of the flowers and the leaves.  I felt a curiosity about the name of this plant, a sense of wonder about the exquisite leaves and in short, I a was enchanted.

Once we returned to the car where I had my book on wildflowers, I combed through the book until I found the plant.  It is called Wild Bleeding Heart which makes sense but it’s other name is Squirrel-Corn.  That made my partner and I burst into laughter as we have fed corn to squirrels in the yard in the fall.  The name comes from the tuber of the plant which looks like a kernel of corn.  The plant conjured up a story and we were delighted that the forest had shared this wondrous gift with us. Later in the week as we were faced with things that were frustrating or sad, we would just say Squirrel-Corn and we felt like children again.  And now, this plant has become part of our story.

Returning to the forest today, only a few days after the stunning trillium display, the beech leaves had emerged fully.  It was raining lightly and the day was dull, so the colour of the leaves was saturated and wonderful.  I felt bathed in this bright green spring light and felt totally alive.  My week is nearly over now and I feel rejuvenated and connected.  I had some other adventures which I will write about in a future blog.  For now I feel I have reconnected with "the enchanted life" and that is something I want to keep for the year to come.

Sharon Blackie (2018) The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.