The Ferns Speak

 

This is the time of the year, in southern Ontario, to forage for those wild treasures of the forest – fiddleheads.  Only the fiddleheads of the Ostrich Fern are edible in these parts.  Since ferns can be tricky to identify, it is best to do so in the summer and then remember where they were the following spring.   However, there is another possible way to identify Ostrich Fern rhizomes in the spring.  The fertile fronds of both the Ostrich and the Sensitive ferns are still present in the spring on top of some of the rhizomes. 

Telling these two fertile fronds apart is rather like telling the difference between frog and toad eggs.  Frog eggs are laid in one big mass while toad eggs are laid in a double row on a long string.  Likewise, the fertile frond of a Sensitive Fern is made up of double rows of brown bead like structures on little branches while those of the Ostrich Fern are dark brown and look like a feather.

The furled young fern leaves rise up from the rhizome looking like the head stock of a violin or fiddle, hence the name fiddlehead.  This is the stage to pick them for a delicious meal.  As these fronds grow, the curled heads unfurl.  Their tiny leaflets are curled in on themselves and these too unfurl and open up.  At this stage, they are no longer edible for humans.

I spent some time recently, sitting on a fallen log with a patch of Christmas Ferns.  They are so called since they are evergreen and apparently people used to pick them for Christmas decorations.  Last year’s fronds lie on the forest floor as the new fiddleheads rise from their centre, from the rhizome below.  I am paying attention, looking carefully and listening. The ferns speak:

Christmas Fern fiddleheads and last year's evergreen fronds

“When the time is right, our new growth rises.  Light, warmth and water tell us when it is time.  Tightly curled, our fiddleheads rise from our rhizome, our core, where we have stored our energy over the winter.  As we rise, the pressure of the soil disappears and we  stretch out, unfurling in the absence of constraint, in the presence of sunlight.

Do you dare to rise from the constraints of human life?  Do you dare to uncoil your gifts, your DNA in the presence of love?  Fear and grief kept them buried, coiled and furled.  Do you dare to take up space?  Do you dare to grow and mature as if you belonged here?  As if you were home?”

I have to admit that there is something about unfurling, exposing, taking up space that feels dangerous.  It is like wearing a target on one’s back.  Part of that is true, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.  Below the surface is the historical, ancestral trauma.  Just like an iceberg, that is the part that can really do the damage.

Some of my ancestors left Ireland to seek employment in the cotton mills of Oldham in Lancashire, UK.  Some came from Yorkshire and some from Middlesex as well.  They left their land and worked inside the mills and for the businesses that supported the mils and their workers.  Intense pollution was the price tag they paid.  Long, unhealthy hours of work was also the price.  Don’t rise above your station was the rule of the land.

I sit on a fallen log amidst the debris of logging and the forest feels fractured.  The world feels fractured with the pandemic.  And my DNA feels fractured by the traumas of my ancestors.  I sit on a fallen log and watch the ferns unfurl.  They speak of rising and spreading out.  They speak of embodying space, of being Christmas Ferns.  They share the forest floor with Trilliums, Trout Lilies, Wild Leeks, Maples, Beech and Balsam Firs.  They share the forest with Wild Turkeys, Deer, birds, fungi and insects.  They are unfurling together and becoming their full selves.

Do I dare to unfurl my clenched, wounded DNA so that the full coding is available to me and to the world?  Do I dare to learn how to heal these old, old wounds not of my making?

For supper, I feast on fiddleheads and Wild Leeks.  I drink my Nettle tea freshly foraged and chlorophyll packed.  I feel their strength enter my body, their wildness and their wisdom.  Unfurl, stretch out, be fully human.  We will show you how.