Old Mermaids Healing Works

Yesterday I walked in the woods with a friend of mine. She invited me over to collect wild herbs. She talks to the plants, too. She thanks them. She listens for their wants and needs. I drove to her house and then she took me to a patch of nettles. It was my destiny. Yes, I had a date with destiny and her name was Stinging Nettles.

For years, decades even, people have told me to eat nettles for my allergies. For six weeks once I drank a “tea” with nettles in it. I had a headache for the entire six weeks, and my allergies did not improve one whit.

Every spring when my best friend Linda was alive, she and her daughter Serena harvested tender nettle shoots. Linda said nothing tasted better. I wouldn’t eat any even when she offered, much to my regret now. I was afraid of them. I had become afraid of everything. Every green thing. Too many doctors had told me I was allergic to the world.

I definitely did not feel as though I belonged.

But even before I was told I was allergic, I was afraid: I was always looking toward the end of things. For the loss. I wanted to be prepared. And now, after years of loss, I was punch-drunk on it. Fear cut loose any moorings I had to the here and now.

A few months ago, my naturopath tried to get me to start drinking nettles. He explained from an anthroposophical view what nettles did. (I can’t remember it well enough to repeat it.) I was skeptical, but soon after a friend offered me dried nettles. I took them and put them up in the cupboard. When I went to look for them later, the cupboards were bare. So I let it go.

Last week, my naturopath urged me once again to use nettles. A few days later, I was walking out in the woods and having trouble breathing. I walked and walked. I looked to the sky for help. I looked to the Columbia River flowing toward the ocean. “Can you stop and help me?” The river flowed on. I looked to the blond marsh cane. I looked to the old oaks covered with blackberries.

I stepped onto a path into the woods. Mosquitoes flew all around me. My chest was heavy. I wondered again, again if I was going to have to suffer with this breathing problem for the rest of my life. Why did this particular illness plague me? I felt myself getting smaller and smaller. I couldn’t connect with anything except my desperation to breathe.

Then something shifted in the woods. I can’t explain exactly what. It was just a feeling. I looked ahead and a round circle of light fell through the dark forest like a spotlight. Beneath the light, a group of nettles swayed gently in an breeze I couldn’t feel. I walked over to the nettles. I felt like they had called out to me. They were standing in compassion with me. I started to cry. I held out my hands to them.

We breathed together.

When I left, I said, “I’ll see you soon. It’s a date.”

Days later, I went to my friend’s house to pick nettles. We stood on the edge of the nettle field. I had never walked amongst nettles because I knew I could get stung.

My friend said she doesn’t get stung—not until the nettles have had enough of her harvesting. Then she knows it’s time to stop.

I followed my friend and her daughter into the nettles. The nettles waved. They moved toward us. They moved away from us. They showed themselves. We asked. They consented. We harvested leaves and stalks. Cleavers clung to them so we harvested them, too. We were deliberate and conscious. We were aware of where we walked, what we said. It was a lovely dance.

We filled a sack and then we wandered. I made acquaintance with an elder tree. Her leafy branches reached up toward us and her trunk sunk deep into the darkest part of the woods. She felt ancient. Waiting.

Afterward we drank nettle tea and made nettle broth. My throat scratched a bit. I got a bit of a headache. It didn’t last and it didn’t matter. I was absolutely besotted with the entire day, with the green, with the humans, with the animals. I was in my element. I was elemental. Completely comfortable and happy.

Grounded.

I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this way. When I put my hands on someone for healing work, I feel present. I am completely besotted then. Completely in love. But that’s about them.

This was about me. Something was clearing.

When I drove home, I was awake.

When I walked through the door at home, I felt as though someone had whispered an enchantment. I was Sleeping Beauty. I had been pricked by stinging nettle and now it was time. I fell to sleep listening to Harlan Ellison talk about writing. I drifted.

At dusk, awake again, I walked down to the community garden. It felt strange to me, this manufactured garden, after being out in the woods. Still, it was beautiful. I was alone, human-wise. I looked out at the gorge cliffs. I felt their presence. Solid. Old. Waiting.

Waiting for us to wake up?

I began watering and talking to my wind-bedraggled plants, and the plovers began calling out noisily near the river. I looked over and saw a pickup truck parked near the river’s edge. The plovers kept crying out and diving. The pickup wasn’t supposed to be where it was. I watched. Eventually a man came up the bank and began putting fishing gear into the back of the truck. He looked over at me several times. I didn’t know if he was curious or if he was trouble. Maybe he wondered why I was watching him. I took my cue from the birds.

I turned so that I no longer had my back to him. Then I climbed up onto the bench near my garden and I held the sprayer over the bed. I made myself bigger.

Top of the world, Ma!

The man got into his truck and drove away. He kept watching me as he went. I got bigger. The truck disappeared around a corner. The birds settled down. I grinned.

I was besotted with plovers.

Later, Mario and I worked in the kitchen together. He put away dishes. I cleaned the hummingbird feeder. (I am besotted with hummingbirds.) We talked about our day. I made a nettle infusion, watched the dried leaves and hot water mix into a luxurious brown liquid. I felt like I was home. Truly. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

It seemed like it had been weeks, months, years since I had felt at home. Still. Settled.

I brought Mario a sip of nettles before we went to sleep. I drank some too. Now we were both nettle. And nettle was us.

In the dark, Mario rubbed my back and said sleepily, “Go to sleep. Go to sleep,” a mantra of touch and words. I had gotten only a few hours sleep the night before, and he wanted to soothe me into my dreams. When I closed my eyes, I saw green. I was still besotted with all the plants I had seen during the day.

I lay on my husband’s shoulder and we wrapped ourselves around one another. I listened his heartbeat. “Let’s fall to sleep this way,” he said. I closed my eyes and felt myself sinking, sinking, sinking into dreams and into him. For once I didn’t think about what I would do if I lost him, didn’t think about the end of everything, I just held him and drifted again. I was completely besotted.

I am besotted with my husband.

In the middle of the night, I went downstairs and poured a bit of the nettle broth into a cup. I curled up on the couch, and I sipped the nettle.

How can I explain how in love I was at that moment? In love with the nettles. My husband. The world.

Had the stinging nettle pricked me awake?

Around dawn, I went upstairs. I put my hand on Mario’s hip, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.

When I was a girl, I thought I was put on this Earth to love. That was my gift. That was who I was. I would reach out and touch someone and love flowed from me to them. I put my arms around trees and loved them. I pressed my face against the earth and loved the earth. Then I grew up and no longer believed that. That was too sentimental.

Now I know that girl knew who she was. She knew more than I know.

I don’t know why I fell asleep way back when. I may fall asleep again—and again.

I may forget again.

But today I know I am in love.

I am love.

I am drunk on love.

Besotted.

(We’ll be in communion with plants during the Faery Ecology workshop. This essay is from my essay Besotted. You can find the complete essay here.)