Sunday, over sixty folks from our small community showed up for a talk and walk with a local herbalist, which surprised me and delighted the sponsors, who naturally profess a desire for everyone to be knowledgable about the plants that live here. I selfishly find larger groups of people draining after a short while, but if I can stand off at the edges, I'm better.
Being in large groups of people brings out my desire to be separate, and I often start feeling depressed because I'm reminded of how overpopulated our world is becoming. I also started picturing hoards of people marauding the local fields, pulling at plants and stuffing them in their mouths like voracious cows.
Okay, okay. . . I know it's an exaggeration.
As a child in Louisiana, my grandmother taught me the names of our plants, but as a newcomer to Northern California, it's younger folk who're teaching me the names of herbs that proliferate here.
Learning herbs and their uses is a wonderful addition to the bumper-sticker admonition to "think globally, act locally." I'd like to see another sticker that says "Be kind to plants; they're people, too."
