The Park Wildman
Atlas Magazine (National Geographic of Turkey)
December, 2006
By Tijen Inaltong

“Wildman” Steve Brill has been organizing educational tours in NY parks, and is teaching what edible plants one might encounter.

For millions of years people have been filling their knapsacks with myriad healthful plants and using them for curative purposes, as needed.

“Since we stopped hunting and gathering the only thing we haven’t changed is the way of finding food. Other than human beings, plants, animals, and the earth itself are resources—we have lost our primary connection with them. Our connection with living things has become living to matter, and holy things have become erased from our lives. The loss of this connection with nature has created an empty place in our souls, and changed us into dependency. In order to fill this black hole in us we have started looking externally for material ways and means of filling it.”

On that day about 20 Americans followed “Wildman” Steve Brill, and I was thinking that we are not sufficiently in touch with the Earth. When people lose touch with what nature bestows generously in its beauty, do they become day by day bound to dependency. Many of those in the group, probably, once this 4-hour walk is over, will pick up their old life where it left off, continue to run to work, coffee and pastry in hand, all the time unaware of the wild plants watching them from the roadside in astonishment. Maybe they will buy a bunch of it from a market and ignore the wild black cherry that they saw that day. As they sat on a park bench eating their garlic-flavored cream cheese sandwiches, they won’t ever see the much more aromatic (than the raised one) wild garlic growing next to them.

Probably, again on a fine day in the fall, as they take a walk, instead of eating a hawthorn that falls on their heads, they will prefer to kick it, instead of eating it. On the other hand I cannot resist imagining that a few of them will remember their knowledge of the fact that in Chinese and Indian medicine, this delicious fruit, red on the outside and yellow on the inside, was used as medicine for the heart. They might take the black walnuts that they took home, dry them, and after patiently peeling them, eat them.

“Wildman” Steve Brill has been organizing nature tours in NY’s many parks, creating recipes for wild plants, and lecturing. I did not know, during the same time that I was writing “The Story of a Grass,” that I would, on a sunny, warm fall day, in one of NY’s most beautiful Prospect Park, that I would acquire and leaf through The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook, and go on a nature discovery tour with his entertaining guidance. I also did not know that his mother-in-law had grown up in Turkey, that his book contains recipes from Turkish cuisine (one of them wild mushroom-zucchini pancakes.) There were other things I did not know. How delicious black walnuts are; that they surpass the Gingko biloba fruit that is so much revered in China; that the park has so many varieties of mushrooms, and that some are exceedingly delicious; that the beech tree that resembles the mother of a monster has seeds that are as tasty as nuts, they only bear once every 10 years, and that this is the year for them; that you can have a feast from the wild fruits growing in the park; that the Kentucky coffee-tree has black fruits the size of small chestnuts that when roasted can be made into a most delicious decaffeinated coffee. I understood what Steve meant by going shopping in mother Earth’s market when I returned home with armfuls.

I thought about not only of what Steve meant, but of women who, for millions of years, climbed over stone and mountain in order to fill their knapsacks with a thousand and one varieties of healthful plants, carrying them on their backs, some in order to feed their families, and selling the rest in a bazaar, using them for healing as needed. In my mind I thought of the  myriad recipes they might have created, and with them I set a table fit for a feast.

In my mind I planted some, I made omelets of some, of some I made a borek, from a few a stir-fry, of some pickles, soup, dinner, even dessert. The women waited for me at the bazaar. From them I would buy, as usual, watercress, arabhair, roots, mustard greens, black handibas, abergumeri, and many other wild plants; get dressed like a sorceress, and turn them from one form to another. How lucky for me that I am the granddaughter of one of these mothers who has been hunting for plants in nature for millions of years. How lucky for you that you can carry the genes of your ancestors who have experience in nature. You should own some of it. We are like knives that rust when not used, and which shine as they get polished. I am not saying that you should go to nature blindly with blades drawn, Nature has its laws, There are mushrooms that can be eaten only once, some plants are similar to those that can be eaten yet are toxic. Those who can differentiate them are peasants who have been guided by the gods, or teachers of botany. If you don’t come across a nature walk in a few that are held in Turkey and you can happen to be in NY, before you go visit Steve’s Internet website.

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