Nettle Ancestors.

a plant, and story, that defies the end of things.

I have a favorite nettle picking spot just behind a nearby old cemetery, underneath the grand linden tree that first led me there. Each time I pull in alongside the rows of headstones, nettles greet me like a deep green carpet in the shade of a million heart leaves, waving.

This place says hello in soft shhhs and wide hmmms. I try to respond in kind.

I go back again and again for early summer soups and stir-fries, leaving some to freeze for pestos and smoothies when the heat ripens. The more I pick, the more it grows, typical of any mint family plant, but especially nettles it seems. This little hidden patch feeds me and my family all summer long.

As I gather with my spine curved away from the irregular, sinking line of headstones, of course I wonder how much of the nettle’s nutrients come from the old, dissolved bones of the buried ones. I glance back, curious to read who is laid here: Smith. Baker. Davis. Lee. Hamilton. The names speak of another place, mostly England I think. These are someone else’s ancestors. There are no Kipars* buried anywhere nearby.

I am not from the place that I now live. I have no ancestry here. These soft hills have never known any of my elders. Because of this, I step more lightly here, bow more deeply, and avoid any air of ownership.

Still, I do pick, because to not pick just feels disrespectful to all that is being offered here. I hum a grateful tune to be woven with the people who were buried here, someone else’s elders, perhaps yours. I sense that nettle knows them, the linden too, intimately. Their stories seem close by, only briefly buried, like some of the old houses here, swallowed by Virginia creeper and bittersweet, but still boned.

There is no other energy to engage with, as a plant, than the energy of life. With leafing limbs and piercing roots the plants spread life force, caressing the Earth’s crust until it yields in embrace. Upwards and outwards and downward - always.

I wonder how it would feel to have roots spreading along my skin.
Like a tickle, spreading smiles? Like a soft, arousing kiss?

As I finish picking for the morning, it’s clear to me that these nettles have been digesting those old ones stories all winter long, and as they rise up generously with open leaves to feed my belly and blood, I am partaking in the stories, wisdom, and even some of the frothy jokes that these old ones once told.

The nettles breathe a stinging song through my fingers. I imagine that where my own dead are buried-

…let this thought come slow, listen to the soft shhhs and wide hmmms…

-I imagine there is a nearby nettle patch, and a woman who frequents there to gather and receive stories of them. (Imagine is a soft word, hope would be more accurate.) Like a scented linden blossom, I hold this hope delicately.
Lithuania. Poland. Scotland. Tennessee. Louisiana. California.
Perhaps you are this woman? Could you tell me their stories? Tend their nettles please?

Sometimes – when I’m practicing qigong – I pretend that my fingers each represent one of my ancestors: right hand from my father’s line, left from my mother. When I bring the tips close, as if holding a grapefruit, my palms get warm – the air thick and viscous between them. I imagine his Poland to her Scotland. His Lithuania to her Sweden. None of them ever met, so I welcome each through my small hands, and sense their soft humor, generations gone.

This braiding is continuous. There is no place where it ends.
Or even begins.
It reminds me that all the stories of the end of things: sanity, beauty, safety, the world, they are all linear stories that have to end somewhere.

But that is not what the Earth is doing. She is spinning, spinning,
circling and hurtling…all we have to do is
accept circular the ride.

In the lore of my ancestors, it is said that the dead visit in the waning half of the year, between August and February, guiding us through the dark tunnels of Winter. It is said they go back to the Earth and leave us to do the living come Spring. It seems no surprise that is precisely when the plants come circling back to life.

I take the long way home, my bag of nettles in the seat next to me. I’m surprised when I pass and old barn that I thought would just keep leaning forever, now folded in on itself. Old boards and metal roofing are piled up at odd angles where the large, drafty structure once stood. As I slow down to take in the strange new scene, I notice the stand of nettles that has been hiding behind the barn. They are strikingly verdant, ready for the task of integration.

“A life is a thread spun, from the distaff stars round the wheel of earth, your blood the spinning nettle thread, dancing footprints down the paths like the plied trails of coyotes, until it is done, and you’re woven back in again where the nettles reach their roots down…” -Sylvia Lindsteadt

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