Holly Drake is still learning to see and savor the delicious beauty all around her. Photography by David Uttley
Holly Drake guides a group of foragers along a diagonal path up a hillside in Todd, North Carolina. This tract of land is owned by a local friend, and it’s one of many such hillsides, garden fringes, and fields in the area where Holly teaches her Wild Blessings students to gather wild edible plants.
This is one of her Saturday plant walks, which she hosts nearly every weekend throughout Boone, Todd, the High Country region and occasionally in other parts of western North Carolina.
“Oh my goodness look at all this!” Holly shouts. The hillside is full of red clover, still deep purplish red in its early, unpollinated bloom. Because she’s loaned her basket to her newest student (it was me), who came unprepared, Holly uses the bottom of her shirt to gather hundreds of the buds in minutes, plucking the heads and cradling the bundle.
She approaches an overgrown field with the kind of excitement one might normally reserve for finding buried treasure.
“We’re fortunate because they were supposed to mow this field already, but they got delayed,” Holly says. This delay in mowing gives Holly and her students an opportunity to “shop.”
“Shopping” in God’s Abundance
Holly uses the word “shop” to lovingly refer to the mass gathering of wild edible plants all over the area—but especially near the New River. This is where most of her “shopping” areas are located—areas where she received permission from friends and neighbors to forage and to teach.
Today, for this particular Saturday class, the Wild Blessings group started with the gathering on the fringes of a garden near downtown Todd, they made their way a short distance to the hillside of clover, and then ended with the collection of handfuls of mint on a friend’s farm near her home.
On this final stop, Holly paused, searched her pockets and finally found what she was looking for—a random selection from her box of cards containing Bible verses. She selects one each morning as the day’s scripture.
“Totally random out of my verse pack,” she says. “They were all amazed at the goodness of God. Do you feel that today?”
Out of another pocket she pulls a small cylinder.
“This is a jeweler’s loupe,” she said, closing one eye and training the other through the loupe and onto a purplish bloom. “You can see through here all the intricacies of this flower.”
Learning to See the Wild Blessings Around Us
Holly started this foraging school after years of following her own curiosity deep into the study of edible plants and herbs and their power as sources of food and healing.
When you see a flower illuminated with light, ask “what is God saying to you.” Look at the sky. What is He saying? Nature is always relating his messages if we will take the time to be still and look.
–Anonymous
She wants people to see and experience the world around them with new eyes and renewed sensitivity to beauty and balance and to some of the deeper messages that might be coming from all that abundance–seeing the world for its wonder, mystery, and unfathomable intricacy.
This retraining of the eyes is the beginning of any forager’s journey.
“I read this beautiful quote a few years ago that sums this up so well: ‘when you see a flower illuminated with light, ask “what is God saying to you,” Holly says in later conversations. “Look at the sky. What is He saying? Nature is always relating his messages if we will take the time to be still and look.’ This is what I’m learning every day, and it’s what I’m passionate about teaching.”
LEARN MORE | DEVELOPING A HIKING HABIT
“I’ve urged my students to find a safe spot where they hike every single day. So that they’re observing the changes in nature, because it’s constantly changing,” Holly said. “And if you’re not doing this, the best time to start is today.
“Even if you start in the winter, when everything looks barren, you get to watch the life come up in the spring. “It’s astonishing to see those tree buds just getting larger and larger. And then they unfurl. There’s something about the discipline of walking the same path every day, observing the plants, the trees, the bark, the shadows, everything along that path, on your way to your sit spot.
“I recommend doing this at sunrise. You can sit with your journal, a cup of coffee, your jeweler’s loupe and just spend time with God, and observing, and utilizing all five of your senses. So I do this every day. I’ve done this for at least eight years or nine years now. And it’s been kind of an anchor to my soul.”
Visit WILDBLESSINGS.COM for more resources on foraging, feasting, and experiencing the wild abundance of western North Carolina and beyond.
