Jennifer Galbreath is in search of wild roses.
Every year she waits for the silky soft petals to unfold, a harbinger of summer's arrival. Because she feels a strong affinity with the flower (her middle name is Rose), the first glimpse of those velvety pink blooms against the green bushes is like welcoming home a family member who left for the long, cold winter.
She leans down and gently plucks a few of the signature five petals off the rose, placing them in a jar. Later on, the petals will be dried and mixed with cardamom for tea, made into a natural hair rinse or face toner, and infused in vinegar for salad dressing or oil for an aromatherapy balm.
For Galbreath, 28, these are the moments she feels most alive and connected to her truest self. She breathes deeper. Her mind settles.
It seems she was always destined to have her life's path intertwined with plants.
Alaska is Galbreath's home now, but her roots lead back to a small farm town in Massachusetts. Her childhood was filled with the smells of maple sap boiling into syrup and visits to sugar houses, hay rides in apple orchards and milk fresh from local cows. "That's where my love of food starts for me," she explains.
But her sense of wonder came from her father. "My dad would tell stories about forest creatures with blueberry hats drinking honey out of acorn caps. It always made me think of nature as a place filled with magical worlds." From a young age, she had a close connection to the woods and the fields she was raised near.
Galbreath's path crossed with plants a second time when she met her husband, Tikaan, an Alaska Native of Athabascan roots, in a clinical herbalism class at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Since the couple moved to Alaska in 2011, they have dedicated themselves to learning about the bounty of native food and medicine that exists around them. "Now I see a grocery store and a pharmacy around me everywhere I go," Galbreath says.
Of being a working professional in Anchorage, she says, "As an adult, I get the same childlike sense of wonder when I'm in nature."
And it's therapeutic. Under the tangles of nettles and musk of highbush cranberries, thoughts of deadlines, meetings and task lists fade away as her fingertips brush a hello to the plants that appear on the trails.
As co-founders of the Anchorage Food Mosaic project, the couple has drawn a crowd of followers who are eager to learn more about wild plants, foraging and a different way of approaching life that views the relationship between people and plants as regenerative. From taking friends on native plant walks to making dandelion root tinctures and lingonberry fruit leather, wild harvesting is an important part of their lives and relationship.
Gathering food and medicine from Alaska's abundance of natural flora is a time-honored tradition of Alaska Native peoples. Galbreath has looked to Tikaan and his family to help her learn about the edible and medicinal plants in the region.
With a running calendar in her head of when edible and medicinal plants are coming out of the ground and the different stages at which they are ready to harvest, summer takes on a different meaning for her. She practices becoming more attuned to nature's schedule, noticing when the fiddleheads are still furled, the spruce tips fresh and bright, and catching the yarrow in full, fragrant blossom. Sometimes you want the root or the bark. Other times it's only the sprout that's edible. Using Alaska's plants as food and medicine is a lifelong learning process.
Early on in this process, however, it was tough. The plants that grew so abundantly on the East Coast were saggy and stunted here. Galbreath remembers leaving her garden on one frustrating night and walking down to a nearby creek. The lush ferns, currants and chiming bell flowers there were striking -- a reminder that the wild world needs no cultivator. Although she continues to be an avid backyard gardener, she now includes native plants and perennials to care for, harvest and trust in their reappearance year after year.
Galbreath is the coordinator for the fourth annual Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) Alaskan Plants as Food and Medicine Symposium. A three-day conference (June 22-24, with a free community solstice celebration on the 21st) at Alaska Pacific University with attendees from across the state, the symposium seeks to promote traditional plant knowledge and ethical harvesting and is full of workshops, keynote speakers and inspiration. To learn more and/or register, visit alaskanplants.org.
"Once you learn what parts of a plant you can use and when, you can't forget it. The relationship that is reawakened between humans and the natural world during this process is even more unforgettable," Galbreath says.
"It changes the way you look at the world."
Jennifers top wild plant ideas:
· Blueberry-lingonberry fruit leather
· Crampbark (high bush cranberry) tincture
· Spicy chickweed "shots" -- chickweed blended with a little water, lemon juice and cayenne, like a wheatgrass shot
· Dried petrushki for sprinkling on fish
· Dried and powdered sea lettuce for home-popped popcorn
· Wild tea mixes such as pineapple weed with spruce tips, fireweed flowers and Labrador leaves
· Herbal oil infusions for a variety of topical skin salves
· Apple cider vinegar hair rinse infused with herbs
Reading/resource list
· "The Boreal Herbal: Wild Food and Medicine Plants of the North" by Beverley Gray
· "Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest" by Janice Schofield
· "Alaska's Wild Plants: A Guide to Alaska's Edible Harvest" by Janice Schofield
· "Alaska's Wilderness Medicine: Healthful Plants of the Far North" by Eleanor G. Viereck
· "Tanaina Plantlore: an Ethnobotany of the Dena'ina Indians of Southcentral Alaska" by Priscilla Russel Kari