Spring tonic

I can’t imagine I’m alone in thinking I can use a spring tonic at this time of year. The idea goes back to earliest civilizations when it was simply instinctual to know that holistically, our bodies have a spring season just like all of nature, especially felt by those of us humans living in northern lands.

Nature stands before us to offer the lessons, but through the eras we appear to have become increasingly deaf to those insights. I watch the robins going for the berries that have overwintered on the sumac bushes; the squirrels and birds sip on the sap from awakening trees; they devour the opening leaf buds of the sumac and walnut and maple trees. The hare enjoys the fiddleheads and dandelion. They seem to be as if they are at a god-given banquet as I witness all of it while sitting outside in the early day and wondering why I feel sluggish. Sitting there sipping on coffee as the natural world puts on a show in hope that I’m paying attention and can relate to the concept of the turning of the seasons within our very own body systems.

Okay, so I admit that sometimes I imagine myself as a tree in its maturing years, although many question the word mature in that analogy and its tenuous connection to me. Simply, as I get older and a few of my branches are weakening, I seem to be waking up to the idea of how rural life allows for a generous list of in-my-face examples of nature’s riches intended for human beings. I have to also declare that winter hibernation is increasingly a calling from the brown bear in me. But then again, I need to allow for a tutoring about natural spring bounty that gets the hibernating body in gear beyond just bear favourite honey as I mark time awaiting blueberry season to arrive.

Is it simply the notion that we have outsourced our reflexes of self-help to a culture of industrialization, consumerism and convenience that has domesticated human nature and subdued our primal instincts to recognize the healing and wellness that wait in the natural world?

As an optimist, I am of the belief that the signs are out there for a rebellion of the human primal spirit against the shell game of consumption that we have been gradually entrapped in.

The sources of many of our packaged foods and medications either contain or are derived come from things like Burdock, Nettle, Dandelion roots and greens; Violets, Sassafras, Red Clover, Watercress, Wild Ginseng, Mint, Birch Bark, Strawberry, Lamb’s Quarters, Spruce Tips, Plantain and Chickweed, to name a few.

These were once gathered and made into a tea, cooked or eaten as a salad. It was a way for early People to replenish bodies with vitamins and minerals after winter diets of preserved and dried foods. This ritual of spring was thought to purify and reawaken the blood. I’m now on the lookout for signs along the County roads that tell of asparagus, rhubarb and other fresh spring edibles.

After this entire ramble I’m beginning to think that a National Spring Tonic Day should be put on the list of holidays on the calendar. Maybe something as a start-up event right here in the County. Imagine banquets of spring harvest to extend Maple fest and help bridge the economy of this time of year. Already I’m sensing the taste of asparagus soup as a side to an order of fries. Okay, maybe not so much the fries, as potatoes are later summer fare. But then again?