Outdoors

A Prayer to the Land

~ Nicholas Tippins ~ 4 Comments

Photo by Pablo Garcia Saldana

Our car comes to a halt before a log in an inlet beside a back road. The log is used to stop off-roaders from tearing up the earth, but this is not our intention, so we gather our things and step into the bristling scrubland. We look to the shelter of a large mound of earth, and clear a space beneath it. Just earlier, I had been listening to a story of a reporter who was stranded in Afghanistan, hunted by the Taliban. There are no bullets flying at us now, yet I do not feel entirely alone, or entirely safe. Continue reading →

Interview With “Wild Man” Steve Brills

~ Nicholas Tippins
Steve and Violet Brills harvesting burdock root.
Steve and Violet Brills harvesting burdock root 4 years ago.

“Wild Man” Steve Brills and his daughter Violet lead educational foraging tours throughout the greater New York tri-state area, including in Central Park. Steve was arrested 30 years ago in Central Park by undercover agents on charges of criminal mischief for eating a dandelion. “That got me so much publicity that they dropped the charges, and the parks department hired me to teach foraging,” he says.

When not teaching about wild foods, Steve can often be found foraging and cooking wild meals with his eleven-year-old daughter. Violet started foraging at the age of two months and, according to her father, “knows the ins and outs of every single plant.”

I reached Steve and Violet by Skype at their home in upstate New York. They had just come in from a walk in which they found Artist’s Mushrooms and enjoyed a late first snow. They regaled me with jokes, skits, and stories as we talked. Continue reading →

The World is Alive!

~ Nicholas Tippins

            “Many Indians have told me that the most basic difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that Westerners view the world as dead, and not as filled with speaking, thinking, feeling subjects as worthy and valuable as themselves.” 

–Derrick Jensen

The World is Alive! Photo by Michael Fertig.

Isn’t it interesting that as we become more civilized, we surround ourselves with more things that are not alive? Continue reading →