The forest has many sounds. Birch trees creak; cicadas chirp; and mushrooms speak – but only if you’re paying attention, says Ali Banks, 33, local herbalist and wildcrafter since 2012. She and her fiance Joe Zokan, 28, who has been wildcrafting for 10 years, are co-founders of Forest Folk Fungi, a local, plant- and fungi-based apothecary.
Wildcrafting, also known as foraging, refers to the practice of harvesting wild plants and fungi for food or medicine. It is an ancient art form, and one that Banks says “is about reciprocity and relationships of consent.”
Among many Native American cultures, Banks explains, it is tradition to ask the organism’s permission before harvest. Likewise, she says, after harvest, one should make an offering to the land. For instance, Banks and Zokan say that in exchange for its fruit, they might offer the forest a song.
Naturally, not every forager will play a flute for mushrooms. Yet still, to wildcraft is to cultivate a profound, almost mystical, relationship with the natural world and its many edible and medicinal species, which are especially abundant in the biologically rich Southeastern U.S.
In fact, many of these species are so prolific locally, they grow, quite literally, like weeds.