Dear Reader,
If you’ve ever picked blackberries growing on the side of a trail, you might have technically been breaking the law – and understanding why requires unpacking a little history.
My name is Hannah Lee. I’m a storyteller of all things environment and climate, and a TV Producer at NorCal Public Media. In this monthly newsletter, I share stories that give us different ways to think and care about our natural world.
Over this past winter, I finally started a hobby that I’ve been curious about for years. Under the enthusiastic guidance of Che Casul – a seventh-generation rancher in west Sonoma County who I befriended while filming our new docuseries – I began learning how to forage for mushrooms, one species at a time… and without poisoning myself in the process.
We spent plenty of foggy days romping around the forest with friends, crawling over logs and through underbrush, and reaching into the damp soil to pull up mushrooms by the handful. It was an absolute delight.
A successful day of hunting for mushrooms!
But as mushroom season came to a close with spring, I started wondering: What other edible species live around me?
It turned out to be good timing. Just a few weeks later, leadership at NorCal asked our team to pitch ideas for a new video series. So, I immediately got to work on developing a show about foraging for wild foods all over the Bay Area called Geronimo Eats the Bay, hosted by chef and forager Geronimo Ramos.
From the start, we knew the biggest challenge of filming the series would be finding locations. In the vast majority of public spaces and parks across the country, foraging is strictly prohibited – and the Bay Area is no exception.
But this hasn’t always been the case. It’s impossible to have a conversation around foraging and not talk about Indigenous peoples, who, before genocide and displacement by colonizers, sustained themselves through gathering edible and medicinal plants. And a perhaps lesser-known truth is that enslaved Black people also relied heavily on foraging wild foods to supplement their diets, as did poor white settlers.
What I find especially interesting is that the right to forage actually used to be protected by law – not just on public lands, but even on private property. For much of American history, foraging was a common practice, and the food readily found in nature benefited everyone at no cost.
Things changed towards the end of the 19th century, when anti-foraging laws started taking hold across the country. Backed by a preservationist view of nature, environmental advocates argued that foraging would allow public lands to be ruined by poor, uneducated rural Americans. Anti-foraging laws were also in many cases used to target and control communities of color. For example, through restricting their ability to gather and sell wild foods, newly emancipated Black families were sometimes forced to return to plantation work in order to sustain themselves.
These laws still have a big impact today. Without the ability to gather the wild foods that grow around us, we’re more reliant on an inequitable food system that’s built on industrial agriculture. And we’ve become estranged from an incredibly powerful pathway for connecting with the natural world.
Of course, it’s important to still forage responsibly (without harming the surrounding habitat) and safely (without harming yourself). If you’re just starting out, be sure to work with a knowledgeable guide – and never eat something you can’t identify with 100% certainty.
Keep an eye out for more coming soon on Geronimo Eats the Bay! I’ll be spending the next several weeks deep in filming and editing, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
Behind the scenes on Geronimo Eats the Bay.
As always, my hope for this newsletter is to create space for an exploration of ideas, knowledge, and meaning-making together – so please reach out with your thoughts on this edition of Our Planet, Our Voice. It’s as easy as replying directly to this email, and I would love to hear from you!
My question for you this month is: What edible species grow around you?
All my best,
Hannah
