Before the Light Disappears
By Brandon Elijah Scott
An herbalist on growing older and making time for what we love
Rub a sprig of rosemary between your fingers and the scent will follow you into the house. You might catch it again when you reach into the cupboard for a cup, by which time you’ve already forgotten what you went outside for. I’ve worked with rosemary for years, and I still love how readily it can interrupt whatever I thought was so important a moment ago.
It’s cold and rainy today in Ohio, which is a perfectly good reason to be inside writing. I’ve been known to do the same thing on a beautiful afternoon, though, which is especially funny when I’m writing about why people ought to go outside. There’s usually a good reason to stay at the desk, and another waiting when I finish with the first. By the time I look up, the light has gone out of the yard.
The older I get, the more I wonder how much of living well comes down to making time for things I already know I love. There are plants I’ve walked past all my life that I could recognize by a leaf in June and would struggle to name in November. There are people I’ve known for years whose stories I’ve only heard in pieces because one of us had somewhere to be. I’d like to know more of both, and herbalism has given me a good excuse to begin.
A reason to go outside
Here in Ohio, by late fall, the plants I teach with look different enough that a familiar walk can make a beginner of me again. The goldenrod has gone to seed, the first hard frost has laid some plants flat, and I find myself stopping where I might have walked straight through in summer. I want to see how the leaves were arranged on a stem or what’s left of a flower after the birds have had their turn. A field I thought I knew can keep me occupied for a surprising length of time.
Getting to know a plant this way makes you a better herbalist. Lemon balm, for instance, teaches you something different when you crush a leaf fresh from the garden than it does when you open a jar in February. Smell the dried leaves before you put the water on. If you have to put your nose halfway into the jar to catch anything, you might give some thought to how long the leaves have been sitting there, or how you dried and stored them. You’ll remember that the next time you’re putting up herbs for winter.
There’s a kind of movement I love because it comes with a reason to be out there. You go to check on a plant and walk a little farther because there’s a bird you can hear and can’t yet see. Some days the pleasure is in walking a whole hillside. On others, it’s in bringing a pot of mint close enough to a chair that you can reach over and pinch a leaf. I hope there’ll always be something growing within reach of wherever I spend my days.
What an herb brings to the table
Some of what I learn about a plant outside follows me into the kitchen. I know rosemary by the scent it leaves on my fingers, and I get to know it a little differently when I give it some heat and olive oil.
Toss a panful of halved baby potatoes with olive oil and salt and roast them at 425°F until they’re nearly tender. In the last few minutes, scatter a teaspoon or two of finely chopped fresh rosemary over the pan and give the potatoes a turn so the leaves catch in the oil. By the time the edges are golden, you’ll smell the rosemary from across the kitchen. I’d taste one straight from the pan, then try another with a squeeze of lemon and see how differently the rosemary comes through.
That same woodsy fragrance is what I’m after when I put rosemary in a tea blend. A little can go a long way in the cup, which is why I like to give it other herbs to work with. In the Daily 8 Tea we make at Woodland Herbal, I can still pick out the rosemary among the ginger, cinnamon, and clove. It’s my daily go-to. I brew it most mornings because it’s an easy way to work some of the herbs I value most for health and vitality into my day, and I enjoy the little lift from the green tea.
In the evening, I reach for something softer. Lemon balm makes a lovely cup on its own, especially when there are fresh leaves to tear and drop into the pot. Pour two cups of just-boiled water over a small handful of fresh leaves or about two teaspoons of dried leaf, then cover and steep for five to ten minutes before straining. Taste it plain the first time. In your next pot, add a few whole German chamomile flowers and see if you catch the faint scent of apple alongside the lemon balm. Those two herbs are at the heart of Sweet Dream Tea, one of the first blends our family made at Woodland Herbal. We round it out with lavender, passionflower, and lemongrass. I catch the lavender as soon as I lift the lid, and it’s the bright edge of lemongrass that makes me want a second sip. And another after that.
What I ask before I reach for an herb
When someone asks me what I’d use for sleep, I want to hear what happens on an ordinary night. Do they lie awake from the start, or fall asleep easily and find themselves wide awake a few hours later? Does pain wake them when they turn over? Is the house finally quiet at midnight, and are they reluctant to give up the only hour of the day that belongs to them?
I spent a good deal of time with those questions while writing Wild Sleep. Lemon balm and chamomile have long been used as evening herbs, and I understand the appeal of a fragrant cup while the house settles. But if someone tells me midnight is the first time all day they’ve been able to hear themselves think, I’m going to stay with that answer for a while. I’ve been the person who stayed up because the day finally felt like mine. It’s worth asking what a person is getting from that hour before asking them to give it up.
This is one of the things I value most about herbalism. A question that begins with an herb can lead to a much fuller conversation about the person who might take it. There may be a remedy I can help them choose. There may also be something they’ve been living with so long that it hardly occurs to them to mention it. I’ve learned to leave enough room in a conversation for that to come out.
Put the kettle on for two
In a family of herbalists, I’ve had the good fortune of seeing how much can pass between people over ordinary work. You sit down to strip the leaves from a bundle of dried mint and someone tells you who taught them to dry it. The next thing you know, you’re hearing about a person you never met and the kitchen they used to work in. Later, you’ll smell that mint and think of a room you’ve never seen.
A pot of tea is also a perfectly good reason to ask someone over when you’ve been meaning to see them for months. There are times when grief has taken up most of the room, and there’s kindness in letting someone tell the same story again. Sometimes they’ve run out of words and you can sit together until the cups are cool enough to hold in both hands. I’ve come to appreciate the work of making tea at a moment like that. There’s water to put on, a jar to open, and a little time for both of you to settle while we wait for the aroma to fill the room.
I hope I’ll always have someone who can show me something I’ve missed in a plant I think I already know. There are people I’d like to ask about their gardens while I can still sit with them in those gardens. I’d like to know what they grew when they first had a little ground of their own, and which plants they brought with them when they moved. Those are the sorts of questions I think of when I’m alone at my desk. I’d like to get better at asking them while I’m close enough to hear the answer.
What’s hard to reckon with about time is how ordinary it feels while it’s passing. We put off a visit until the weather’s better, or think we’ll ask about the garden the next time we’re there. Years later, we’d give almost anything for one of those unremarkable afternoons, to hear a familiar voice coming from the next room and know we could still get up and follow it.
One day, I may be the one sitting in a chair with a pot of rosemary within reach, telling somebody where I got it and remembering halfway through that there’s more to the story than I thought. I hope whoever’s there has time for the long version. I hope I remember, while there’s still someone I can go and sit beside, to give them that same afternoon.
