At home wherever you find yourself

Nathanial Whitmore, herbalist and mycologist, is known in the Upper Delaware area for leading forest walks.

I attended a talk he gave recently on edible and medicinal plants at the Damascus Historical Society meeting in the township hall in Damascus, PA. He had a big bucket full of wild plants that he had picked on his way to the event: the last plant he had plucked right outside the door of the hall.

He stood in front of the audience and selected each plant like a familiar friend, wiped it off with a towel to avoid soaking the speaker’s lectern and held it up to the audience. He described each plant by name: mugwort, edible wild carrot, pokeweed, wild nettle, marsh mallow, comfrey and others—and talked about how to identify them in the wild, what could be eaten, what healing properties each had.

As I watched him handling the plants with such casual intimacy, I thought: this must be someone who is very much at home in the natural world, and I wanted to know more about his relationship with what he calls home and also the wilder places he inhabits.
Nathaniel Whitmore’s familial home is a 100-acre farm in Damascus, and the name of the road is his family name. He lives there with his young son Toa in the house that was originally his English paternal great-grandfather’s house, where his father was born on the kitchen table. His great-grandmother was a Sunday school teacher and spiritual leader at the local church.

His maternal great grandparents, the Van Gorders—of Pennsylvania Dutch origin—had also lived in the area for generations. Aunts and uncles and cousins lived all along Whitmore Road.

On his ancestral land there were hayfields, a peach orchard, corn cribs, a chicken coop, a small dairy farm and pigs. There were lots of other farm kids around, all about the same age, and they would fish in all the area ponds, swim in the river and sled on the hills. His mom’s cowbell would call him and his siblings to the house for meals.

Property borders were permeable. but when he was small, his home territory would end at the edge of Whitmore Road, where he and the kids on the other side would call to each other and ask their parents for permission to cross over.

When he became a teenager, his curiosity and his territory expanded. Spiritual experiences set him off on a lifetime of exploration and study. He read books, lots of books, picked up for 25 cents at the flea market, or in the basement of the library in Callicoon, NY, where donated books were stacked. He read Carlos Castenada’s works, the “Tibetan Book of the Dead,” books on biodynamic agriculture and other esoteric subjects. He read the book “Zen Macrobiotics” cover to cover in one sitting, and committed to become a vegetarian that day.

His concerned father introduced him to Taterbug Tyler, because Taterbug knew about native plants and could show them to him, and he became Nathaniel’s mentor in learning about foraging for food in the wild.

Everyone knew Taterbug: he played bluegrass in the local bars and made powerful moonshine from cherries. As a child he suffered from lung disease and his family was told by doctors that he wouldn’t live to adulthood. He was tended and nursed by his aunties using their folk medicine, and came to believe in the healing power of native plants.

Taterbug became a self-taught shaman after a near-death experience. He collected wild ginseng and herbs, parking on roadsides to forage for plants, leaving his business card—a 3x5 card printed with just “Taterbug”on his car windshield—with the keys in the ignition in case anyone needed to move the car.

He and Whitmore walked the woods and fields and climbed the rock ledges to find food and medicine. They were guided by the transmitted wisdom of the old-timers, by Taterbug’s own shamanic intuition, and by Whitmore’s “Peterson’s Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs.”

As a young adult, Whitmore made a conscious decision to learn everything he could about plants, particularly herbs, and this practice evolved into years of study. While working at a local farm, he read volumes of thick field identification books in his time off—books on Native American medicine, Chinese herbal medicine and American folk medicine as well as classic botany texts. He took correspondence courses, went to conferences and spent lots of time outside, camping, observing and collecting plants. He was recognized for his botanical knowledge when he went on a community peace walk from Callicoon to Shohola, PA, which led him to regularly lead naturalist walks for the community.

Whitmore believes that to learn about plants you have to spend significant time outdoors. To this end, he has conducted herbal apprenticeships. One weekend a month, May through October, away from technology and artificial light, his apprentices spent time walking in the woods and identifying plants in the wild, studying them through the seasons. They referred to books, but direct observation—combined with the experience of gathering around the fire to cook, eat and make medicine—gave students a personal relationship with the plants and the environments in which they grow.

He says: “How can you understand pine bark when your hands have never become sticky from the pitch?”

Although he has lived in the Upper Delaware River Valley most of his life, his path has taken him as far away as the jungles of Peru and the west coast of Japan. I asked Whitmore if he ever feels like a stranger when he is far from home. He told me that everywhere he goes, he is collecting and looking at plants, many of which are familiar. “The first place I go when I travel is to the university library.

“Family designation is important in botany,” he continued. “When I travel, I look for the common things; I see a plant and realize ‘I recognize that family!’ It gives me a start to understand the ecology of the place.

“When I travel to mountains and plains in temperate climates, I feel connected in all those places,” he continued. “In Japan, I could recognize plants from the very first day. They have the same garden weeds popping up in the field that we do.”

On the other hand, he adds, “tropical or desert landscapes are more exotic. But even in the jungles of Peru, I was amazed. I was in the heart of the Amazon, and I felt like Pennsylvania is as diverse. When there is something that I don’t recognize, I note the differences and any similarities, and can still make connections.”

Whitmore maintains that it’s the process of learning that gives you real knowledge: the observation, the guessing and failing, the time spent studying, reinforcing, remembering details of place and conditions. This kind of subtle knowledge becomes wisdom. A phone app or Google search can give you the name and characteristics of the plant, but it doesn’t give you the knowledge or the relationship of the plant to the place.

He says, “The world is very large, but it is the knowledge and relationship that makes you feel that you are at home, wherever you find yourself.”

Nathaniel Whitmore is known as one of the region’s experts on the identification, harvest, and use of wild plants and mushrooms. He regularly teaches about wild edible plants, medicinal herbs, edible and medicinal mushrooms, herbal medicine-making and the theory of herbalism.
For the list of walks and herb talks, email kobudokurafuto@gmail.com.