Report from an Actual Field: Ethnobotany Float Trip on the Skagit River

(This is also a report from the more-distant past as I actually took this trip a year ago, pre-blog, and only got around to posting now.)

In August 2007, I took an Ethnobotany Float Trip down the Skagit River.  I signed up through Discover U, but since they are no more, you can sign up for it directly through the tour operator, Pacific NW Float Trips.  I am looking at the website and feeling like this is the wrong time to post this, since they now say the trips run March through June, but mine was offered in August so maybe they can be flexible.

Anyway, with all the time that has elapsed and my lack of note-taking, I’m just going to rely on the company’s actual description to explain it since I find the copy pretty accurate:

Do you ever stop and wonder about the names and uses of wild plants that you pass by each day?  There is a Native American saying that there is a use for every plant and a plant for every illness.  When you float down this mellow (no white water) section of the Upper Skagit River nestled below snow-capped North Cascades you will learn about edible wild foods, medicinal plants and mushrooms, and the traditional Coast Salish methods of harvesting and consumption…There will be lessons on plant identification, ethical gathering practices and traditional use of plants for food, fiber, medicine and shelter. We’ll explore meadows and woodlands along the river, forage in nature’s well-stocked pantry and learn how to collect in a safe and legal manner while preserving plant habitats. 

While, per usual, I retained little actual practical information (although, also per usual, I could tell you all of the interesting details about the people on the trip with me), I absolutely loved this trip and would like to do it again. 

The guides were a nonstop source of information; it seemed like they knew something about every single plant in our field of view at any given moment.  Even if I am bad at retaining the useful bits, I still appreciated hearing about it. 

Normally, my lack of context means I could look at a meadow and just see a monolithic concept of “Nature.”  After this trip, I had a greater appreciation for seeing individual parts making up a whole and at least a general sense of what I could look at or for in the future.

And, actually, although it wasn’t the point, the interesting details of the people guiding and on the trip were part of the appeal.  When your day job is working in corporate America, and your second job is writing about pop culture, there was something bracing and refreshing about being around people who sometimes live without electricity, or call themselves “crones” and supplement their income by selling small bundles of lavender.  I think, like many people, I harbor a secret desire (one that I am constitutionally incapable of carrying out) to live off the grid and being around people who are much closer to that world than mine was a good change of pace.

This was my first time using my digital camera, and being an old-skool film snob, used to working with a Nikon manual camera that I think is older than me, I am not the best with auto-focus.  So unfortunately, many of the pictures are not as good as they could be, but I hope they communicate the gist.  

We disembarked at one point to go into a field, where a plum tree laden with fruit had recently attracted a hungry bear.

The scratches on the tree were from the bear climbing it to get some plums.

Our guide eating plums.

We were able to take plums home with us, and the most efficient way was to grab some of the extremely-laden branches.

Bear poop with I believe plum pits.

It’s hard to see (auto-focus problem) but the green ball in the dead center of the photograph was not actually a plant growth, but, said my guide, some kind of bug that had bored its way into the plant and was chilling out there.

This is some kind of thistle-type plant, and apparently every single part at every single stage of its life can be used medicinally or as food.  I wish I could remember which and when, but unfortunately I was too busy fighting with my camera to pay adequate attention.  Oh well.  Hopefully I’ll have the chance to take the trip again (with pen and a pad) before I am trapped in the wilderness, Bear Grylls-style.