Even though it is April, the hills around Livermore are draped in dozens of shades of green We’ve had record rain and snowfall this year, ending a four-year drought, but most Californians know that this is just a respite from future and probably more intense dry spells.
On this day, the temps will be in the mid-70s, and I am in shorts, carefully dodging all the happy green poison oak that carpets the areas around the trails. I wonder briefly if I will have a reaction today. Even when I had a dog who cavorted carelessly around and through the poison oak, and I had to lift her into the car at the end of hikes, I never broke out. Surely, her coat was covered in that toxic oil. I reach out and knock the trunk of an oak tree. I hope my luck holds.
Pat, my husband, has a long history of immunity to poison oak. Back when he was a forest firefighter, he was put at the head of the crew that cleared the poison oak. He sawed it down, grabbed it and piled it up, and breathed in the smoke, filled with that particularly nasty oil. And while some of his comrades were hospitalized because of its impact on their lungs, he was invincible to the stuff.
We amble, look at the blue sky, stop to take photos, talk in a random fashion. First, we talk about our planned hike next year on the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain. I worry that we won’t make it. Pat has a hip that will one day need to be replaced, and I doubt that without surgery it will not carry him 10-15 miles a day for days and days on end. All the skiing he’d done the past three years is wearing it out. Of course, we talk about Mai--my student who fell on hard times and moved in with us—how she makes us laugh, how she has grown, how she has done so well these past four years, how quiet our house has been since she went to college.
We are delighted when we smell the wild cilantro, and we bend over, carefully moving the Miner’s Lettuce and other leaves looking for these small plants that produce such a strong smell. I bite into anything that looks likely. Pat shakes his head, thinking that my approach is insane. We find wild carrots, and a plant whose name I don’t know, but I recall my grandmother pointing it out as something good to chew on for menstrual cramps. Yes, and we finally find the cilantro. It is smaller than the herb found in grocery stores, but its taste is much more powerful. Pat pinches a leaf between his fingers, but I bite into it; the smell conjures up memories of the soups that Mai makes when the weather is cold.
According to sites on the internet, cilantro, which is the Spanish name for coriander, is not a native to California. It belongs to a family of plants that apiaceous, which include celery, carrots, and something called loveage. My big Webster dictionary tells me that loveage is a “European apiaceous herb, cultivated in gardens.”
I wonder at this name. How did it come to be called this? So close to that human emotion–in one form or another-that consumes and drives most of our lives.
Loveage seems like it should be how much love has one accumulated in a life, the amount of banked good will—you know love + baggage. Or maybe it should be the formal version of “lovin.” In my family, we will often scoop up a small child and cuddle her to us and say, “I’ve got to get some lovin from this kid.” Those kids will squirm and protest, but we all know they are loving that lovin’.
Scott Peck, the author of the well-known book A Road Less Traveled, says that love is not an emotion; love is an action. He tells a story of a man at bar, regaling other folks who have bellied up to cold drinks with stories of his children, telling his inebriated audience how much he loves his family. Peck says nope, that’s not love. Love would be that man being with his family, helping with homework, cooking a meal, teaching a child how to change a tire, or listening to the rambling stories of his children. Those are actions that show love.
Loveage hiding in Miner's Lettuce.
The loveage herb has green leaves, yellow flowers, and seeds with a big flavor. One small leaf can flavor an entire dish.
Here we are in our retirement planning all sorts of adventures, all the things we didn’t do the past three decades when we were in the belly of a beast, consumed by our work. Research is pretty clear that the people who experience the most well-being in their later years are the folks who have a purpose in their life, who are surrounded by a loving community, who have lives with meaning. And of course, meaning is often tangled up with other people. Have we cultivated enough of a garden? Do we have enough loveage stored up to carry us the rest of the way?
I reach out and knock on a nearby tree trunk, hoping our luck holds.