123. Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life w/ Gabrielle Cerberville

Gabrielle Cerberville, known as the Chaotic Forager, returns to discuss her new book "Gathered on Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life" and shares insights on building relationships with wild spaces beyond mere resource collection.

• Moved to Virginia at the base of Shenandoah National Park to pursue a PhD in Composition and Computer Technologies
• Uses biodata from fungi and plants to create music as a form of science communication
• Created a community-based approach to foraging through workshops and classes in her converted basement classroom
• Wrote "Gathered" as a combination of memoir, cookbook, and field guide to share both technical knowledge and the deeper meaning of foraging
• Collaborated with experts including culinary specialists, plant and mushroom identifiers, and indigenous food practitioners to ensure accuracy
• Challenges individualistic "self-sufficiency" narratives in foraging communities, emphasizing that these skills developed in community contexts
• Recommends beginning foragers start by finding local clubs and experienced guides rather than relying solely on books
• Suggests approaching foraging with curiosity rather than conquest, focusing on building relationships with plants before harvesting
• Emphasizes observation and spending time with individual species to develop deeper understanding and connection

Pre-order "Gathered on Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life" now at your local indie bookstore or wherever books are sold. You can find Gabrielle as Chaotic Forager across all social media platforms and at chaoticforager.com for workshop information.

Also, be sure to check out the Blue Life Podcast! You can support them by donating to their funding campaign at givebutter.com/BlueLife, following them on social media, and lis

Chapters

• 33:38 Marker 01

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

What is up, plant people? It's time once more for the Planthropology Podcast, the show where we dive into the lives and careers of some very cool plant people to figure out why they do what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Vic Rom Beliga, your host and your humble guide in this journey through the sciences, and as always, my dear friends, I am so gosh darn excited to be with you today. Hey y'all, I have a returning guest today, and she's been a crowd favorite, and I mean one of my favorites for a very long time. And she has a brand new book coming out that I wanted her to have the opportunity to tell you all about. Depending on where you're listening to this, it may be brand new, it may be forthcoming, it may have been out for the immeasurable past, assuming that this is being listened to, you know, down the road, and uh, you know, we've figured things out as a species, but I digress. My guest for today is the chaotic forager herself, Gabrielle Serberville. We've been friends for a few years. We were mutuals on TikTok and Instagram and some different places, and we've just sort of kept up since the first time she was on the show, like four years ago. And it just, it's so much fun getting to watch her content. She is so excited about natural spaces and wild foods and the preservation of both of those, that she is just the perfect spokesperson for our planet. And she's written a new book called Gathered on Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life, which comes out in October of 2025. And there's plenty more information this episode about that. But it's all about her experiences in nature and with gathering and foraging and living off of the things that the planet provides for us. And there's great memoirs in here, recollections of her time in nature and learning to forage and learning about the wild spaces around her, but also like great recipes and tips and tricks. Like if you're going out foraging, maybe you wear pants, stuff like that. It's really great stuff. So you're gonna enjoy this episode. I'm gonna tell you right now, you need to go pre-order her book. Do it right now. Okay? Right now. Do it now. There's a link in the thing. Go to the link in the thing and order the book, and then come back and listen to all the good stuff she's going to tell you about it. So I can't wait for you to hear this. It was such a genuine, genuine pleasure to get uh record with Gabrielle again. So pull up a chair, find a bowl of wild mushrooms, but very carefully so you don't die, and get ready for episode 123 of the Planthropology Podcast with the chaotic forager Gabrielle Serverville.

SPEAKER_02: 2:52

I'm good. I'm so excited to be here. It's been a long time.

SPEAKER_01: 2:57

Yeah, we were just talking off like off recording before we started that you know you've been on the show before, and that was that episode. I'm actually gonna look. I'm gonna pull up the date because it shocked me, actually. It was episode 61, and that was October 12th, 2021.

SPEAKER_02: 3:14

That's insane. So, like right at straight up pandemic times, like wow.

SPEAKER_01: 3:20

It was that's and like in my mind, I was like, oh, it's just been a year or two, like it hasn't been that long, but like time has blown by.

SPEAKER_02: 3:28

It really has.

SPEAKER_01: 3:30

So, I guess to that end, what have you been up to for the past four years? I feel like you've done a lot in the last four years.

SPEAKER_02: 3:37

I've been busy, that's for sure. Yeah. So I I finished my master's, I started my PhD at the University of Virginia. So I moved. I I live out in Virginia now, uh right at the bottom of Shenandoah National Park, which has been really nice. And I have been writing a book. I've been trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

SPEAKER_01: 4:04

That's uh I've decided, I think, the older I get. That's sort of like a lifelong endeavor. The uh figuring out what you want to do. Big time. Because like I still don't really know. I'm you know, I'm doing the thing, it's fine, but like there's days that I'm like, is this the thing? Is this the thing I do? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 4:24

Totally.

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

But so well, you talked about living right at the edge of a national park. Is that the best thing ever?

SPEAKER_02: 4:32

It's kind of the best thing ever. I grew up on the East Coast, so being back on the East Coast, it's I love the Midwest, but I always missed the mountains. So now I live where there are mountains again, and things like elevation suddenly start to matter with foraging. Cause like if I miss a season, I can just keep on going up and then I can catch it again. So it's it's kind of it's kind of nice to have options like that now.

SPEAKER_01: 5:01

You know what's funny is that literally never occurred to me that like you can like, oh, it's too hot down here, I'll just go up there.

SPEAKER_02: 5:09

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Uh really nice in the summer when it's super humid. I can just be like, you know where, you know, where it's 10 degrees cooler up there.

SPEAKER_01: 5:19

That's pretty awesome. So tell us a little bit about your PhD program, because that's you know another big undertaking. It feels like you always have a couple of really big, cool projects going, but what are you working on?

SPEAKER_02: 5:30

I I feel like I am an academic masochist because I keep doing this to myself and I don't know why. But like I am in a music program. So it is the composition and computer technologies program at UVA. Uh, we're a pretty small program, uh, just a bunch of weirdos who use computers to make noise and uh a lot of really interesting people who are making really cool things. But I've been focusing more on biodata and on trying to do science communication with this art bent. So using art to make science communication more effective, essentially.

SPEAKER_01: 6:10

That's really interesting. And honestly, in my opinion, that's a super important field. I was talking my my students and I were talking about this a little bit yesterday that uh when we look back at like what is you know, a historical record. We were talking about sort of the uh origins of horticulture and what we do in plant science, and looking back at old drawings and paintings and descriptions of foods and uh everything tells us so much about like our scientific history, our natural history. And and that's uh an important piece of this teaching puzzle.

SPEAKER_02: 6:42

Yeah, absolutely. I find that with all respect to scientists and artists alike, artists often when they try to do SICOM, they don't quite know how to read the data that is there. And so then that leads you down paths where you might reach incorrect conclusions. Uh and then scientists, even if they understand what they're doing really well, sometimes when scientists use art, it ends up coming off as really corny. So I'm trying to trying to bridge the gap and do a bit of both while recognizing that I am a master of neither field. Um I I am doomed to be a jack of all trades for the rest of my life. But it's been really fun to find new ways to give people experiences that make them feel a little bit more responsible for and a little bit more connected to the world around them.

SPEAKER_01: 7:46

That was so you've studied this a little bit or you've worked in this in the past, right? So if I remember correctly, and again, it's been a few years, but your master's project, you were doing like biofeedback and translating that into music from uh mushrooms, is that correct?

SPEAKER_02: 7:59

Yeah, yep, I'm still doing that.

SPEAKER_01: 8:01

Yeah. Okay. Which is so mushrooms are or fungi, I should say, are like wild enough in my mind that I'm like the thought of like translating I like it's a little scary to know what they think. I don't know. And I know that's not exactly what's happening, but it feels that way, just a little bit.

SPEAKER_02: 8:23

Yeah, it is interesting because we're kind of I think it with biodata, there's always this, there's always this dance, right? Because you can kind of make the data say anything you want it to. You're sort of choosing the voice, but you're also trying to listen at the same time. So sometimes I get more useful information out of like a sonogram, or I get more useful information out of like an Excel spreadsheet than I do from something that has a lot of pre-recorded sound samples for the live data to play. So it's it the important thing, I think, is that everything is always communicating. Like all behavior is communication. Your plant tells you when it needs water by wilting, you know, uh the earth tells you that it needs water by burning. We have all of these cues that we've in many cases forgotten how to read. And working with biodata gives you the opportunity to try to figure out what's going on.

SPEAKER_01: 9:38

Hmm. That's yeah, really interesting, really fascinating stuff. Sort of in the same vein, talking about science communication and the way we did it, we do it. You have I was looking at, you know, I stalk people just a little bit, like lightly friendly.

SPEAKER_02: 9:52

Well, yeah. What are friends for?

SPEAKER_01: 9:55

Right. Just some light to moderate stalking, just a little bit. Your like presence online has, I feel like, blown up over the past several years. And you know, you have something, what, like one and a half million, two million followers across platforms. And that that number in my brain, like that's not that's a weird number to think about. Is it that way for you?

SPEAKER_02: 10:16

I think that there's something kind of misleading about numbers on social media, because just because you have a million followers doesn't mean a million people are seeing what you make. And I've definitely found that since I have shifted my focus more towards media that is uh longer lived than social media, I don't have quite the same pull to make the kinds of videos that I used to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:47

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 10:48

It feels a little bit more like maintenance rather than grinding.

SPEAKER_01: 10:52

That's that I think that's such a good way to put it, actually. That you just kind of like you keep up with it, you make the stuff, but I agree, you know, as someone who's done long form media like podcasts and done some writing, like it is a totally different animal. Like the ethos behind it, the way you approach it, so different.

SPEAKER_02: 11:10

It is. Yeah, it definitely is. I think there's a real difference between I think when you're starting out, you're just trying to get seen. You're just trying to like get followers and you know, trying to make things that are gonna make people laugh or gonna make people think. Uh, and then as you kind of figure out what you're doing, uh it it kind of whittles it down a little bit. I think I've no I've certainly noticed like a lot of the people that I followed at the beginning of the pandemic either aren't making content anymore, are making totally different content that is more thoughtful, maybe a little bit more spaced out, or I guess some of them are still making the content, but not not in the not in that way. Like it's more focused, it's more pointed. I find that I have a higher bar for the things that I'm actually willing to post, which is maybe not great content strategy, but I think is important to me because of the kind of thing I'm I'm trying to accomplish, which is really solid, trustworthy, well-thought out education.

SPEAKER_01: 12:19

That's and that's such a I think an important point that I think people on both sides of the screen, so to speak, or both both sides of the microphone need to hear is that like there's this pressure and there's this idea that you just oh, like for some reason my algorithm got so screwed up, and like every other video now is some like social media coach that's like, you gotta post every time you open the app, you gotta do this and that. And I'm just like, I for one, that would feel so inauthentic for what I want to do. But two, like, who has the time or brain space for that? It ain't me.

SPEAKER_02: 12:54

Not me either. I can't. I you have to think of it more like a marathon than a sprint, because otherwise you will burn out and you will you will avoid making content. And that has happened to me many times. Um, I go at it too hard, I get too focused, I get overwhelmed, and then I can't do anything. I'm just frozen. And there'll be like four-month stretches where I don't post anything at all. And that's just because like I'm out, I'm out of juice, ran out of gas. I'm gonna sit here until someone comes along with a gas can because I can't do it.

SPEAKER_01: 13:29

That's I found that with the show too, with this podcast, too. Because I've taken over the years a couple of long breaks that was like, I'm gonna take a month off. And then six months later, I'm like, oh crap, I should record an episode, you know, like but I think there's a line somewhere where we do things because we love them and we do things because we care about education, about our the material we're covering, all that. And then when it just becomes like, again, like you said, the grind, it becomes a thing you have to do, and it sort of ruins it. Uh there's all kinds of reasons to do things, but I think I'm like you in a lot of ways that I would rather do something I enjoy that I find value and fulfillment in.

SPEAKER_02: 14:05

Yeah. I know that personally I've tried to I I always try to give myself a lot of options. So I try not to put all of my eggs in one basket. You know, I yes, I'll make content and I'll also write a book and I'll also do this program that has a stipend. And I'll also have, you know, these other side projects and things that I'm working on in my house or or whatever to keep that all keep me really occupied, but that give me room to shift between choices so that I don't feel like I wake up in the morning and I feel like I've wasted a day if I don't make a video.

SPEAKER_01: 14:41

Yeah. That's I think that's a really smart and probably healthy way to approach that. Because it, you know, again, the burnout, just the pressure. I think it gets to people. And it's obvious sometimes when it starts to, and you see shifts in their tone and the way they approach things, and it's like, oh, you maybe should take a step back. Like, but give it a minute.

SPEAKER_02: 15:02

Yeah. And I think sometimes we feel entitled to people's attention when we've kind of lost the plot a little bit. And that's definitely happened to me before, where I am like upset that people aren't watching my content. But then I look at it and then I'm like, well, this isn't good. No wonder nobody's watching this because it sucks. Because I'm burnt out and that's coming through in what I'm trying to make. And so then at that point I go, okay, I have to like, I have to like go visit my folks. I have to like go outside without a camera. I have to go lay in the grass and read some Mary Oliver and cry in a hammock for a while and be a person.

SPEAKER_01: 15:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:43

Or just like do something else, like focus on my garden, you know, do some recipe development, like things that I don't have to film.

SPEAKER_01: 15:51

Yeah, that's cool. Well, so one nice thing about this content creation, social media, whatever, is it leads to cool opportunities. And we'll talk about the book a lot more in just a second, but I've seen over the years that you've been teaching workshops and getting to meet people and go forage in a group. Can you talk about that a little bit, what that experience is like?

SPEAKER_02: 16:10

Yeah, I think that I was always really hesitant to do that because I'd had a couple of experiences back when I lived in Michigan where like people found out where I lived and were weird about it, or I people would, you know, get access to my information because of a walk that I led and then kind of abuse that. But out here in Virginia, I decided, you know, I would really like to have more control over my time. I found that I was traveling to all of these different festivals and doing all of this different stuff and working my ass off every summer and not really having very much to show for it because so much of my resources were getting tied up in travel or in lodging or um it really just like having time that I couldn't be here working on my own things. So I said, you know, I think I need to cut back on some of these external things, some of these festivals, um, some of the stuff that really sucks a lot of my energy, where I have to be chaotic forager all the time for everyone, and instead like choose when I'm going to be chaotic forager and I'm going to be like your guide in the woods. Uh and so I've started doing more with you know, leading my own forays. I transformed my basement into a classroom. So now I have like a little kitchenette and a whole bunch of crazy equipment down there. And uh I'm planning on doing more, doing more this fall with like preservation and fermentation and all kinds of different things. I've got a vinegar making class that I'm really excited about. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

That's really cool. And I like the thought of finding ways to take that control back, right? And again, when you're passionate about something, being able to like engage with it in a way that that feels good to you is so important. And that's really cool. And but it looks like you have a lot of fun doing it. And that's from the outside as a friend, is fun to see. It's really cool to see.

SPEAKER_02: 18:14

I do have a lot of fun doing it, and I feel a lot more relaxed because I'm making the schedule. So I know that hey, this Saturday, three weekends from now, I'm gonna go out in the woods with people and we're gonna have fun and I'm gonna have snacks for them, and we're just gonna hang out and we're gonna learn things together. Uh, and I really enjoy that time. And I enjoy meeting these people who are at like all different levels of foraging ability and knowledge. And we we have kids sometimes. So I'm gonna be teaching at a forest school this October for a day, doing kids' forays, which is always really fun because kids find cool things, they're low to the ground, so they find the really interesting mushrooms.

SPEAKER_01: 19:00

That's super cool, yeah. And yeah, and so my son is nine now, which is weird to think about. But though you were just talking about of like a kid's perspective of nature and of the things, it's so different. And I don't know where we lose that along the way. Like, I don't know when that happens, but like we'll be outside or like taking pictures. He likes photography and stuff, and he'll find the smallest little thing that I would just have stepped over, walked past, and like, I don't know, there's something about that like speaks to me as a nature lover, as an educator of like finding ways to hold on to that wonder is so so important.

SPEAKER_02: 19:42

Yeah, I think it's a combination of things. I I think one of the things that prevents us from being able to see like that is that we have a we have this socially ingrained sense of time and the fact that we are expected to constantly be moving through what we're doing and on to the next thing. Uh and kids, uh if you've ever like been waiting for a child to tie his shoes before you have to leave the house, like you know that kids don't have that yet. They don't have that like uh socially ingrained sense of time. And so it gives them more opportunity to experience those small things that don't seem important enough for us to stop and look at. Um and like logistically, they are closer to the ground, so they are seeing more of these things. Like I was on a I was on a walk with a kid, the kid found a truffle. I'm like, what? You found a truffle. And like no adult was gonna see that. No adult was gonna see that. They were all looking for chanterelles, but like this kid found a truffle. Uh and that's always really cool to me. If you get if you give a get it's like uh, you know, if you give a mouse a cookie, if you give a kid a hand lens, like you'll never see them again.

SPEAKER_01: 20:57

Oh yeah, just endless fascination. Endless fascination, which is great. I like I love that. That's just from the outside, again, that's one of my favorite things to watch happen is that like joy of discovery. And that, I don't know, that the world gets small after a while, right? Like uh especially like it's great having a phone that I can be in contact with people. It's great that 1,500 miles apart we can like talk and all that, but like the world gets small after a while, and I try to remember being little and things feeling big and new and all of that, and getting to see that again in some in someone else as you're teaching, as you're doing that, is just like that's such a rewarding experience. At least, at least it is for me.

SPEAKER_02: 21:40

Yeah, yeah, it is for me too. You know, I don't have kids, I don't want kids, but I really enjoy kids. I think they're absolutely fascinating people. And a lot of adults overlook kids, or I don't know why it's like in vogue to like not like children. I think they're really interesting. But so many of the best foragers that I know, really, I think all of the best foragers that I know tap into their seven-year-old selves like really well. It's basically the case for all of my favorite people in the foraging space. They know how to see out of the eyes of a seven-year-old and look at a forest that is still like wonderful and magical, but then also have the knowledge and the understanding of an adult that has spent a lot of time in those spaces.

SPEAKER_01: 22:30

Yeah, that's really cool. And I guess honestly, that leads me to, you know, what we're kind of here to talk about, your book that's coming out, Gathered, on foraging, feasting, and the seasonal life. And, you know, just to, you know, and I'm not just saying this because you're sitting here across the camera from me, but I love this. I haven't had a chance to like get all the way through it. I've spent a couple days reading it and and I want to talk about just some of my thoughts about it as we go, but it is such a wonderful, like fun, joyful approach to what you do. So so can you tell us about the process? Where did this come from? Where did this start? What was your experience of writing it like?

SPEAKER_02: 23:09

Yeah. So I think even when I was a little kid, I always wanted to write a book, but I didn't know what. I I like wrote a novel as a teenager that lives on an ancient like bubble iMac that's probably uh in my parents' basement somewhere. Uh it's absolutely terrible. But I love writing. I love, I find it sometimes difficult to figure out what I'm thinking or feeling in the moment. But when I have time to write it down, I feel like I can, I can really express myself and I can really understand what I'm thinking and feeling. And so an agent had actually reached out to me, my my agent, um Callie Dietrich. I actually have two agents that work at the same place, Callie and Wendy, uh, Wendy Sherman. And they reached out to me and they said, you know, we've been seeing your content on social media and we think you might have a book in you. And I was like, that sounds cool. Uh and just because you're always getting scammed when you work in social media, people are like, I've gotten probably 40 podcast invites in the past like four days that are not real podcast invites. But I was, I like spent time looking into this. I'm like, are these real people? Is this a real thing? Uh and they they wanted to represent me and I looked into them, sure enough. Like I actually had a couple of friends who had worked with them and had really great experiences. So they had initially suggested that I write a field guide. And I was pretty against the idea. Because in my mind, I I don't think anybody needs like a field guide from me. I think there I was trying to find books that did the thing that I would have really benefited from when I first started, especially looking for mushrooms, because I can't really remember exactly when I started foraging, but uh, when I started looking for mushrooms, uh there is a lot of information out there. But a lot of the soft skills of foraging are not written about as eloquently, I suppose. So you can get a field guide that'll tell you what something is, but not necessarily like what are best practices for harvesting? What is the best way to assess whether or not this is a specimen that I should collect or leave behind? What are some of the histories of foraging? And why is it that these laws are so confusing? And who is benefiting from the way that things currently are and who is being disenfranchised? And so I said, you know, I really want to write about all of these things. I want people to have good information. I want people to have, you know, ideas of what to do when they come home with the things that they forage. And I also want people to understand the nuance of this activity and that it isn't just grocery shopping and it isn't just a way to do consumerism and not feel as bad about it. It's about a relationship. And it's a relationship that you build over the course of your entire life. And so I thought the best way to do that was through memoir and talking about some of my own uh joys and missteps and experiences and really bring it back to the gift that foraging has given me. The I think the most profound gift that foraging has given me is the ability to exist in community and to experience reciprocal relationship in a way that is outside of consumerism uh and that is outside of capital.

SPEAKER_01: 27:05

Wow. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, that's incredible. And that's I think that's what struck me the most reading through this this week, is that it's something so unique in in the sense that like it is memoirs, right? Like you have dates in here and places and lived experience that led you to the knowledge that you have and led you to the, I guess, uh overall conception of foraging in nature and the and like you said, the community and relationship. But also, like there's a ton of super practical things all the way through it. Like it opens with definitions and you should tips like you should wear long pants. And that sounds like uh I it's such good advice because people don't think about those things.

SPEAKER_02: 27:53

Yeah. And there are things that because I spend so much time with beginning foragers, it forces me to remember what it was like to be a beginning forager and all of the things that I take for granted now. And it allows me to address them in advance. So, like when I send out the information about where we're gonna be meeting for Saturday's foray, I always include stuff like that. Like, hey, here's uh here's what you should have with you. Here are the tools that you might want. You know, here are the things that you should do to keep yourself safe and comfortable. And some of that stuff you just you take for granted. You don't even think about it after a while. But like, full disclosure here. So, like I have been wearing, I wear the stupidest foraging uniform you've ever seen. I wear like leggings, and then I wear wool socks up to the middle of my calves. I have a pair of sneakers on because I can't do hiking boots. They drive me nuts. Then I throw shorts on over the leggings, and then I tuck my shirt in, and then I have another shirt over that. So I look like an absolute moron. Uh I look like the seven-year-old version of myself that I, you know, try to be when I go into the forest. Like I look ridiculous. And then two days ago, I saw some black cherries, and I was like, oh, I'm wearing shorts right now, but black cherries. And then I go over, and guess who has poison ivy all over their legs now? This guy didn't listen to my own advice. So sometimes even those of us who are experienced get humbled by our own hubris.

SPEAKER_01: 29:39

Isn't I totally that's and that's such a I think common experience with people that do things like this. It's like oh, here's all the stuff you should do. And then it's like, ah, nah. It's fine. It's fine.

SPEAKER_02: 29:51

It's fine. I've been doing this forever. Just one time.

SPEAKER_01: 29:55

And then yeah, poison ivy is no joke.

SPEAKER_02: 29:57

It's not.

SPEAKER_01: 29:58

But then also like, you know. Ticks and mosquitoes and scorpions, depending on where you are, and all kinds of things that you just like those things don't play. You don't want to deal with that.

SPEAKER_02: 30:08

Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you want to get humbled, just spend time in a forest somewhere. Spend time in a prairie. Spend time in a desert. You will get humbled real quick.

SPEAKER_01: 30:19

Real quick. So this seems like a great time for a quick break. We'll go to the mid-roll. I've got some recommendations and things for you. We'll talk about the normal stuff. And then we'll jump back in and talk more about the writing process for Gathered and hear a lot more from Gabrielle. So stick with us. We'll be right back. Well, hey there, friends. Welcome to the Mid-Roll. So nice to have you here as always. I'm going to try to keep this short today. And I always say that, and I don't think I ever do it, but I'm going to really try for sure. So, first off, how great is Gabriel? Really the best. And I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed this book. So I want you again, if you didn't do it at the beginning, do it now. Go click on the link, pre-order the book, or order the book, and you will not regret it. I promise you won't regret it. Thanks so much for listening to Planthropology and being a part of it. It's it's wonderful that I get to do this and that you get to be here with me for it. And I just love that so much. If you want to support the show, there's a lot of ways to do it. The best thing is just to tell someone about it. Uh you have someone who's interested in foraging, send them this episode. Do you want to just share your love of plants with everyone around you? Scream it from the rooftops. How much you love planthropology, and I will be your friend forever. We'll be best friends. Like just just just we'll do the thing anyway. You can support the show financially. You can go to planthropologypodcast.com and click on merch. In addition to being able to find old episodes and things like that, you can pick up some cool swag. There should hopefully be new stuff coming. I think I've been saying that for three years, but it's gonna happen. It'll happen. One of these days, it will happen. Also, you can go to buymeacoffee.com slash planthropology, and for the price of a coffee, you can help me support the show. But mostly the y'all, y'all, these jokes run on caffeine. The silliness runs on caffeine, and I need more of it because coffee has gotten expensive. So if you want to leave a rating in review, go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Podchaser, anywhere you can and drop a five-star rating. And I would I would love that. It would make me feel good on my inside parts. And also, if you have any tips for the show, any guests you'd love to see on here, just general comments, send me an email at planthropologypod at gmail.com. The last thing I want to talk about, um, you may remember from way back a former guest, Rachel Boyd, who was also my co-host and the producer on a different podcast I did for a while called In the Grow. It's also an NPR show. It was great. We haven't gotten to do it in a while, but she has done a lot of editing and audio producing. And she's part of a wonderful sci-fi podcast that's just starting up called Blue Life. And the first couple episodes are out, and y'all, it's so good. If you like audio drama, if you like high production value, great science fiction stories, you're gonna love Blue Life. Um, they are still working on their funding stage, they're really close to hitting their goals. And if you have anything that you could contribute so that this excellent show can keep going, uh go listen to the first couple episodes of Blue Life, go drop them some cash if you've got a little bit extra, and tell them you'd love to hear more Blue Life because I, my friends, would love to hear more blue life, because it's great. So there's a promo coming up here in just a couple of seconds. I would like for you to listen to it with your ear parts, and then click the link for this as well and go support them and just make this happen because it's a great show, and I really want to see where the story goes. And so you can help me make sure that that happens. So get ready for the blue life promo, and then we'll come back with more planthropology, and we'll start that in like five, four, three, two, one, go.

SPEAKER_03: 33:48

Why do we have to do this? You can't even spend that money.

SPEAKER_01: 33:52

I told you I have a plan.

SPEAKER_03: 33:55

Are you gonna go see mom? If you go see mom without me, I'm looking in this box.

SPEAKER_00: 34:02

Here's what you came for. Here's the blue light.

SPEAKER_01: 34:07

Whoa! Whoa!

SPEAKER_00: 34:11

What's that?

SPEAKER_01: 34:14

Hey.

SPEAKER_00: 34:17

What are the two givens in life? Huh? My grandparents before the wars used to say, death and taxes, am I right? Well yes, but But now there are three things you can count on: death, taxes, and blue life. Everybody needs blue life to survive, Carolyn.

SPEAKER_03: 34:49

Need more Blue Life? Check out episode one now. You can listen on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Blue Life is an independent podcast, and you can help support us by going to Blue Lifeworld.com and joining our community. Live Blue.

SPEAKER_01: 35:12

So I've sort of been through this writing process, but I think it's something that's very foreign to most people. Because it's I and I honestly, and I've said this before, but and I fully believe this. I think whether you're writing it, whether you're dictating it, whether you're just thinking through it, everyone has like a story in them they need to tell. Whether it goes anywhere, whether you sell it, whether it just sits on a shelf or an old bubble iMac, like I feel like that is such a cathartic experience and like helps you understand a lot about like the you and your experiences. But from like a writing and technical and like process standpoint, if you don't mind, would you just walk through what that looks like forming the book, coming up with the chapters, coming up with the topics, all that?

SPEAKER_02: 35:57

Yeah. So I'm a big fan of an outline. I mean, that's how I that's how I do all of my academic papers. I outline all the way until I have a paper. I kind of outline until I have a book. And it took me, I want to say, a total of maybe 18 months to write the book. So I kind of took my time with it. I was also in school at the same time. So, you know, a little bit too much going on at once. Definitely wouldn't recommend it to anybody who's thinking about doing a PhD program and writing a book at the same time. That was real dumb. But for me, I found that I worked best when I was really intentional about blocking off time. So I would make sure that I like am in my office, I have the door closed, my cats aren't bothering me, I'm just in here and I'm working. I would also kind of try to draw myself out through the store, the beginning of the story I wanted to tell, and the end of the story I wanted to tell. Um, so having a beginning and an end really helped because everything else that was in the middle could kind of it could kind of pull towards that end. So one thing that I do a lot in the book is play with time. So I, you know, you're it's a seasonal guide. So I have to think back to different years where I was experiencing that season and find the right story to tell, and find the right plant or the right mushroom to teach a lesson or to illustrate a point. And that was the hardest part. The hardest part was deciding which stories I was going to tell and which ones I would save for another book, uh, which ones maybe didn't fit in this one. And so I wrote the text first, and then I went back and I said, okay, these are all of the different plants and mushrooms that I referenced that I want to come up with recipes for. Some of them were newly developed recipes, some of them were recipes that I've made videos about, but that I just wanted to describe in more detail, or I wanted to explain the science of how like lactofermentation works so that you can apply it to any number of different things that you find throughout the year. I also wanted things that built on each other. So, you know, if you make Juneberry barbecue sauce earlier in the year, then you can use it on the Maitaki that you find in November. And with the field guide, I was really, really helped by the fact that I had a wonderful illustrator who was feeding me drawings as I was writing. So finding an illustrator took time. I actually ended up hiring a friend of mine who I met at Mushroom Camp in Michigan probably five years ago. And she does these wonderful, dreamy watercolors that are morphologically accurate, but they have like a soul. There's just there's just something about them, they have a soul. And being fed these illustrations and you know, working on the chapters that they appear in, it was just like, yes, I can, I can like imagine exactly where I was, I can remember these things, and I can come up with uh a thread that ties all of these things together.

SPEAKER_01: 39:35

And I'm glad you brought that up because I was gonna ask you about the illustrations in here because I love the like line drawing style and just I like it.

SPEAKER_02: 39:43

Oh yeah, and I that's an arc, so that doesn't have the full color spread, but she did like all the images that you see on the front are gonna be in the spread, and there are like 40 more images that are just like so beautiful.

SPEAKER_01: 39:56

If you happen to be watching a video of this at some point when I get my stuff together and put it on YouTube, these illustrations are beautiful. I mean, really beautiful. That's so cool. And so you mentioned the recipes, and that's kind of as you've been talking, I've been sort of filtering or flipping through here looking at recipes. And it's actually really funny when you were talking about that lactofermentation barbecue recipe, that was actually the one that I had opened.

SPEAKER_02: 40:19

Oh, that's really funny.

SPEAKER_01: 40:20

Weirdly. So these are all your original recipes, you've come up with all the stuff and done all that.

SPEAKER_02: 40:25

Yeah, I mean, some of these are like modifications of things that I make using grocery store ingredients too. You know, like I I cannot say that onigiri is like an original recipe. I'm I'm modifying it, and I'm the real like information of the recipe that's going to be useful to you is like, how do you prepare this foraged ingredient that I have included? So I spent a lot of time recipe testing, uh, a lot of time just like playing with ingredients and uh importantly talking to people who spend a lot of time with some of these ingredients. So I ended up hiring a number of people to kind of serve as an editorial board because I was trying to do too many things. I was honestly shocked that I sold the book at all because or that so many people were interested in it because I was like, well, it's it's a memoir and it's a little bit of field guide and a cookbook. And also like I have these meditations in there, and there's just like so much going on because I like leaving all my options open and I like including as much as I can. I, you know, I turn in my manuscript and they're like, there's a lot going on here. I'm like, yeah. But anyway, I had this sort of editorial board of four different people. So I had uh my friend JB Douglas, who is a culinary genius who specifically works with wild food. And I had him like check over all of my work and make sure that my recipes made sense, that they were able to be followed, and that the things that I was doing with the ingredients were like the optimal ways to treat them. Because, like, even though I know, you know, how to use May Apple, maybe there's something that I could do that's even better. Or maybe there's a way of doing this that's easier, a way of processing this that's easier. And so JB was really helpful with that. Um, I had done a bit of a work swap with Sam Thayer, who's written a number of books, but he just came out with a field guide a couple of years ago and asked if I would copy edit it. And rather than accepting payment, I said, How about I copy edit this for you and then you do the same thing for my book? Um, and so he was my uh my plants expert. And uh I had Errol Bonkowski, who is a uh mushroom expert. Uh, she's one of the top identifiers on iNaturalist. We know each other adjacently. We never met in person, but I had sent her a message and said, Would you be on board with this? And she was super gracious and she checked all of the work with mushrooms. And then the last piece of the puzzle was that I felt that since I was spending a lot of time talking about indigenous people and indigenous practices, I really needed to bring somebody on board who who was indigenous and who was a generally an expert in uh historical cultural food practices. Um, and so that's where Vivian Mork came in. And she was really great and uh actually caught a couple of errors that I had made and a couple of things that would have been a little bit embarrassing, uh, just about like mixing up a couple of people groups. So um, so having Vivian was really helpful.

SPEAKER_01: 43:51

That's super cool. And uh I saw a post you made recently, maybe last week. I don't know, time is like a flat circle, I have no idea, but recently about how it takes a village to do something like this, right? You it's it is a in a cool sort of way, and I love the way you talk about it because of the way you talk about community. Like this is a work of community, right? This is something that represents so many different peoples and so many different viewpoints, but kind of refined into your own. And I just I think that's a that's such a neat concept.

SPEAKER_02: 44:23

Yeah, that was really intentional. You're probably familiar with the the general feeling in a lot of foraging spaces, in a lot of bushcrafting, and I I hate the word, but like primitive living spaces. Uh, the whole thing is individualism. Everybody's always pushing for like, here's how you can be self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency is garbage, it doesn't work. You will get sick, you will burn out, you will, you know, your crops will fail, your livestock will die. Like you don't have the capacity as one person to live a good life with nobody else around you. We human beings, we have not evolved that way, we have not developed that way, we are not meant to be that way. We are meant these these skills were developed in the context of community, and they need to be practiced in the context of community. Uh, or not islands. And the hyperindividualism is a is a perversion of like the very thing that we are supposed to be learning from the forest.

SPEAKER_01: 45:30

Yeah, uh a hundred percent. That that's very well said. Yeah. So that's and it's super interesting to think about. And I think that's something that's important for people to hear with everything, just everything, right? Everything happening, all the weirdness, all the turmoil, and uh that that we survive, we not just survive, but we thrive and we prosper and we lead, like you say, meaningful lives through community. And that is such a just such a good thing to talk about and think about.

SPEAKER_02: 46:02

Totally.

SPEAKER_01: 46:03

So, and I know it's hard to pick one, but do you have a favorite recipe or a favorite thing that you forage?

SPEAKER_02: 46:08

Man, I don't really have a favorite thing that I forage. I tend to get really obsessed with whatever the season is at a given time. So, like right now, I'm just in berry mode. I'm going out for black cherries and autumn olive and like all of these things that are just exploding at the moment. Uh in a month, it's gonna be all about my take and like the last bolites that are coming up. Uh, then it's gonna be, you know, persimmons or whatever. I but yeah, at the moment it's uh it's also an amazing spice bush year. So I've just been collecting so much of it. And uh I've got I think five trays in my dehydrator right now adjust of spice bush, because the last couple of years haven't been as great. So I'm trying to capitalize on that while I can.

SPEAKER_01: 47:01

I think one of my favorite like things that I've actually made. So I live, by the way, just as an aside in the middle of nowhere, kind of up on this like this high prairie, you know, we're about a thousand meters above sea level, and it's a short grass prairie and very flat, and mostly ag land now, right? It's mostly agricultural. So, you know, there's things to forage here. They're a little bit fewer and farther between than places with mountains and trees and things like that until you get down. Um, there are natural springs, there's muscadines, there's hawthorns, there's all there are things, but one of my favorite things that I've made that came from one of your videos was a red bud syrup, like a red bud simple syrup. I have a couple of red buds in my front yard. Great US uh North American native plant. They're so cool, so cool, gorgeous. Except that I think I sent you a message. I waited too long this year, and they had already been pollinated a little bit, and it was like very bean forward. It was very that's a legume, so like that does happen, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 48:06

Yeah. Usually the and okay, so I also have a red bud in the side yard at my house that I've just sort of allowed to do its thing because I love red bud. And the last two years I have gotten to it too late, which is so stupid because it is in my yard. It's in my yard. What am I doing? Why is this so difficult? But then once they get a little bit too bean forward, I usually just end up throwing them in tacos.

SPEAKER_01: 48:35

Oh, that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02: 48:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 48:38

Yeah. Okay. I'll have to think about that one in the in the future because like I made all this simple syrup and I was just like, oh, it's weird.

SPEAKER_02: 48:46

It's weird. Yeah. I I find that they're a lot better before they open up. Yeah, more citrusy.

SPEAKER_01: 48:54

But same deal. I walk by these two super trees every stinking day. And I'm like, oh, I need to do that when I get home. And then two weeks later they're open and the bees are there, and I'm like, oh well, maybe next year. So let me kind of start to wrap up here. Uh if you had, and I think you have uh talked about this last time you were on, but I think it's good to reiterate, aside from buying this book, which everyone should, if someone wants to get into foraging, get into being more connected with their wild spaces and their human and ecological community, what do you where should we start? Where do you think someone should start?

SPEAKER_02: 49:32

I think you should start by finding people. Even before you like go get a book, I would find people. So there are a few ways to do this. Most, if you live in the US, or or even in like parts of Canada, uh, if you look on the North American Mycological Association website, Nama.org, you can find mushroom clubs that meet near you. And if you go, you don't even have to just do mushroom clubs. There are often like foraging groups or even just like native plant groups, people that are interested in this stuff. You can find a lot of them on Facebook. But try to join a group of people who can teach you things. Something else that I will tell people to do is like follow your curiosity. So go into a green space that you know well and look around and see if there's anything that you can identify. For some people, it's gonna be a dandelion. Um, maybe for some people it's gonna be a white clover, something along those lines, something that's very ubiquitous that everybody generally knows. You might find that you know more than you think you do. Uh, and then you can sit and you can just sit with a plant or sit with a mushroom and try to figure it out tip to tail, like just what am I looking at? What are the features that I'm seeing? Who is this? Who is this being that I'm sitting with? And really spend your time with them. I the one of the best ways that you can learn what's around you is to not start with the idea that you're going to look for food and instead start with the idea that you are going to learn who some plant or some mushroom is. Um and once you figure that out, you will start seeing them more places. And then you can go, wait a minute, I always see this plant growing near this plant. What are these plants? So it allows you to kind of expand over time. And you can use tools like iNaturalist to help you narrow things down to genus, but really like observation is so underrated and underappreciated when it comes to learning about plants and mushrooms. And starting with curiosity rather than like conquest is usually a good place to, it's usually a good place to be.

SPEAKER_01: 52:01

You've given me already so many great clips out of this. Like you're a pro, but like no, I love that. Starting with curiosity rather than conquest. Because I you're gosh, and I'm gonna think about that a lot, because I think when we enter these things, we enter these new hobbies, these new pursuits, we are conditioned to think of it of like, how do I win? How do I conquer this thing instead of how do I just know more? How do I be more in community, more in harmony with this? That's really a good way to think of it.

SPEAKER_02: 52:33

Yeah, and foraging is such a localized set of skills uh in some cases. Like the if I went out to Texas right now and you showed me around your yard, I would be able to identify some things and then other things, I would have no clue because I've never met those plants before. I've never met those fungi before. I have no idea. And so then I would like need to be introduced. And I we get this idea that like we can somehow, like you said, we can win. We can like get all the knowledge and then always be the smartest person in the room. And nature will always humble you because that will never happen to you with the outdoors. Like, you will always have something to learn. And if you make the goal learning instead of making the goal like having a freezer full of foraged mushrooms or like foraging 90% of what you eat, or like whatever it is, it's it those things will come, like you will have like a great chanterelle score. But if that's what you're always looking for, then you'll you'll always be disappointed. Or at least most of the time you'll be disappointed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 53:48

Yeah. You have to, I don't know, prioritize the the process and then the good things that come out of it come out of it. And that's great.

SPEAKER_02: 53:56

Yeah. And just like let yourself be delighted and let yourself take time and let yourself leave things. You know, let yourself walk past something and say hi and go, I you know what, I've got enough of you at home. I'm good.

SPEAKER_01: 54:10

That's really cool. That's really cool. You know, I understand that like you've got a ton going on between the PhD, between the book coming out, and just everything else that you do. But like, what's on the horizon for you? What's next?

SPEAKER_02: 54:22

It's hard to think past the book because it's not out yet and it's coming out. I am hoping to take a real vacation. I want to go on a real vacation. Uh, which to me is like I want to go out to Oregon during mushroom season and like turn my phone onto airplane mode and disappear. But we'll see. We'll see when I can make something like that happen.

SPEAKER_01: 54:48

I think that's a good goal. I think that's like a thing we should all want is to just like I'm going low-tech, like brick my phone for a week. Nobody knows where I am. That sounds like the best thing.

SPEAKER_02: 55:01

Yeah. I just want to sit in a little cabin with a stack of novels and not know what time it is.

SPEAKER_01: 55:10

It sounds wonderful. Like, truly wonderful. Well, Gabrielle, thanks for everything for your knowledge, your wisdom, your experience. I I again, I'm not just saying this. I genuinely like think the world of you and value you as a friend. And I appreciate all the heart you put into this and just everything you do. So thanks for being on. It was a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02: 55:30

Thank you so much for having me again. It's been so good to catch up with you. And I'm just really grateful that that you like it. And I hope that other people do too.

SPEAKER_01: 55:40

I think they will. So, real quick before we jump off, tell us where all we can find you, when the book comes out, and where to find it.

SPEAKER_02: 55:46

Yeah, so you can find it all places that books are sold. I've been encouraging people to go through their indie booksellers because the world is terrible enough and Jeff Bezos doesn't need any more of our money. But it comes out October 21st. You can pre-order it if you're listening to this before then. Uh, and you can find me at Chaotic Forager on all on all socials and uh chaotiforager.com if you're interested in a workshop or something along those lines.

SPEAKER_01: 56:14

Very cool. Well, it was a pleasure as always. Thanks so much. And we'll have to do this again sometime.

SPEAKER_02: 56:19

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 56:21

Y'all, I think this idea of curiosity over conquest is one of my new very favorite things because it really frames how we see the world. And I think the lens through which Gabrielle views the world around her, how she sees nature, how she sees all the things that she encounters out there is just so refreshing and so wonderful and something that we could all use like a lot more of, like a lot more of in our lives. So, Gabrielle, thank you so much for being on. Thank you for being back on Planthropology and for writing such a great book. So, again, if you have not done it yet, go pre-order or order gathered on foraging, feasting, and the seasonal life, and and you will love it, I promise. Thanks for being a part of Planthropology, thanks for listening. You know I do this for you, and it is one of the great pleasures of my life. Planthropology is hosted, recorded, edited, all the things by me. Our intro and outro music is by the award-winning composer Nick Scout, and the mid-roll tunes are by my buddy Rui and his lo-fi dad jazz. So thanks for listening, thanks for being cool. Y'all keep being kind to one another. If you have not to date been kind to one another, hey, give that a try. We need a lot more of that. So be good, be kind, keep being really cool plant people, and I will see you next time.