Spring Harvest

Foraging ancient dna amidst the wilds of civilization

I want to tell you how to find ramps. Now, I’ve been told this is a controversial statement. I’m told with the aid of social media, ramps have become extra hip and possibly even in danger. So hot right now. This being the case, you can forgive me for being a bit vague on exactly how to find them. However, I do love them and want to write about them and I hold on to the hope that, like in other areas of conservation, love will help preserve a species. I would like to write about how to harvest them responsibly. There really is only a certain percentage of people that will go roll around in the dirt and find their own food so if the ramps are getting decimated, it is most likely foragers like you and me that are doing most of the damage. Sure, someone might see some sparkly “influencer” (I’m old so I put that word in quotes) holding some ramps near a stream and want to go out and find their own. I would like to think that is an opportunity for conservation. In my mind, the more people that care about wild places and use them and begin to depend on them, the more these people will want to preserve them. If this would-be forager is just going off a pretty picture with no context and no understanding of what they are digging up, they would probably be more prone to doing damage. I would like to describe my relationship with this plant in hopes it may inspire a little respect for the little green devils. We all want it both ways. We want people to give a damn about public land and rise up and donate money and tear down fences and all that, while at the same time, we get mad when we find someone in our ramp spot. I say ‘we’ here because I’m as guilty as anyone. We’re all out there on Instagram showing our handfuls of ramps and morels and then we complain when irresponsible people go out there and take them all. Who’s really being irresponsible in that equation? Anyone who claims to be unaware of human nature should really take some time to figure that out before showing off how fun and fulfilling a life lived in the outdoors can be. This attitude reminds me of getting angry when a local band you like becomes a little more popular. Sure this may be good for the band’s long term survival, but I miss being able to see them in a small bar with no one else there! It’s hard to share special things. I want everyone to care about the woods. I want everyone to care about ramps, too. I keep my special specific spots to myself like the rest of you, but I don’t want the woods, in general, to be a secret. That is short-term thinking that will never create more woods. To me that is the real problem: we need more public wild land. We don’t need more people to stay indoors so we can find all the ramps or mushrooms or pheasants. We need more people to see the immense and deep connections involved in wild places and food. The fewer people that are invested in this, the smaller the call will be to protect it when it comes up for sale. And it will come up for sale. If you’re still angry about me telling people about ramps, you can take solace in the fact that not many people read this thing. In that group, I’d wager a good percentage of them already know how to find food outside. A good way to channel that anger may be towards bringing awareness to the species you’d like to save. The genie is out of the bottle here, so what’s next? I did not intend for this disclaimer to be the longest part of this piece.