CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

[Cheerful theme music begins]

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

Alexis Nikole Nelson aka Black Forager uses her platform to engage with millions—yelling, singing, and celebrating the hidden bounty of edible plants waiting to be found in our backyards, on our nature hikes, growing from our sidewalks and in our parks across the world.

In this episode, Alexis is joined by CIIS associate professor, activist, and licensed creative arts therapist Britton Williams for an engaging and joyful conversation about Alexis’ life and work, food justice and foraging for edible plants to enrich palates and the planet.

This episode was recorded during a live event on April 12th, 2024. CIIS Public Programs members can watch a video of this talk on their member portal. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms

[Theme music concludes]

Britton Williams: I just want to say firstly It is so great to be here and be in conversation with you.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Oh my Gosh, what. The pleasure is all mine.


Britton Williams: I mean As someone who has been following your work for several years, I have to say, seriously, what a pleasure it is to have gone foraging with you just now. So I felt like maybe we should start from the beginning. I'm a person that's like a definition is always good, like so that we know we know what we're talking about.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yes. Right?


Britton Williams: Like, so if someone were to ask you, what is foraging? What would you say? Like, what is foraging?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I would say that foraging is the art slash science of identifying plants, fungi, flowers, and then taking them home and turning them into tasty little treats.


Britton Williams: Nice. I like it.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: It started really technical at the beginning and it kind of went off the rails.


Britton Williams: I mean, but anything that ends with tasty little treats feels like something you should at least be, you know, curious about. So what would you say, you know, so I shared, you know, I'm excited to have gone foraging with you because I feel like I'm a bit of a couch forager, which means like I've been following you for a long time and I'm like, yes, yes. Oh, I love this. Okay, great. But I don't know that I trust myself. You see what I'm saying? Literally with me to pick something off of a tree. And so what would you say for folks who are interested in foraging? Like, yeah, okay. I hear you. You go out, you identify, you figure out what it is, you go home, you get your tasty little snack. But where do I start? Alexis, as a newbie, what would you say to that person?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Well, first of all, I would tell them that there is no shame in the nervousness game. Nervousness keeps people alive, which is important. Before we even sat down, we were having a conversation about people who should have been more nervous. So I would say that is a totally normal, intelligent place to be starting from. And I tell everybody, start small. Find like one plant in your neighborhood and get to know it. Recognize what it looks like during different parts of the year. I am like, you know, this is a marathon, not a sprint. When it comes to foraging and learning about new edible plants, I have been known, like cow parsnip is one of my favorite vegetables. I literally watched a cow parsnip patch for an entire year, 365 days before the first time I felt confident enough to be like, okay, we know each other.


Britton Williams: Yes. Yes.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I know you mean me no harm. We’re buddies. I helped you spread some seeds out in the fall and now I can take some leaves and feel like you're not going to hurt me.


Britton Williams: I appreciate that you took your time to get to know before you went in there and did a little something.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yeah. You wouldn't walk into someone's house who you don't know and be like, make me a cheesecake. That would be ridiculous!


Britton Williams: You would not, That is true.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: If you become friends with them in the future, they probably still have a weird thing and would never make you a cheesecake.


Britton Williams: That is true too. So your evolution, if you were to think about like the origin, who or what was the inspiration for you to become a full-time? How did this all start?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: If she's watching this at home, I'm just going to preemptively apologize because it's my mom's fault. Every time I'm just like, blame Kim! Oh, I'm sorry. I called you by your first name. I do it for comedic effect sometimes, but then I remember that sometimes she is watching and I don't want that phone call after this.


Britton Williams: No, that is real. My mom does let me know that her first name to me is


Alexis Nikole Nelson: mom. Exactly. My mother, if she's in a bad mood, occasionally, but my mother is an avid gardener, just has the most impressive green thumb I've ever seen. When my houseplants are not houseplanting up to their fullest potential, I'll be like, mother, can they do a spell at your house? She's always been so excellent with plants, but with that also came a knowledge of a lot of the weeds and native plants that were edible too, some of which she learned from her mother, my grandmother who grew up in Massachusetts, worked in cranberry bogs as a kid and as a teenager back when child labor was legal. It's a rough time in American history and it was more recent than we like to remember. And with my nana, she was really intent on my mom and her sister getting to spend time outdoors on their own terms and getting to experience things like foraging, things like wild food, things like growing your own food, but for yourself, not for large companies or for farm owners. My family's Cape Verdean. There's a really long history of Cape Verdeans working on other people's farms in Cape Cod instead of being able to put that time and effort towards taking care of themselves and their own community. She sent them away to sleep away camp in New Hampshire and made sure my mom was a Girl Scout or a weird 1960s equivalent of Girl Scout that I could never remember. I was a Girl Scout, so I'm like, that doesn't exist to me. And so between the knowledge she got from her own mom and from spending her summers in the woods and just other things she picked up as she grew her love of gardening, she then got to pass that down to me because as a kid, I always just wanted to be outside. Thankfully she did too. That was the thing that we really bonded over when I was a kid. When she first pointed out onion grass to me, which was my first forageable plant that I had a relationship with, I was like, what do you mean there is free accident food everywhere? This is mind blowing. Why isn't this on the news


Britton Williams: Well, I can think of a couple of reasons.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I also can think of a couple of reasons. Turned on the news hour with Jim Lehrer and being like, why isn't he talking about onion grass? That was a very niche reference for people who watched PBS in the 90s. We did not have cable when I was a child. 


Britton Williams: I really appreciate you kind of tracing the lineage that brought you to foraging. First of all, shout out to your mom. This is who we have to thank for you being the Black Forager and bringing us all of this goodness that you bring. Thanks mom.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Thanks mom.


Britton Williams: But what I really appreciate about that, part of why I got so excited personally when I discovered your or met with your account years ago was because as a black woman, I began to recognize as the older I've gotten how I've been severed from nature, from land, from my ancestors relationship to the earth. And so as I hear you talk about the lineage, it just reminds me, it underscores, like this literally lives in the body, the bones, the blood.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yes.


Britton Williams: And so there's something beautiful about that. And I know that you have said before, you literally started your account naming it the Black Forager so that folks would see like, we're in this world.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yup


Britton Williams: We're in this community. And so I'm curious your thoughts on that severance that I'm talking about, that separation from this history. Why do you think there was that lack of representation that caused you to say, I need to really presence myself? What do you think that speaks to?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I think at a very base level, because as much as I would like to think that I wrote a mental treatise within my mind before naming my Instagram page, a lot of what it was born out of was one, my family and friends were getting sick of me annoying them on my personal Instagram account with all my weird food. They were just like, this is not what we followed you for and you can make another account for this. I just want to make sure you know. And so I was like, okay, I will make another account for it because I want to keep track of the things that I like making. And I was going through the other foraging accounts that I followed and I just suddenly, like I was talking to a friend of mine who also forages, who also grew up in the Midwest and I was just like, oh my God, Stacy, there's like no one with a big account in this space who looks like me. And at that time, Instagram was still for pictures and RIP, what a time to be alive. And so I was taking a lot of like just pictures of the food, just pictures of the plants. And so I wanted to make sure that people knew regardless of whether they could see my hands in the photo or not, that those photos, that knowledge, those recipes were coming from someone black, that like we were also a part of this community. Because growing up, I remember people in our own community telling me like, that's not a thing that we do. So far separated that we believe that the outdoors like aren't, isn't for us. When I went from like a pretty small but very diverse Montessori school to a pretty big public school, which I made that transition in middle school and was making new friends and was also really excited because I was the only black girl in my class in my Montessori school. So I was just like, other black women, this is the best. And I remember the first time that some of us were hanging out and I was like, oh, do you want to go on a hike around the neighborhood? There's like a pass through the woods and we can go get some forsythia flowers. And my friend Jasmine, who we laugh about this now being like, girl, we do not do that. Like, who are you, Bear Grylls? Because that's the only person we knew who was also doing things like that. And even as I got older and got to college, there was like, yeah, there was Bear Grylls. You see restaurants like Noma and Copenhagen. There's just so much affiliation with foraging with people who didn't look like me at all, despite the fact that every single person alive today is alive because someone in their lineage was a forager. And so for me, it was crazy to get imposter syndrome about something that is so integral to all of us. And even with the rise in farming, even post agricultural revolution, foraging was still a really important source of nutrition. It was still a way to get like a varying amount of vitamins and minerals seasonally in your diet in addition to whatever it was that you happen to be growing. It's like, what if your crops fail before things like Monsanto? Sometimes, and I mean, even with Monsanto, sometimes your crops be failing.


Britton Williams: It's true.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Every once in a while, I feel like Mother Nature is just like, I just have to remind them.


Britton Williams: Yes, Who's really in charge?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Y'all can't ingenuity your way out of drought. I'd love to see you try. And so all of us have ancestors for whom those skills were so important. I also felt like it was a very male dominated space in the 2000s and in the teens, which is so crazy because historically for thousands and thousands of years, the gathering part of hunting and gathering was women's work. And I'm like, don't take this thing. We have so few things. Like you can share it. You just can't have it. Come on, It's like every time I see someone getting like a cool, oh, it's a TV show where I'm adventuring around the world and trying all these wild foods and it's another man. Give it a rest. Please!


Britton Williams: I really appreciate the way that you both here and also on your platform, you do weave these histories into your videos and you talk about how this lives in our ancestry. This is a part of our world. You also bring in history though about why we've been separated from foraging and the history of coloniality and how that was like, wait a minute, you think you're going to get some free groceries on land? No, no, no, no, no. We're going to make this illegal. And I've really appreciated that because again, when I think about how and why people get separated from these histories, oftentimes it is because we are unlearned from these histories and tension deliberately. And I think this is something I've really taken away from your platform of like you do these amazing and creative videos and you're also teaching, you're teaching history. You're teaching people to connect to these histories that they've been separated from. I'm curious your thoughts on what is the intersection of foraging, for example, and racial justice?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yeah. So.


Britton Williams: Or foraging and gender justice as you brought it.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yeah. I mean, going back to, I so wish that I could go back in time and like sit down with little like seventh grade me and my friends and be like, oh no, like the system worked the way the system was designed. Yes, yes. Like that is why the separation. That's right. Has happened. I know that a lot of you know this already. A lot of you have heard this story, but for people who haven't, I will give a very quick TLDR. American history, it's wrought with colonialism, racism, classism, you know, all the isms. So first off, when colonists came into this land, which indigenous people had already been living on, thriving, surviving, having a great time for thousands of years. It's pretty well known that a great way to defeat a people is to cut them off from the resources that they are affiliated with culturally. And so a lot of a lot of colonists had no problem with getting rid of a lot of native crops. They almost didn't even recognize them as crops because those food systems didn't look like Western European farms to them. And so it was a lot of getting rid of those really productive food spaces and replacing them with often calorically less productive European style farms. So that and of course, like the huge loss of indigenous life was kind of like step one in this very American story of losing that knowledge because who are we going to get that knowledge from the people who are already here, who already had a relationship and a stewardship with those plants. And of course, like when a lot of black folks were brought here during the transatlantic slave trade, thankfully, there still was a lot of like crossing of communication between the black community and the indigenous community. A lot of crops that were brought over from Africa, things like okra, like we were just talking about a lot of different a lot of different goods were traded and information about them was too. And if there is one thing that a colonizer doesn't like, it's two groups that they are trying to be in control of being in cahoots with each other. They are like, oh, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. There will be none of that. So once the Emancipation Proclamation was signed and black folks were technically free, I say technically because a lot of people, it wasn't like today where we have our phones that we're connected to. A lot of people just chose not to tell the slaves on their plantations until they absolutely had to let them go. That's a different tangent. That's a different TED talk. We can have that conversation later. But when black folks were freed and had some of these relationships with indigenous plants and with indigenous people, a lot of the former plantation owners were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you guys could be self-sufficient. And so what are we going to do? We're going to say all of our land that we own that you were foraging, trapping on previously because a lot of people don't know that slaves were often granted time to do things like forage, to go and hunt and trap and fish. And some of them were allowed to make money that way, but you had to come back to the plantation afterwards. And they were like, well, if I'm not getting work from you for free, you are absolutely not getting food for free from the land that I own and have never touched with my own hands. And so starting in South Carolina and then kind of ripple effecting out into the remainder of the United States, these really strict anti trespassing laws were put into effect. And honestly, that didn't just negatively affect the black population. It negatively affected poor white people who didn't have land of their own to be able to gather food and grow food on. And of course, the indigenous population, which had already lost so much land for the folks who were even like still there, not displaced by atrocities like the Trail of Tears. And so those things put together very much severed not just us, but everyone from the idea of wild food made everyone in America proper kind of feel like, no, these large scale monoculture farms really seem like what we have to be relying on because all of the options and the other options have kind of been taken away. Now, the park system, which I like, have a love hate, mostly love relationship with because in the last couple of decades, especially, they've really come to recognize some of the colonialist ideas that the park system was founded on. And I've started trying to be better about letting people actually be a part of nature instead of just staring at it like it's a really cool piece of art in a museum that you can't get too close to or the fuzzy alarm goes off. But that also then ate up a lot of the land that wasn't already owned by everybody. And then suddenly, you can't be hunting or gathering food on any of those spaces either because at that point in time, there was a very like, oh, these spaces are wild and the only way we can keep them that way is if we don't touch them. We're definitely not going to ask the people who were living here already how they managed to have it still looking like this. They've started asking so, you know, better later than never. And so suddenly, there just wasn't a place here to forage. When a lot of my friends who live especially in parts of northern Europe were mushroom foraging and berry foraging are still very ingrained in the culture, very much still an activity that is normal for families to go and do together during certain seasons, they are always so baffled that foraging is such a niche activity here in the United States. And I'm like, yeah, we really shot ourselves in the foot like several times over.


Britton Williams: We're missing out.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: We are. We are. On just all of these amazing foods. And thankfully, I feel like we're kind of finding our way back to it. Things had to get a little bad first for us to be like, time out, wait a second, monoculture is bad. Uh oh, that's going to be, that's unfortunate because a lot of our land is monoculture now.


Britton Williams: But you're such a big part of this ship too. I mean, I think your platform is a part of it. And yes, receive that, receive that. And one of the things that I really so appreciate and literally just did with you is that like you say I love teaching people that they can forge in their own neighborhood. And like when I'm watching your, like you're like, not deep in the forest, which for me,


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I live in the city.


Britton Williams: Like you live in the city. And I have to say, because I am the person that's like, no, I am not going too, too deep because I will be the person that gets lost and can't find my way out. And so I really love that you're like, let's just like do this thing in the neighborhood. And I am curious, like what your commitment is to that, like, and how you see that being part of your platform to say, like, you actually don't have to go that far to do this. It's right here. And I think you're connecting, but I think it's worth underscoring that this is the way you are bringing it to people by saying, you don't have to go that far.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Well, because there is a lot of, there's still a lot of privilege and access to those deeper outdoor spaces. There is a certain degree of privilege to having like land out in the country or a cabin in the woods that your family owns or a relative owns. Not everybody has access to that. And it's another thing with all of those like cool TV shows about traveling and foraging is they love making it seem like you have to be in the middle of nowhere to find these foods. And that's the way we've viewed it in the media for a really long time. I'm like, oh no, see, now that's crazy because my Grammy was picking poke shoots in the backyard of Cincinnati, Ohio. Like I've known from the jump that a lot of these plants thrive in spaces that we have disturbed, thrive in places where human beings are living. And it like, it always hurts me when I'm going through my comments and someone's like, oh, I live in Manhattan. Like, I absolutely cannot forage. I'm just like, I will literally hold your hand and walk with you through Central Park. I will show you where my favorite Sassafras tree is. I will show you where the half berry with the fruits that taste like pumpkin pie are. I'll show you where all the wine berry vines are. You don't even got to feel bad about harvesting all of them because they're invasive as heck. Like, let's go. I was like, there are places to forage in New York City. There are places to forage everywhere. You know, some of these foods are so resilient, they'll come out of cracks in the sidewalk. You know, dandelions, I feel like, are such a perfect example, which is why it's almost kind of insidious that they've been alive for such a long time as like a sign that you're not a good member of your neighborhood and a good member of your community if you have this present in your yard, which is crazy. My yard is like 90% dandelion. How else would I make dandelion wine if my yard wasn't 90% dandelion? Come on now.


Britton Williams: That's so real. I mean, I literally just learned the other day, I'm pretty sure I have, you know, a tree that is edible. They're not mulberry, they're snap cookies. They're magnolia. I'm pretty sure. But I did the thing where I was like, I think it's magnolia, but I don't want to dissect it.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I'm going to have you text me a picture.


Britton Williams: I will text you a picture because I literally, my husband was really like, I don't know, I just, are you sure? And I was like, well, no, but I mean. I definitely second guessed. I was like, it looks like the same thing. This is why I appreciate your kind. I think I'm doing the thing you did, you know, like where I'm like, I'm getting acquainted with you. I'm looking at you. I'm seeing you grow. I want to make these magnolia snap cookies, but let me just get a relationship. And you know, so I think it's that piece of being able to like watch your account and feel like I'm learning something. I'm getting my acquaintance with these plants that have long been like, this tree has been there since I've lived in this place, but I never looked at it and thought, oh, I might be able to make a cookie with you. You know what I mean? We can take this relationship a little bit deeper. And so when I'm thinking about this, first of all, this is another piece. You don't just forage. You bring the stuff home and you cook with it. Right. And so I guess I'm curious to take a little detour for a minute. Can you share with us a little bit about like, did foraging inform your cooking? Were you always someone that had a love for cooking? What is the relationship there for you?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yeah, I think foraging and my mom growing a lot of vegetables in our yard has always informed the way that I cook. I like to joke, except it's not a joke, but my mom is the plant person and my dad is the chef. And so I kind of had no say in the matter for becoming this way. If I wanted to spend time with my mom, I was spending time outside. If I wanted to spend time with my dad, I was usually spending time in the kitchen because when they weren't both at work, those were the spaces that they wanted to be. Either that or I'd be like on the couch watching Star Trek and I did that too. And so I got a lot of that kind of inherent cooking knowledge from my dad, from just like hanging out with my grandparents in the kitchen and watching the things that they would make. And there's always something really exciting about like getting those first few tomatoes off your plant in the late summertime and oh, they're warmed by the sun and you take them in and my dad would like slice them up and make us sandwiches with them. So I feel like they both have been informing each other from the jump. Unsurprising to literally anybody, I was kind of a precocious, annoying child. And so my parents sent me to culinary summer camp when I was eight. Not sure if I would do the same thing. There's a lot of knife skills in culinary camp and I'm not quite sure I had all of the motor skills downloaded yet for all of that, but we made it work. And I mean it was really nice because my parents saw how much I loved cooking and they also fostered that from like a pretty young age and it began when I was a kid being like, oh, well you can be responsible for a side dish for dinner this evening until it evolved to like by the time I was in high school I was just like making dinner for my family a couple times a week. And it really kind of developed into my love language because it felt like a melding of my parents.


Britton Williams: Beautiful.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: To love languages.


Britton Williams: Beautiful. Have you ever, because you always remind us, happy snacking, don't die. It's important. It's an important reminder. I'm curious, have you ever had a plant scare where you like took a bite into a little something or maybe brought a little something home and then you were like, uh-oh, wait a minute, I don't know if this is what I thought it was. 


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yeah, So I am a big fan of like, first of all, never put something into your face hole until you're 100% sure of what it is. I am so serious, 98% is not sure enough. If there is any doubt in your mind, simply don't do it. It's easier than dying.


Britton Williams: True. True story.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And so I, when we were living, not in the house that we're in now, but the house that we were renting before, all of these beautiful yellow flowers were coming up. It was about this time of year. And I remembered in one of my foraging books reading about a plant called yellow rocket and I was like, oh, I feel like from what I'm remembering the form was super similar. I'm going to go walk out to this park where I know a lot of them are growing and I'm going to bring them home. And I just pulled them, I brought them home. I didn't put anything in my mouth.


Britton Williams: To be clear.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And I got my book and I cross referenced them and they were like, do not confuse with poisonous butter wheat. That's butter wheat, okay.


Britton Williams: Yes.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Done. Kidney failure, not today. There's like no shame in like continuing to learn. It's impossible to know every single plant and I hope that I've never made it seem like I do. I know a lot of them. We're all still learning all of the time. You know, one of my foraging mentors, Sam Fair, like I accidentally taught him an edible plant last year, which is cuckoo bananas. Absolutely bonkers to me. And I still learn about new plants from everyone else all the time. So there,


Britton Williams: I did see a video where you posted and you were like, all right, I'm going to do a print of this mushroom.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yeah,


Britton Williams: like, I'm not so sure.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: So we're not getting it. Exactly. Okay. And that's part of the getting to know process. Wild Anoki mushrooms were definitely one of the ones that I took a long time getting to know because it's look alike is literally called deadly gallerina.


Britton Williams: Oh, wow.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: How are you going to have deadly in the name and sound like a disease I don't want?


Britton Williams: Well, it was effective.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: It was effective. And so it took like a whole winter because of course they both have the same growing season, and of course they love growing in the same kinds of places of gathering both of them, taking them home, score printing them, like looking at how they look in situ, taking them home and comparing and contrasting them. And now years later, I feel very confident going out into the woods and being able to tell even just from looking at the cap, which is which. Yeah. But that doesn't happen right away. Yeah. So that just loops right on back to the advice for anyone who's nervous. That is good.


Britton Williams: Yeah.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Nervousness is what has kept the human race alive for so long.


Britton Williams: It's true.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And you have time. Like it's not a race. No one's going to show up on your doorstep with a written exam in six weeks and be like, if you cannot identify all of these plants, you can never forage again.


Britton Williams: You know, I actually, I really, as I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm thinking about this. I really actually think you're giving us a gift too, in not rushing people to expertise in a society that is obsessed with expertise.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: So obsessed with getting there as fast as you can.


Britton Williams: Yes. Right. Like, do you know what you're talking about? Are you right? And I really, it feels like there's a gift of meditation in this of like, I can do the thing, I can forge the thing. And if I'm not sure, then I don't need it. You know? So that I don't die. Right? And so, but that that's okay, because in that there is a process of learning. And I really do actually feel like there is a gift in just that piece of wisdom that you're offering to people that the goal is not to be the ex, to rush to expertise. That this is like a relational development that takes time. 


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Exactly. You didn't rush to becoming best friends with your best friend. Like that is, that is a relationship that you both have been mutually working on for years and years in order to get to that point. So it would be wild to expect people to not just develop a close relationship with one plant, but with so many of them in a short period of time. This is not one of those like, eight week coding intensives.


Britton Williams: Right?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Once you're done with this, you'll be able to build everybody's websites forever. It's, it's kind of like a lifelong. Yeah. Love affair. It's a journey. You know, you're learning about the world a little bit more with each passing growing season and you're learning about yourself a little bit with each passing season. And you said that it seemed a little bit meditative. I really feel like foraging is the longer that you do it. It's not that you get like better or faster, but you start recognizing patterns. You start recognizing who likes growing where and why you start seeing who has symbiotic relationships with one another. You start noticing the types of birds that also like gathering those areas.


Britton Williams: I saw you recently into birding.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Oh yes. Oh my God. It's a real problem. Earlier today I was like, look a cormorant. And let me tell you the other people on the pier, not as excited. And for me, it's just, it's become a part of the puzzle. I honestly, it's so weird. I feel like an additional like veil has been lifted. I'm like, oh my gosh, yeah, they're another part of these ecosystems. Why was I not folding them into my layered knowledge of how these spaces work? Because they're also interacting with these plants. They're also interacting with these fungi and with each other. And they're also, they also have these like personalities and patterns and being able to be like, oh, I know that it's this time in spring because the hummingbirds are coming back. Like their migration has made its way up from the south. And it all just deepens your relationship with place, which I, we are so divorced from.


Britton Williams: Yes.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And in society as a whole right now. And we're told that so many other things will fill that kind of like empty spot in ourselves. And I really think that having a relationship with where you are, it just makes you feel a bit more safe, a little bit more comfortable, a little bit happier in the world that you are occupying. Some of the kids in my neighborhood used to be like, oh my God, I hate living over here. Like I hate living in the city, blah, blah, blah. And recently, you know, sometimes they'll tag along when I'm just walking around for certain plants that I know grow close by. And now it's like, oh, they'll already be at the blackberry bushes when I go over to go get some. Oh, they already know that the redbud trees are blooming and that it's time to go and snack on flowers.


Britton Williams: You're teaching literally the neighborhood.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And it just, it seems like just from conversations with them that they have started kind of caring about our neighborhood a little bit more just from that. And that we've all kind of had this really like these beautiful things to bond over. And there are things that cross race, that cross generations, that cross socioeconomic status. And I just I feel like those kind of things are really missing in society as a whole right now.


Britton Williams: There's a real focus, it feels, in your work around interconnectedness, like that we are connected to the land and with that the plants are connected to the birds and connected to the seasons. And I'm curious your thoughts, you and I talked a little bit earlier just about mushrooms, the mycelial networks. I mean, like, literally, there's a whole world that exists. And we walk on this every day. And I think if we knew an took that time that you're talking about to appreciate, like, I'm walking on grounds that are literally talking just to sustain the world, the environment, the neighborhood, this space that I'm in right now. And I'm curious your thoughts on this, the possibility, the possibility that exists when we connect. And I'll kind of ground that by asking how has foraging changed you? Like, what are the things that you would say like, this is what I see different in me since starting this journey by being connected?


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I slow down a lot more, especially in like very naturey spaces, but even just going on walks in the city. I feel like it makes me notice things a bit more than I necessarily would have. And with my brain that nine times out of ten is running like a mile a minute. I'm worrying about like 17 different things at any given time, like all of us are. And, you know, panicking about the next 30 things on my to do list that I have to get done. And to be able to just walk out of my door and kind of exhale fully. And one of my favorite things to do is just noticing, just walking around and being like, OK, it's been this amount of days since the last time I walked outside. Let's see what's changed. Oh, the tulip poplar is leafing out now. Oh, the plum trees are blooming. Like, oh, the elm trees are starting to drop their samaras and all of the sparrows are going and eating them. Like it gives me a sense of peace that during times in my life where I've been really disconnected from nature, I did not have. And I'm not I'm never going to be like, and that's the only way to get it, because anybody who tells you that something is the only way to do something is trying to sell you something. But it's definitely a way for me to kind of find a sort of meditative piece. Just meditating on my own is sometimes a terrifying experience because I just am like, oh, well, actually, I just sat in the quiet and spiraled for 20 minutes. But there were cute little bells sounds in the background. That counts.


Britton Williams: Yeah, you bring in such an important point. You've used your platform to also mold in conversations around mental health, which I've really appreciated. Literally, I watched you one day making something and then being like, OK, let's take a break, though. Go outside and you like hug a tree. And then you're like,


Alexis Nikole Nelson: When I tell you I was like literally having the worst day like that actually might have been one of my worst days of recent memory. That was very real. And I was just like, you know what? Maybe someone else is also having their worst day in recent memory. And I'm going to show them that it's super OK to be very not OK right now. Also, tree hugging, very underrated. People make fun of it. Trees are solid huggers. Like part of me went out to do it a little bit for the ha ha's, because if there's anything that I'm going to do when I am at my worst mentally, it's like, well, at least I can make people laugh. I'm not laughing, but if other people are, it's OK. And so I went to like my elm tree in the backyard and I like gave it a hug and I was like, oh, oh, yeah. And you can kind of watch it happen in the video. Like my shoulders drop a little bit and it ended up lasting a lot longer than I intended it to, which is why I had to speed up the clip.


Britton Williams: That's what I was so struck by. Like you went out, you kind of took this where you'd said in the video, like, I'm having a hard day. But then you were like, actually, I do feel a little better. And I really appreciated that moment because I do feel like I witnessed that. And I know, like, again, I love a tree. And I mean, like, first of all, they exist across seasons, generations. Again, the wisdom that we can gather.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: The amount of times I have cried at an old tree.


Britton Williams: Listen. I mean, and if something can hold your tears, it's a tree.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: It is Tree. Yes.


Britton Williams: You know, and what does it mean to be held by a tree? And I really saw that video as just like a again, yet another meditation of like, what does it mean to take a moment and be held by a tree? Yes. Which has so much wisdom of sustainability, of survivance, of growth, of renewal, of passage, of death and rebirth. And like that. Yeah. Sometimes we do need to take a break and hug a tree.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And trees are also such a good reminder that sometimes we need to take a break. Yeah. Like a lot of times when, you know, I find myself I'm grinding, grinding, grinding and I'm just like, oh, my God, why am I feeling so awful? I'm like, oh, right, because every living thing has to take a break sometimes. And I mean, granted, here in California, it's a little bit different. Some of your trees don't go night night in the winter, and that's very confusing for an Ohioan who like grew up split between Ohio and Massachusetts, where the trees absolutely go night night for the winter. They're like, I actually would like to opt out of this experience. And I'm like, listen, I don't blame you. If you need me, I'll be inside eating soup until y'all wake back up. And yeah, they just have so much to teach us. And they I'm not going to go on my big tree rant, but there is like a 450 year old oak tree in one of my favorite parks in Columbus. And when I'm having a really, really bad day, I'll be like, I gotta go see the oak. I gotta go see the oak. And it has just like perfect roots for sitting on. And I'm just like, OK, leaning on you makes me remember that I am very tiny and that my problems do not matter and that you will be here catching someone else's tears in 100 years. And none of these problems will exist anymore. I probably won't exist anymore. And as macabre as that is, when you're having a bad day, it's kind of comforting to just be like, oh, yeah, someday all of this is just going to be. Woosh.


Britton Williams: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of the things that help us go and call us, you've even done it here today singing and you've talked about how much singing grounds you. And I don't know about you, but I've really been interested in the way that they found that trees, plants and mushrooms. 


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Yes. Yes.


Britton Williams: They sing. And I'm curious, do you listen to the music of the plants when you're foraging? Do you listen to the music of the plants that they hook up to these.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: OK, I was given one of those and I have only hooked it up to one plant. And it is the sweet little baby yucca that lives in my office. She has a lot to say. I'm just like, I was like, you don't look like you're doing a whole lot to my silly human eyes. But apparently there's a lot of little vibrations going on as you're, you know, converting carbon dioxide back into oxygen and drinking in sunlight. I wish I could just drink in sunlight, that would be cool. So I have I have now tried and it was a very cool and surreal experience. I have to say, before I had one, I definitely rolled my eyes when people are like, I'm hooking this up to these plants. And I'd be like, oh, brother. But then I did it and I'm like, no, this is beautiful.


Britton Williams: The sounds are incredible. I mean, and some of them are shocking. And I mean, it's again to me the wonder that lives. Just we see it every day and we don't.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: I was like, can I collab with my yucca plants? Can we make a song together?


Britton Williams: Please do and then share it with us.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: But also just being out in the forest and hearing the difference in the wind rustling through the plants between winter, early spring, mid spring, summer, fall. Because as the leaves change and grow and dry and die, like those sounds change. My like every time I go on like my first real winter hike, like after we've actually gotten a couple of frosts under our belt, like after the ground is fully frozen. I always make a point, even if I don't want to get my booty out into the woods because remember, like hearing that quiet. Yeah. It is weirdly invigorating. And it also makes you very much appreciate when you go out six months later and it's like the exact opposite. So loud.


Britton Williams: Yeah.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Birds are making sounds like squirrels and chipmunks and bats are out there making sounds and things are beating their wings and leaves are brushing up against one another. And it's so beautiful. Like when I started when I slipped and fell into birding. As one does when they reach their thirties, I hear we all get assigned to a hobby we thought was boring in our 20s. Mine's birds. So weirdly in Columbus, there is a cemetery that's really popular for birders and they know it's popular for birders. They have leaned in. They have like specific points that they have a map you can pick up at the front, a birders map. And I went in one day with my little Merlin app that I've been really into lately. It listens to birds songs and tells you who's singing them.


Britton Williams: Oh, wow.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: It's mystical, magical. And I'm just like these dang rectangles. This is why I can't quit you. And just sitting there on like a warm, very early spring day and listening to the overlapping songs and the very beginnings of like grass just being tall enough to be making sounds in the breeze. I started crying and then I was like, a sweet old woman's going to come here with her binoculars and be freaked out. I got to get out of here.


Britton Williams: I feel like you embed so much of aesthetics into your I mean, through your fashion and through the ways in which you just you fully, I feel, bring yourself into whether whether it's the forging, whether it's the cooking or the birding that you've slipped and fallen into. And I mean, also like shout out to the mulberry makeup. You know, I watched that and I was like, okay, I see lipstick I see you blush. And I'm curious how you've also allowed the creativity. Like so you you are creative spirit I feel like it just exudes from you. And I think we've established that, you know, the land, the earth, the plants is a creative spirit. How do you feel in relationship to that creative like how to how does plant life inform your creativity, your aesthetic.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Oh my goodness. I mean, I'm dressed in a dress that literally like there's there's a Robin skeleton but there's also a living Robin somewhere on the dress to. There's a whole lot of really fun mushrooms, some kind of silhouettes of some old and gnarled oak trees and willows. A lot of my dressing up to go outside did originally like arise from me being like, oh, I know historically when I'm doing something that a person usually of the white people persuasion can identify that sometimes gets me in trouble. If I look really cute and approachable like a cartoon character, then maybe they will ask me what I'm doing before they report me to the authorities, which which did work, by the way, like that absolutely is what has happened sometimes. Oh, yeah, you just look so cute over here doing whatever you were doing. What you doing? But I also I don't know, fashion has always been like a really fun way for me to express myself. I absolutely love my parents. No hate, no shade to my parents, but they definitely picked out my clothes until I was like 13 years old and so I feel like the second I was allowed to start picking my own clothes, I immediately like got a frickin $40 sewing machine from like refurbished one from Joanne fabrics and was like, okay, well, I have a lot of ideas about how I would like to present myself in the world. I don't know how I'm gonna do it but I'm gonna try. Which my, my sweet mother. I just remember walking around the city with her one time and being like, you always dress so eclectic these days, which is definitely black mom for I'm a little uncomfortable with this, but you're not hurting anybody so I guess we'll let it ride. It's fine. And I don't know, I also have like always been kind of like a heavier set curvier person and, and that's like despite playing like to varsity sports and I, I don't think my parents did it because they didn't like the way that I looked I think they did it because they were worried about how other kids would treat me because pre teens are historically demons. So my mom would be like out walking laps around the neighborhood with me and I was in like tennis programs, all times of the year like running multiple miles a day and multiple times a week and I've just always been built this way. And that was something that I felt really self conscious about but I was like but what I can do is dress this body that I have been given in ways that make me feel more comfortable and make me feel cute and make me feel feminine because also when you're like a six foot tall black woman a lot of people kind of assign masculinity to you whether you want them to or not. And I'm just like, I’m baby. I rebuke that and Thank you very much. And clothing is just kind of been a really fun way to do that and now I really kind of enjoy dressing up for the woods. It, you know, why not make going out into nature, an excursion and events. And usually I get like a pretty healthy mix of people being like, yeah, people being like, I don't understand what you're doing. I'm so sure that as I'm like zipping by on my little bike because my two modes of transportation are these guys and my bike back at home, and then it's like, weirdo heading to the park on our little like 30 mile an hour bike and I was like, I'm going to go out ball gowning today. I thought it would be fun I was like the bluebells were going to be out this color matched I thought it would be a fun thing.


Britton Williams: I feel like you offer this invitation for people to really step into who they are, however you enter this work, however you step into the world of forging, which again for me has certainly as someone who's followed your work been such the invitation. I wanted to ask you because you've given us a couple of invitation into your jars.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: The Jar Tours.


Britton Williams: The jar tour, because, you know, so again I'm always like learning from you the multiple ways that this, this world of forging can be embedded whether it's makeup, whether it's eating, but like also it's like tinctures and medicinal. Yeah, and so I'm curious in your jars of tinctures and dried herbs one if you do have a favorite tincture or dried herb or something of the moment right now that you might want to share with us and kind of just give us a little get into this.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Okay, so there I would say that it is twofold. Right now, if we're talking about a dried herb, I am absolutely obsessed with mugwort tea. Mugwort, she's, she's a kind being. We love her. A lot of times for some reason, especially with the time change my sleep schedule can get kind of wonky around this time of year, and nothing gives me like a more restful night of sleep, then a nice little nice little cup of mugwort tea. Before I go to bed. I will say, you got to be careful how much you're ingesting there are a lot of cultures that consider it to be like a moon herb I mean its name is Artemisia vulgaris, the one that we tend to find in my neck of the woods though out here you guys have a lot of really cool Artemisias like California sagebrush. Oh my gosh, and California mugwort which makes a beautiful tea. The day that I ran out of it, heartbreaking might make a point of like, maybe stopping by LA before I head home to find some more. And, but I will say, because every time I talk about mugwort tea on my page, someone is like, Well, I dried some mugwort and it was the worst most bitter thing I've ever tasted and I'm like, because you didn't know her rules. Everybody has rules, including plants and mugwort does this really cool thing where if you're just going to clip it and hang it upside down to dry, it will use the last of its energy that it has photosynthesized and it's like dying breath to become as tanic as possible, which I mean, sometimes you got to be petty. But if you look to cultures where mugwort has been eaten as like a green as a tea as a flavoring agent. You, you have to steam them first, which in China, my friend Shell is from Beijing and she taught me the whole process of going through and processing mugwort and the suburb that she's from there's a whole spring festival, and seven days of different recipes that you, you go and you make with mugwort, and she's like the most important step is a step called the kill green where you have to steam it for about a minute to two minutes, and that halts all of those metabolic processes. And at that point, then you can go ahead and dry them. And instead of having like an awful bitterness. It's sagey, it's toasty. I like drying it in a warm pan with my hands, mostly because I'm impatient but also because that is traditionally a way that it's been prepared if you're making say like mugwort green tea or mugwort matcha. And so sometimes matcha is the move if you were trying to have a non caffeinated matcha late in the day, because sometimes I really want green tea, but sometimes I don't want to be up until three in the morning.


Britton Williams: That part.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: And it is an excellent trade off so mugwort and me have been like really close the last couple of weeks. Also, shout out to cottonwood bud tincture, I will say here on the west coast, I don't like to pick favorites but you guys do have the superior cottonwood species, compared to us out east. You guys as your buds just produce a lot more resin than ours do that resin is filled with Salisone, your body breaks it down into Salicylic acid. If you’re sick. It's real nice when I was super down with COVID if any of you saw that video. It was just like a little faster at bringing down my fever than like some of the Tylenol and the Advil that I was taking and I'm not. I also still love modern medicine. A couple of weeks ago I was having cluster headaches and one of my friends was just like, I told me to start taking magnesium supplements and you know what I cannot forage a magnesium supplement. Because when I tell you that I took one of them and I was just like, I can see again. Oh my god. Two things can two things can coexist


Britton Williams: at the same time. On the other side, in a word, do you have a plant enemy, like, I cannot stand this plant.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: tree of heaven


Britton Williams: tree of heaven. I've heard it here.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: It's on site. Every time I bought a tiny chainsaw. So I could take out all of the ones that try to invade people's yards in my neighborhood, because my neighbor has like a 70 year old one in his yard. And I don't know if you've ever dealt with the tree of heaven but they will send root shoots out like a quarter mile in any direction, the worst. They smell like wet peanut butter when you cut into them, which is disgusting. Also, we're starting to have a problem with the spotted lantern fly in my neck of the woods, I know you guys have already had a problem with spotted lantern fly in New York City. That's why I don't visit during their season, because I don't like killing things but also they're not supposed to be there. And spotted lantern flies love tree of heaven. It is the main plant that they predate upon. They're both from the same area they both co evolved with one another. And they did not co evolve with a lot of our North American plants which is why they have been so successful. There's nothing else to like regulate them, at least the spotted lantern flies, maybe you will regulate the tree of heaven it doesn't look like that's what's happening yet though.


Britton Williams: Well, I have to say you certainly have inspired me and led me into the world of forging for the first time and as I look at this audience I imagine you've inspired so many other people and so want to say a big thank you to you Alexis.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Thank you.


Britton Williams: Yes


Alexis Nikole Nelson: No, You guys are going to make me cry. Not fair, not fair.


Britton Williams: Certainly this response speaks to that legacy that you're talking about and the impact that you have. Thank you all for being here and it's really been a joy and a gift to sit with you being thought in conversation with all of you. May we all take these gifts that have been offered through this conversation. May it travel with us. May we move slowly, may we touch the earth, may we listen to the music of the plants, and deepen our interconnectedness that is. Thank you.


Alexis Nikole Nelson: Thank you everybody.

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 

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