Daucus Carota
The other day Rebecca Lerner and I were prepping for one of our Urban Foraging 101 walks when I spied a regular carrot in somebody’s sidewalk garden. Domestic carrots will rapidly interbreed with wild carrots. Saving carrot seed involves vigilantly eliminating nearby wild carrots (aka queen anne’s lace). I said, “Maybe we can point this out for comparison to wild carrot. You know, if you leave the domestic carrots alone they just revert to their wild state, like, really quickly…hey maybe that is a metaphor! Becky helped me figure out exactly what the metaphor might be which is this: The instinct for rewilding is within each and every one of us. Think about it: Why do we like grilled meats so much? Why do children build forts of sticks and dirt? Why do millions of Americans go camping on vacations? Why do most of our hobbies involve pursuits like hunting, fishing, gardening, and making crafts? If left alone, unconstrained by laws that prohibit wild living, schools that break our spirits, and brainwashing by the media that tells us we need to purchase more consumer products, how quickly might we too begin to revert to a more wild state?! If you have any more ideas about the “rewilding instinct” please share them here.
