Page 15 of Fire and Rain
ChapterThree
Eden foundherself smiling as Sean left the trail and walked through the meadow toward them. “Out for a hike?”
“I thought I’d get some fresh air.”
After what had happened this morning with Mila, Eden had needed the same thing. “It’s a good day for that.”
His gaze shifted to her basket. “Are you out for a picnic?”
Eden tousled Mavie’s hair. “We’re foraging.”
“Foraging.” Sean repeated the word as if he’d never heard it.
She held up her basket. “We’re harvesting wild foods for supper—whatever we can find. The mountains are better than Safeway. There are all kinds of good things here for food and medicine—nettles, fireweed, fiddlehead ferns, claytonia, salmonberry shoots.”
Sean knelt, looked at the shoot in Maverick’s hand. “What have you got there?”
“Sambewwy.” Maverick held it up.
Sean took it, sniffed. “What do you do with it?”
Eden laughed at his expression. “I usually pickle them or use them in stir-fries.”
Eden showed him the patch of salmonberries she’d found and harvested a few more shoots, which she let Maverick place in a paper bag. “I don’t pick many shoots in any one area because that means fewer berries. I come back for leaves in a few weeks and for berries later in the summer. I make the berries into jam. You’ve eaten it.”
“I have?” He chuckled. “Can I help?”
She was hoping he’d ask. “I’d like that.”
They moved across the meadow. Eden showed both Maverick and Sean how to find and identify the edible plants, sharing the knowledge she’d been given, tucking the harvested leaves and shoots into different paper lunch sacks for easier sorting later.
“Always use gloves to harvest nettles.”
“You can tell wild onion because its leaves are flat and because it smells like onion. If it doesn’t smell like onion, it’s not wild onion but death camas.”
“Once you know which plants grow in which environments, you know what to look for in a sunny meadow or the edge of a stream or the forest.”
They moved toward the edge of a damp, forested area where Eden found claytonia, watermelon berry sprouts, docks, and one of her favorites—fiddlehead fern.
Maverick stuck a fiddlehead in his mouth, grimaced at the texture of the chaff.
Sean nodded. “My thoughts exactly, little dude. You can eat this?”
Eden couldn’t help but laugh as she took the fiddlehead from Mavie. “You remove the chaff first. I put them in the dryer inside a sleeping bag sack and run it on the fluff cycle until the chaff is gone. Have supper with us tonight. I’ll make nettle pesto.”
She hadn’t planned to say that. The words had just popped out.
One eyebrow arched. “Nettlepesto? Okay. You’re on.”
Sean carried Maverick on his shoulders as they made their way back down the trail to the parking lot. Then he climbed into her vehicle, Maverick falling asleep on the short drive home. While Eden carried Maverick inside and put him in his crib to finish his nap, Sean carried her basket. She found him standing in the kitchen, peeking into each of the bags.
“Where did you learn all of this? Is it one of those Kodiak things?”
“More of an Alaska thing.” Eden put on gloves, scooped the nettles, and dropped them into a colander to rinse them. “My Alutiiq grandmother taught me, but my ancestors survived this way. My mother and I used to forage a few times a week when I was a little girl. Nature provides—if you know what you’re doing.”
He glanced around the kitchen. “Can I help?”
“Want to get some salmon out of the fridge to grill?”
