Country Wisdom Saved Me
Thanks to Ma Borrowman’s country advice, I saved myself from SO much pain!
Taiwanese nettle at SongLong Fallls
City living is not in my roots.
Living in a hundred person village at the top of a slight hill in the middle of the Canadian countryside is. And my parents? They grew up even more country. Like, moving to the village when they were kids was considered moving up. Admittedly at that time the village, Middleville, was a little bigger and still had its K through 8 one-room-schoolhouse.
Anyway my parents know a lot of old wives tales and tried-and-true country gems of wisdom. My mom had shared one with me when we were taking a long walk next to a creek deep in the woods once. If you get stung by nettles, she said, find running water, scoop out some mud, and scrub that all along where it stings.
I remembered that mud-tip summers later when I came TEARING home from the fields screaming because along with some other neighbourhood kids I had accidentally pushed through a hedge of stinging nettles trying to get back to my uncles yard. I’m sure our hollers could be heard all down our single village street.
No running water in sight, I ran to a hose fixture in the neighbour’s yard and turned the water on full blast to saturate the ground to make mud. Once there was enough, I frantically tried to rub the mud all over my body. It worked! The sting started to lessen immediately.
Cut to a trek into the mountains of Taiwan to see the incredible area around SongLong Falls here in Taiwan two weeks ago. I was thrilled to see some Taiwanese nettle growing! I had no gloves, so I made a makeshift covering for my hand with what I had in my bag so I could take three leaves to make tea with later.
Well. Can you guess what happened? Of course you can.
Obviously my hand covering was not up to the task and in trying to twist the fibrous stem, my hand and wrist were suddenly filled with the sting of a hundred nettle hairs. They don’t just prick like a cactus, they actually INJECT painful and itchy compounds into your skin as a defense mechanism. So the hairs are stuck in your skin AND they are using chemical warfare.
NOooooooooooooooo, I thought. Fuuuuuuuu I’m so far from home.
And then Ma Borrowman’s wisdom popped into my head. I was near water! There was mud everywhere! I’m so happy that there weren’t people around because I was digging and covering my hand and wrist with mud and making sad moans that turned into excited sighs of relief when the stinging started to recede.
Instead of fiery pain that makes you cry out loud for the rest of that day and maybe the next, I just had what felt like the a quieter version of the tingles you get after your foot was asleep. It was just in the tip of my finger, and on the side of my hand for a day or two. Easy to ignore.
I’ve heard a lot of people’s nettle sting remedies over the years and they’re always MUCH harder to do if possible at all in the woods. Not Ma Borrowman’s mud-trick.
Country wisdom still has me saying things like, That’s a rain wind (when you can see the whites of the leaves just so). Yesterday, I told my coworker that if her splinter still wasn’t out by the evening, soak some bread in milk until soggy and tape it over the splinter to dry and it would be out by morning.
As a city woman more often than not these last eighteen years, I’ve found that some things are as sure to encounter as can be: rain wind, impossible splinters, nettle patches, and the usefulness of country wisdom.
#nettle #taiwannettle #taiwan #nantou #taiwanherbalist #herbalist #nettlesting #remedies