ISSUE 86: A Place to Root
"Mountain Gaia" from the series Earth, Polyphonia, by Ana Kapodistria
“Here. Here we go,” Carol said, and we shuffled to a stop. She drew my attention to the patch of yellowroot we were standing in. Carol sat down next to a plant and started to turn up the earth around it with the hand cultivator she’d been carrying (which she called simply her “digger”), raking the metal tines into the dark soil to loosen it. After a minute she set the tool aside, her hand feeling around the roots, then pulled up with her fingers a small tuber. She broke it open to show me the striking color that gives the plant its name. Yellowroot is known to be anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and anti-parasitic—good for colds, flu, stomachache, mouth sores, eczema, and many other afflictions, Carol explained, stuffing the large part of the tuber into a potato sack. She’d promised some to a neighbor who’d been sick. The part of the root still attached to the leaf and stalk she stuck back into the tilled soil, covering it again so the plant would keep growing, and we moved on.
Read the rest of Holly Haworth's A Place to Root, from our fall issue.