TRUCKEE, Calif. – Roots shaped like tiny potatoes, pine nuts for snacking, and an assortment of teas made from fireweed, nettle and Russian olive are all offerings plants in the Sierra Nevada provide. Participants of the Ethnobiology Conference in May had the opportunity to try these samplings and other “trail snacks” as they explored the Martis Valley Trail in a field tour that utilized all five senses.

Christopher Mackessy and Nikki Hill together led the sense awakening journey. Mackessy identified plants, explained their palatable potential, medicinal benefits, and laid out guidelines for responsible harvesting. Hill revealed how plants offer information about disturbance, water, and their evolution with humans and animals, often referring to the plants as friends.

The tour instilled a greater awareness, sense, curiosity, attention and appreciation for plants, cultivating a connection to the surrounding lands.

Understanding how humans are a part of these wild ecologies, Mackessy says, is an often forgotten concept in modern thought, which tends to mark humans as separate. Principles like Leave No Trace, although rooted in kindness, he says, create a separation that can lead to downstream negative impacts.

“I think it’s more important to be aware and thoughtful and grounded in the traces that we’re leaving,” he explained, “so that the traces that we’re leaving are ones that are mutually beneficial.”

Eating jelly made from violets found in the regional forests, nibbling Sanicula graveolens, which tastes like cilantro and uncovering other “trail snacks,” as Mackessy calls them, brought the tour group into their senses, bridging that separation gap, rekindling a connection and stirring love for the land.

“You can’t love something that you don’t have a relationship with,” Mackessy told the Sun, “and you can’t have a relationship with something that you never interact with.”

The concept of wilderness as being separate from human existence is actually a new concept, Hill explained, that is just a few centuries old.

Many of the plants within the Martis Creek watershed, known as Timilick Valley by the Wá∙šiw (Washoe) people, hold cultural importance for the Tribe and point to a long rooted relationship and evolution with humans. That relationship is evidenced by plant anatomy as Hill revealed with a type of Brodiaea.

The flowering plant can be harvested from the region and produces tiny bulblets at the root. These bulblets will grow into new plants, but not until they are detached from the main root, which often occurs when a human or animal harvests them. It’s an adaptation and an example of how humans have been a part of beneficial disturbance and how ecologies evolved with these interactions.

Plant structures can also hint at preferred topography, soil and dispersal, all a part of the stories they tell. Hill explains cultivating an awareness of how a particular plant fits within its environment can foster a deeper sense of familiarity with the place and the lineage of relationships that have occurred there.

“Familiarity is like knowing what your friend likes and how they got to be the way that they are,” Hill said.

Plants can also spell water patterns on the landscape, which Hill read to the group by the various hues the plants threw.

“I like to say that plants don’t lie,” she said and can reveal historical grazing and ranching, even if it was 100 years ago.

Wild onions, blue flax, sagebrush and Hooker’s balsamroot are just a few of the other plants identified and discussed on the walk.

Building this knowledge takes time and starts with simple gestures and steps. “That first step often doesn’t even need to be active,” Mackessy said. “It’s just stopping and passively noticing.”

That awareness can then lend to a deeper dive into ecological relationships.

For Hill, a big factor is interacting, and observing.

“It’s a living, breathing process,” she said.

To join one of Mackessy’s ecological walks, visit Trash Panda Permaculture’s Instagram or Facebook page. To learn more about Hill’s work, visit Groundwork Ecology Center’s website, layinggroundwork.org