I have become an acorn addict, and today I did my best to
share the affliction. Amanda from the University
of Victoria Ecological Restoration Club contacted me about leading an acorn
workshop. We went to Playfair Park,
where there is an abundance of Garry Oaks (Quercus
garryana) that are actually producing acorns this year. I started by reading a nice passage from Wild
Fruits that captures Thoreau’s fascination with acorns:
“How munificent is Nature to create this profusion of wild
fruits, as it were, merely to gratify our eyes!
Though inedible they are more wholesome to my nobler part, and stand by
me longer than the fruits which I eat.
If they had been plums or chestnuts I should have eaten them on the spot
and probably forgotten them; they would have afforded me only a momentary
gratification, but, being acorns, I remember and as it were feed on them
still. Yet as it respects their peculiar
and final flavour, they are untasted fruits, forever in store for use, and I
know not of their flavours as yet. That
is postponed to some yet unimagined
winter evening. These which we admire
but do not eat are the real ambrosia—nuts of the gods. When time is no more, we shall crack them."
"I cannot help liking them better than horse chestnuts, which
are of similar color, not only because they are of a much handsomer form, but
because they are indigenous. What hale,
plump fellows they are! They can afford
not to be useful to me—not know me or be known by me. They go their way and I go mine. Yet sometimes, I go after them.” (October 28,
1858 HDT)
And go after them we did as well. I started by having everyone collect 5 acorns
and we examined them together pointing out the various signs of insect damaged
acorns. Then I talked through the
process of drying, cracking, grinding, and leaching the acorns. I brought some acorn meal that I had started
leaching that morning to show what it looked like. Then we collected acorns. Most people stayed for longer than I
expected, but even after the last left, I couldn’t stop myself and picked until
my bike bucket was completely full.
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