By Pat Murkland
Buckwheat returns shortly after the Apple Fire in 2020 (Pat Murkland Photo).
Three years ago, amid the 2020 pandemic, we were returning home to an ash-filled, burned moonscape. We remain grateful to firefighters for saving our homes from the Apple Fire.
Sun rises over the hill and a field of summer’s finest buckwheat in 2023. (Pat Murkland Photo)
This morning, three years later, as the sun rose, we walked amid the tallest stands of Hulaqal (Cahuilla), Hunaaqac (Serrano) or California Buckwheat (in Latin, Eriogonum fasciculatum). Buckwheat has always been a powerful food and medicine plant for Native people.
Buckwheat (Pat Murkland Photo)
Buckwheat also always becomes the backbone of the natural world in these harsh summer months when everything is dry and hot. While other plants are snap-dry, and referenced by firefighters as “fuel,” buckwheat blooms and offers nectar and later, seeds, to all kinds of insects, birds and others. Buckwheat keeps the world humming.
Walking along, I can still see the ashes from the fire three years ago mixed into the soil, along with the now over-dried and baked mud that flowed in numerous storms during our recent winter’s epic deluges. Buckwheat may be a plant for dry places, but it surely benefited from whatever plant food was in the ashes, and all that winter snow and rain. The stands of buckwheat now grow tall in fields and along the foothills’ edges.
Yerba Santa growing tall. (Pat Murkland Photo)
Also growing tall are another important medicine plant, Hantut (Serrano), Tanwivel (Cahuilla), also called Yerba Santa, (Latin, Eriodictyon sp. Benth.). I walked among them, smelling their subtle sweetness.
Elderberries (Pat Murkland Photo)
And it’s a great year for the medicine plant Kuuht (Serrano), Hunqwat (Cahuilla), and Kutpat (Luiseño), also known as Blue Elderberry (in Latin, Sambucus nigra L. ssp. caerulea (Raf.) Bolli). There are so many berries the birds cannot gobble them all.
In 2020 when the ground was completely charred and coated with black ashes, it was difficult to look forward and envision the plants coming back, or growing as well as they are today.
But here we are. Although the dragonflies aren’t flying yet at this time of day, they soon will be.
Twenty years ago, when Dorothy Ramon Learning Center began in our homes, we moved forward with lots of hope. Wayta' Yawa', Always believe, as Dorothy Ramon reflected in her cultural memoir of the same name.
And now, 20 years later, here we are.
Come help us celebrate Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s nonprofit journey so far in saving and sharing Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts, and help us honor our co-founders, Ernest and June Siva.
Come to the Dragonfly Gala, Aug 12, 2023, 4-8 pm at Morongo Community Center. SECURE YOUR SPOT. TABLES: $1,000, $2,000, $3,000; SPONSORSHIPS ALSO AVAILABLE. Individual tickets, $60. PLEASE RSVP HERE. (you can pay at the door).
Thank you! News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is always FREE. We love to hear from you. PLEASE EMAIL. Thanks as always for reading along with us, from Center leaders Ernest and June Siva and Editor Pat Murkland. August 4, 2023.