Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting

ecology, culture, and spirituality. Gina Rayla Serva is a geographer, environmental anthropologist

and the author of Feasting Wild in search of the last

untamed food. To keep herself calm in the midst of the uncertainties of COVID-19,

Gina forages for apricots, juniperberries, and sage. As she collects these wild foods,

she considers the widespread loss of traditional feminine knowledge

and the generations of women in her family

who have intimately known the land.

How she asks, can the ancient feminine understanding of wild medicine

serve a fragmented world?

Thank you. Wild medicine serve a fragmented world. I watch my mother's hands as she waters her garden in the dusty heat of a New Mexico sunset.

My mother's hands are gnarled like tree roots.

They twist and bulge with arthritis, marking years of use and injury.

Internal scars from a well-lived, rough life. My mother's hands wield weird magic when she connects to plants.

It's as if her touch alone can force tender shoots from the dry desert soil,

as if a mere stroke of her fingers can unfurl leaves, push roots deeper into the ground,

lift stems, and plump the tomatoes.

My sister has inherited this gift.

Her purple-tasseled corn reaches over the fence line.

It waves to the sunflowers just as tall. By July, the squash

...