S’áxt’

Another spring mini-season to document. If the early blueberry blossoms are little chimes (or bear bells?) of spring music, s’áxt’ or Devil’s Club are the high-hat cymbals, prickly and menacing beauty flourishing into a new spring canopy.

I’ve been watching the Devil’s Club stalks since mid-March, looking for signs of change. I didn’t see much happen for about a month, except to note that the spines catch gifts of moss and lichens and leaves and snow from the real canopy, hundreds of feet above. And then just after the first blueberry blossoms tinkled through the understory, the s’áxt’ stalk I was watching took on a beautiful pink whose hue was somewhere between rhubarb ice cream and human lips.

Like Frost’s first-green gold, a hard hue to hold. It’s bittersweet–both hopeful and dispiriting– I guess, to see the bulbous “leaf scars” hinting at previous years’ spring crescendos. If O. horridus weren’t such a great Latin name for s’áxt’, I might suggest O. paradoxicus.

They’re all green now. The roots and stalk of the s’áxt’ are some of the most powerful medicine in the Tlingit medicine cabinet and for all indigenous groups in its range. O. horridus is apparently potent, valuable for everything from treating arthritis or cancer or wounds or blindness to changing bad weather to keeping evils spirits outside the home. According Lantz, Swerhun, and Turner, in Western scientific terms, “Phytochemical research has revealed that this plant has antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial, and antimycobacterial properties, and these are undoubtedly related to its widespread use in traditional medicine.” In the case of arthritis, one traditional treatment involves “whole stems used to beat rheumatic limbs as counter-irritant.” I’m not quite there yet. Maybe it’s middle age, but I see life doing something similar to many close to me these days; I guess there’s some hope in the counter-irritant approach. That sweet pink may not be our hue to hold, but we’ll somehow be stronger for the s’áxt’s in our lives? If I had any sense, I’d be hanging it on my threshold.

Tlingit folk have a variety of cultural guidelines around harvesting but s’áxt’ is to be harvested with respect and reciprocity. Eagle clan members often harvest for Ravens, and vice versa.

Apparently, the most powerful medicine is in the roots, and the mini-season of s’áxt’ leaf emergence is when that medicine is traveling up from roots, through the fragrant cambium below the spikes to the giant pricker-lined leaves. S’áxt’ protects itself in part due to the value of the protein in its leaves.

We’ve all been “clubbed” while bushwhacking at one time or another around here. Even Cedar gives a little pause before succumbing to a chomp of the stalk. Maybe I can add another trait to its value: Porky training.

The transformation from stalk to leaf, with that lovely phase of leaves emerging like fingers holding something precious, is complete, and yet another shift making me wish I could slow the passage of time. May is the month to see and feel potential. June it seems, the moment to be lush.

As I write, the mini-season’s ending. The s’áxt’ canopy has pretty much formed. The green guerrilla is in the forest room. The cymbals are cymbaling. The medicine is in the air. And Cedar, my beloved brevity editor (I know, I know, but not bad for a dog), is knocking my elbow away from the keyboard so we can hit the trail.