Moveable Roots: Foraging & Flourishing in a New Home

by Emma Troyer of Plain City, OH

I’ve walked past the spot a hundred times, but I never saw it before. All summer, and all winter too, my dog and I romp through the mud, snow, and weeds on our usual rounds along the edge of the field, behind the stand of trees, and around the other side, where the sun shines bright on our faces in the mornings. He sniffs everything, while I wish for more trees on the horizon. I never noticed the small clump of wild mint, not until the other day.

Though I have plenty of enthusiasm for it, I am only an amateur forager. But a snap of the leaf and a good whiff made me certain what this was – sweet, spicy mint. Wild mint, maybe, or perhaps the garden tea that is so popular around here. Its seeds might have blown to this particular place from any one of our mennonite neighbors’ gardens.

Once, when I was younger, I lived in the upstairs of a timberframe garage where I had sheaves of wild apple mint hanging from pegs in the walls. The mint grew bountifully alongside the road just up the hill. I never knew until one day when my friend showed me, and we gathered bunches to dry for tea. I was even less knowledgeable about foraging back then, but already enthusiastic. And, of course, being a college student I was very interested in anything that came free.

My friend told me the story of how the apple mint came to grow there. Her mother-inlaw, who lived in the farmhouse down the road, had a thriving mint patch in her front garden. One day some of the cows broke loose and got into the mint patch. Evidently, they found it very tasty. Later, when they were moved up the road to their summer pasture on the hill, they scattered droppings along the road as they ambled along. Apple mint has grown there ever since.

When I think of that little farming town where the apple mint grows, I think of green pastures, crooked fruit trees, icy-cold creeks to wade in, flannel shirts, and colorful pottery mugs. The collection of characters is varied, but compatible, like the colorful cast of a 90s TV show or a Wendell Berry novel. That was long before I picked up reading Wendell Berry myself, but looking back, my little town in central New York was a northerner’s version of Berry’s Port William – still bearing the marks and flaws of the real world, but having a flavor of paradise which is always at least faintly detectable, and especially so when the sun sets over the hillside.

I did not stay there, but opted for adventure when it presented itself. At least, moving to Ohio to work on a small dairy was supposed to be an adventure. It turned, as things do, into a romance. Now I live in a different place, still new to me, and wild in different ways. It is a place with fewer trees, where I live with a man to whom I promised myself because I love him more than I love trees.

It was here, in Ohio, that I began reading Wendell Berry. I started not with his fiction, but his economic and agricultural commentary. This resonated so deeply in my agrarian soul that it truly hurt, even more so now in the 21st century than when he wrote it some 50 years ago. (I am referring in particular, for those curious, to The Unsettling of America, 1977.) I then traveled to the familiar town of Port William in the pages of Nathan Coulter, Hannah Coulter, Andy Catlett: Early Travels, and Jayber Crow. I got to know the people of this imaginary place while simultaneously getting to know the people of my very real place. A close-up look at Berry’s characters may have helped me to better understand the humanity around me.

Berry’s ever-present refrain of place, people, and loyalty sang to my heart a true song, and I couldn’t get enough. Perhaps even more so, I wonder now, because I found myself far from the people and places to which I felt most loyal. I resonated with this theme, and it stung a little. When I read Hannah Coulter two years ago, I felt incredibly guilty. I couldn’t condemn Hannah’s children for leaving their childhood home, because I knew I had left mine.

I agree with Jayber Crow, the kindly barber of Port William, when he says that “in order to feel at home in a place, you have to have some intention of staying there.” We all need to have a place, one in which we feel we are an integral part, a place that needs us as we need it. But it is sometimes difficult to discern where that should be. Must it always remain the same place all our lives? Is it wrong to move on to greener pastures? What ought to dictate these decisions?

I’ve asked myself these questions many times, along with another important question: how does a person go about building a new community on an entirely new frontier, especially when it’s not exactly the kind of place you would have chosen to belong? Here, in our new home, I have learned to rely on my husband’s roots. I have learned his history, and tried to make bonds with his family. Even armed with those good things, I think trying to make a new place feel like home is still one of the hardest things a person can do.

My dog and I walked by the small mint patch a few times before I finally went back there with a shovel and a basket. I scooped one of the small croppings of fragrant green leaves out of the dirt, careful to keep as many of the roots attached as I could. Then I dropped it in my basket and headed back toward the house.

Our garden has woken from its fourth year of sleep. Perennials like sage, oregano, lavender, tarragon, bee balm, and echinacea are springing forth from their cover of leaves and straw. I planted my new little mint in the corner of one of the beds in the spot I’d prepared for it. Having finished tucking it in, I stood back to observe how it looked. A little awkward after transplanting, but very eager and willing. And of all the herbs in my garden, this is the first mint.

We live in an age where it’s common to leave your hometown as soon as you can, whether for marriage or for a job, or because we are told we need to get out and make something of ourselves. Marriage is a high calling, and I am honored to be the wife of a good man. I also miss my home. And while reading Wendell Berry still makes me feel guilty sometimes, I have decided that it’s not the leaving of your hometown and family that is the real shame – it’s the ripping up of your roots, the rejection of what you came from, and the belief that those things no longer matter.

I’m talking about the good things, of course, the things that make you call a place home to begin with – the love, the wisdom, the forgiveness, and the loyalty. And for me, it’s also the flannel shirts and handmade mugs, and the apple mint growing by the side of the road.

I think Ohio needs more trees, so we’ll plant some. Our neighborhood could use more animals, and I think our chickens and rabbits help give the landscape some of its old character back. And as for me, I need patience, and time. It may not feel like home yet, but at least I know my roots can be moved.