There were lots of cottonwoods. Some birch and spruce. I didn’t yet know them as individuals, the shade and companionship they’d give, but they were friendly. And welcoming, in their familiarity. Like cousins, green with life. Especially the aspens, who felt the most charming and easy in a teasing way, with their flapping leaves that said, “Hello.” To me, the newcomer in town.
Last summer, walking down a small slope on the dirt path near my house felt like stepping through a portal. To life and breath and soil. Away from busy cars. Powerlines. Sidewalks. The mail-order-kit houses erected in the 1950s during the oil boom, all lined up, one after another. Away from neighbors I felt shy around and mostly didn’t know yet. In the neighborhood we’d chosen because it was known to be uncharacteristically neighborly. Where there is, however, a standing, though unenforceable, restrictive covenant, which says: “The property hereby conveyed shall not be sold or alienated in any manner whatsoever to other than Americans of the white race.”
So, as you can imagine, entering that portal meant entering the familiar world of the good nature of trees, who always welcome. And other plants that didn’t abide by often cruel, made-up human rules.
Daily walks, wherever I am, have always been important for me. My therapist friend tells me that walking is a form of somatic therapy. Body healing that calms the nervous system. Movement that allows us to process emotions and trauma. I know I need these walks, and I know I enjoy them more when I’m surrounded by the quiet of trees and growing plants that are ever-changing throughout the summer.
Other plants didn’t abide by often cruel, made-up human rules.
So I was surprised when I looked down at the forest floor of my new walking route on the trail system of Alaska’s largest city and felt like a stranger. I knew the ferns. But I didn’t yet know the difference between pushki, or cow parsnip, and devil’s club, two showy plants with leaves as big as Thanksgiving platters. I hadn’t yet realized that pushki has a soft, hollow green stem while devil’s club has a strong, dark brown, spine-covered branch-like stem. Other patterns of new-to-me plants pushed out from the soil, and I wanted to know them, too. If I knew who they were, maybe I could gather the courage to get to know some new people, too.
My introduction to having a relationship with plants wasn’t on a trail but in Gram’s kitchen, as a kid. If I had a cough or sore throat, Gram gave me a mug one-quarter full of a brown cold tea. Though we grandkids didn’t like the astringent, bitter medicine taste of sargiq, or wormwood, we drank what Gram gave us, because Gram knew best. Now I pick the tall stalks every fall to dry upside-down in my kitchen, then store them in jars to make tea for my family whenever we catch a cold or have a sore throat. And today, whether I’m walking on the Anchorage trails or back home on the river beach in Unalakleet, I am drawn to the plants, knowing that many are helpers, some are food, and a few, like rich purple monkshood, are straight-up deadly.
On my new neighborhood trail, in a place where I felt like a foreigner, I knew I needed to be introduced. Like at a dinner party. Or a backyard barbeque get-together. I needed a casual, safe situation where introductions were expected.
SO, NATURALLY, I met devil’s club, or S’áxt’, as it’s known in Tlingit, at the hospital clinic. The same place where I get penicillin shots for strep throat, estradiol patches and progesterone pills for perimenopause, and colonoscopies.
The Alaska Native Medical Center has a Traditional Healing Clinic, where Indigenous healers provide counseling, physical services, a healing garden, talking circles and cultural classes. For two months, I saw a healer every week to relieve pain in my shoulder and hip. She offered a class on making a healing salve out of devil’s club. I immediately signed up and waited, impatiently, for my introduction to a plant I knew was important to local and Southeast Alaska Native peoples.
Seven or eight of us met in what felt like a lab in early summer. White 5-gallon buckets sat on the table filled with stalks of brown, thick, spiny, crooked stems. Our instructor told us to pick the stalks in early summer and to wear leather gloves to protect our skin from the plant’s sharp spines, which contain a sap that can cause blisters and pain. In fact, most people who come across S’áxt’ avoid it at all costs because any spines that become embedded in one’s flesh can cause a severe infection. Devil’s club’s scientific name is Oplopanax horridus, or “horrid, armed ginseng.” A proper introduction to this plant was necessary.
Our instructor, Ruby, is Tlingit and was introduced to S’áxt’ by her grandmother, who made tea from the cambium in her kitchen. Ruby taught us to scrape the spines and outer skin off the stems with a spoon. We then peeled the next layer, the smooth cambium, off the stalk in white tendrils. This was the medicine. Like sargiq, which I knew, S’áxt’ could be made into tea for colds and sore throats or a healing salve for aches and pains and a long list of ailments. The plant teaches me that even the most feared and aggressive-seeming life can be soft and have something to share if you take the time to get to know it.
New-to-me plants pushed out from the soil, and I wanted to know them.
I left the clinic with cambium ready to soak in a carrier oil like grapeseed or olive. In the fall I mixed the oil with Vitamin E oil and beeswax from some Anchorage friends who keep backyard bees. I gifted a tidy jar of the salve to them and shared others with more of my friends and family. I kept a small tin case of it for any rashes, cuts or achy joints at my house.
Later in the summer, my husband, young son and I went biking along the Anchorage trails. Among the ferns, in the golden sunlight that filtered through the birch and cottonwood branches, I saw some large showy leaves on a plant taller than me. Cone-shaped clusters of small red berries dotted the cacophony of plants, showing off their glory at the tail-end of the season. I smiled. And said, “Hello,” to S’áxt’. Happy to know them. Feeling like I was no longer a total stranger in a new place. I was getting to know my neighbors.
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This article appeared in the June 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Plants make good neighbors.”
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