Over the years, I have interviewed a number of herbalists, people who study—and believe in the effectiveness of—herbs and medicinal plants found in the Southern Appalachians.
Some of them were experts in the field. The late Marie Mellinger of Rabun County, Ga., comes to mind. I followed her on one of her walking tours of the wild and learned a lot. But I don’t remember enough to go out into the woods and solo.
Certain foods, even nature’s offerings, don’t like me.
If I’m on the road when my stomach disagrees with my mouth, I’m soon searching frantically for an Amoco station or an Arco or an Aloha or a BP or a Buc’ees—doesn’t matter—just someplace with a restroom. And when I find one and park, I walk like John Wayne, only three times as fast, until I reach it.
Last week, I came across a fellow named Darryl Patton of Gadsden, Ala., who is a master herbalist and clinical hypnotherapist. I called him up. I wanted to know if chia seeds and quinoa are healthy, because they have no taste that I can tell. My wife bought three pounds of chia seeds—we have a good two pounds left—and five pounds of quinoa, which is down to four and a half pounds after three months.
“They’re great foods,” he said, “but like you said, they sure aren’t beans and cornbread.”
Patton, by the way, wrote a book about Ches McCartney, who toured the country with a wagon and a small herd of goats. He was the famous Goat Man, someone I wrote about recently.
McCartney drank goat milk, never bathed and never got sick. Lived to be in his 90s. How did he do it?
“He could’ve eaten a dead chicken off the side of the road and wouldn’t have gotten sick,” Patton said.
McCarney would goat along about nine miles a day, stop alongside a road, set some old car tires on fire to draw a crowd and then do a little preaching of the gospel. He also sold his postcards: one for a quarter, two for fifty cents and three for a dollar.
Patton, author of “America’s Goat Man,” has been called “a walking encyclopedia of herbal folklore” who has presented seminars all over the country, even Alaska. He learned about medicinal plants from the late A.L. “Tommie” Bass, one of the last old mountain herb doctors.
“I spent 12 years roaming the woods with him,” Patton said.
He sent me a list of the most well-known, traditionally used herbs in the South. I’ll share a couple of them: plantain and chickweed. Both, he said, contain high concentrations of vitamins and minerals and vegetable proteins.
Just know what you’re gathering.
My mother used to cook poke salat, made from pokeweed, but she warned that you have to cook it just right or it might make you sick.
We’ve never cooked it at our house. I like John Wayne, but I don’t want to take up walking like him at triple speed.
Phil Hudgins can be reached at phudgins@cninewspapers.com.