Inspired by one of my recurring outdoor events, my first magazine essay, "Acorns and Octavia," was recently published in the Winter 2022 issue of Orion Magazine . Read the essay in its entirety here or find a copy at a local bookstore that sells literary magazines (e.g. Barnes and Noble.)

Sassafras is a plant with a wildly oscillating reputation. From panacea to mass-produced soft drink to illicit drug source and back again, sassafras has had a varied career. As one might expect given its colorful record, sassafras is enigmatic in appearance with multi-shaped leaves that simultaneously resemble dinosaur footprints, mittens, and your run-of-the-mill unlobed leaf. The plant is also unusual in its smell—when scratched, it emits a shockingly familiar "Froot Loop" aroma. But fortunately for us, sassafras and its forested environs contain none of the nutritional landmines of the cereal aisle and, what’s more, it offers a potent array of medicines with an expansive array of applications. I deepened my appreciation for sassafras during a recent visit to United Plant Savers’ Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary in Ohio where I had the opportunity to browse the personal library of the late Dr. James "Jim" Duke—a prominent botanist, ethnobotanist, and herbalist. There, I encountered Doug Elliott's book Wild Roots: A Forager's Guide to the Edible and Medicinal Roots, Tubers, Corms, and Rhizomes of North America in which he explains that sassafras became the New World's first "cash crop" due to its extreme popularity in Europe where it was regarded as a cure-all. He notes that it was consumed widely as a tea until its usefulness for treating syphilis rendered it unfashionable to consume. Not long after, he writes, tobacco would displace sassafras as the plant of choice. Though not a focus of Elliot’s analysis, it is also crucial to note that the medicinal use of sassafras by indigenous peoples of North America including the Cherokee are clearly the first uses of sassafras in what is now the U.S. Further, a history that centers marginalized knowledges “from below” also reveals that, even after the ascendancy of tobacco, sassafras maintained a place in the healing practices of settler peoples operating at the grassroots. Even now, sassafras remains a valued remedy in various traditions of American folk medicine , among them Appalachian folk medicine and the African American tradition of Hoodoo. This was evident when I visited a site of familial significance and discovered one specific way that sassafras was likely used by my own ancestors. Earlier this year, I visited Central Pennsylvania where my great-great grandfather Janos Luckazs worked as a coal miner in the 1800s, extracting bituminous coal from several mines in Clearfield and Centre Counties over the course of his working life. In an effort to learn more about what his day-to-day life may have entailed, I visited the Coalport Area Coal Museum where I learned a great deal about the lives of coal miners in the 1800s. One unexpected learning arose, however, while examining artifacts enclosed in a glass case. The museum's curator pointed out a bottle of sassafras oil and indicated that, even following sassafras’ decline as a fashionable substance, miners and other common folk would use it to support their ailing bodies. I was especially excited to discover this ancestral story due to the apparent connection between Pennsylvania coal miners and the emergence of the modern world’s most widespread and marketed sassafras product: root beer. After tasting an herbal concoction featuring sassafras while on his honeymoon, druggist Charles Elmer Hires created Hires Root Beer— the first mass-produced root beer for commercial sale. The product debuted in Philadelphia in 1876 and though Hires intended to call his beverage "Hires Herb Tea," his friend Dr. Russell H. Conwell insisted that Pennsylvania coal miners would never drink something called "herb tea," prompting Hires to select the name "root beer" instead. The A&W Root Beer we know today would enter the market in 1919 and ascend quickly in popularity aided by the teetotaling sensibilities of the prohibition era. Products that contain safrole—an active constituent found in sassafras—would be banned by the FDA in 1960 after a scientific study indicated that it produces carcinogenic effects in animal models, prompting sassafras-free root beer recipes to emerge. Despite this discovery, the applicability of this finding to human health remains controversial. For example, research conducted prior to the ban showed that ill effects did not appear in humans when they were given approximate doses of safrole. Today, figures like Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Axe are encouraging people to give sassafras a second look, pointing to the substantial difference between the lab procedure used in the original experiment that had safrole banned and typical modes of human consumption in real life. Unfortunately for sassafras, its reputation has been further complicated by the emergence of two drugs synthesized from its misunderstood roots. These drugs go by many names: the first, MDMA, is commonly known as "ecstasy” and “Molly”; the second, MDA, goes by “Sally,” “sassafras,” or just “sass.” Despite their differences, both would be used in psychotherapeutic circles to promote emotional openness and reduce anxiety. MDA was first used in this manner in the 1960s but was subsequently banned when negative side effects were discovered. It was in the 1970s that MDMA would gain wide usage in clinical settings and eventually became widely available as a street drug. In 1986, however, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency would reclassify MDMA as an illegal substance based on evidence that the related substance MDA , not MDMA, induced neurodegeneration at high doses. Efforts to overturn this decision have been raging ever since and, 35 years later, MDMA is being used with great success in clinical trials centered around treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). As a result of MDMA’s popularity on the black market, sassafras has now become subject to overharvesting . In light of this, the mounting data on MDMA’s therapeutic efficacy raises questions about how widespread clinical use could magnify an existing ecological problem. Though there is some suggestion that companies are attempting to synthesize safrole , it is not yet clear how clinical use of MDMA may reshape sassafras populations in the U.S. and around the world. In the meantime, sassafras remains a beautiful, unique, and unquestionably complex denizen of the understory who reminds me of the resilience and ingenuity of my ancestors, the endurance of folk healing traditions, and the hazards of medical reductionism. Despite changing public opinion and administration methods, sassafras’ singular appearance, aroma, and storied relationship with humanity remain. I hope that the next time you glimpse sassafras on a trailside, you’ll say “hello” and appreciate the veritable pharmacopeia at your feet.

At a recent event that I led with Outdoor Afro at the Neponset River Reservation, we came upon a large stand of St. John's Wort—one of my favorite plants due to its uplifting presence and ability to hold its own alongside pharmaceuticals in the human body. St. John's Wort is widely regarded as a free and effective herbal alternative to pharmaceutical antidepressants including SSRI drugs, and one that doesn't present the litany of side effects that the pharmaceutical options typically present. After describing some of the powerful ways that one can work with St. John's Wort (e.g. by drying the wild plant for tea, tincturing it, or creating an infused oil to apply topically), I shared the following story based on an experience from the previous summer that this image partially captures. I was taking a leisurely walk through what is known as Area Four in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is an area of Cambridge that is situated on the edge of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus and Kendall Square—an area that houses over 120 of the region's 1,000+ biotech companies. BioGen, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Sanofi are among the pharmaceutical giants that have made their homes there. As I walked around this landscape so marked by the project of technological progress, I noticed something that—to many Cambridge residents—might seem either irrelevant or distracting if it managed to draw their attention at all. I noticed multiple beautiful stands of St. John's Wort and a particularly abundant one directly adjacent to Sanofi. This is one of the pharmaceutical companies that manufactures the antidepressant drug Wellbutrin. Known by the generic name Bupropion hydrochloride, Wellbutrin has been at the center of an ongoing saga of recalls, reintroductions, and price gouges that appear to have left a number of its users seeking alternative options. In light of these concerning trends, I was delighted to discover the presence of St. John's Wort in the immediate vicinity of Sanofi. Though separated from the Sanofi campus by a large fence in this particular case, much of the St. John's Wort was visibly bursting out of its enclosure and, in some cases, even dangled precipitously over the edge. I found it inspiring to discover that this golden plant had decided to sprout in such abundance in this particular location as if to say to passersby "whether or not you know my name, I'm still here and I’m here for you." Traditionally harvested on St. John's Day, or June 24th, St. John's Wort grows abundantly in meadows, fields, and areas with gravely soil. Walking through this largely barren and angular architectural landscape, I couldn't help but contemplate what historical transformations have prompted us to forget the immense power of plants like St. John's Wort. Though there are a great many factors that one could list here, one modern thread is certainly the movement from more reciprocal ways of relating to the natural world and healing the body to escalating nature illiteracy and near-total reliance on consumer products and experts for healing. Add to this the historical movement from education steeped in natural history to science education that unduly emphasizes the micro, displacing other vital ways of seeing and making sense of the world. We’ve moved from ways of assigning value that consider the abundance that is readily perceptible with all of our senses to those centered around, for example, what can only be glimpsed through the aperture of a microscope and demystified with the blessing of particular purveyors of knowledge. Though we seem to have gained from the birth and expansion of these sciences, I fear that we have lost a great many riches in its all-encompassing grasp. The stands of St. John’s Wort serve as a reminder of the healing and learning possibilities that remain accessible to everyday people using the ancient tools of sight, touch, taste, and smell. I find it grounding and sense-making to develop relationships with these healing elements that occur in our own environments and that we can really interact with rather than turning only to medicines synthesized out of ingredients harvested elsewhere and offered up by corporate entities whose conflicts of interest have become so notorious. When I see St. John's Wort sprouting out of the sidewalk, on a hillside, or in some other location, it reminds me that the power of these various for-profit entities isn't total. There is still space to forge interdependent relations with the land around us and recover a relationship to our own emotional truths, undisturbed by the dulling of emotion and sensation that so many antidepressants induce. In contrast to pharmaceutical SSRIs, St. John's delivers a radically different medicine by reminding us of the sunshine and that it can coexist with its dark opposite, allowing authentic inner lives to take shape in a complex world. Ultimately, St. John's Wort reminds me that, alongside various large and powerful institutions, power can also be glimpsed in wordless acts of endurance, beauty, and grace without demonstrative displays and direct-to-consumer advertising. By turning down the volume on these programs and being willing to wander with greater sensorial attention, we may revolutionize our relationship to place and discover an outpouring of sunshine in unlikely places.