Inspired by one of my recurring outdoor events, my second piece for Orion Magazine , "When Elves Took Over an Abandoned Gas Station" was recently published. Read the essay in its entirety here !

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.