How to Find Nature As Medicine Growing Right Outside Your Door, with Megan Edge

You don't have to go to some far distant forest and tromp through watching out for bears and cougars. You can forage right in your neighborhood. And I teach people about urban foraging, which is basically stepping outside your front door and knowing that the dandelion that's growing in the crack in the sidewalk is edible and medicinal.

If you want to live like you matter, ditch the pills, look great and feel Freaking amazing. You're in the right place. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo.

And I'm Dr. Ed Levitan. Welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast.

Where we empower you to live a vibrant and healthy life by optimizing your structural, chemical, emotional, social and spiritual lives.

Hold on to your hats.

Hello and welcome to the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo. Star sighting today at Levitan. And today we have Megan Edge on our podcast. And both of us are really excited to have this conversation because she is a master healer, educator, counselor, and author of the Heart's Journey, Healing Hearts, Oracle Cards and Guidebook. She's also an expert on food is medicine, and not only foraging, but the role that nature plays in our health. So we're going to talk all about that today. Welcome, Megan. We're so happy you're here.

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

When I said to Ed, we're talking about foraging today, I wish I had been filming because he went, oh, great. So what is foraging for the listeners?

Yes, that's such a great question. And up until very recently, I had a rather naive assumption that when I said foraging, people went, oh, yeah, sure, I know what that is. And it turns out that that's not the case for many people. They've not even a word they've necessarily heard of before. Or it invokes images of our ancestors scrabbling through the dirt and finding a root here and there. And it's more than that, but it is also that it's essentially going out of your normal environment and finding the foods and the medicines that nature provides for us and then bringing that home and learning how to incorporate that into your diet, into your food, or how to use it as medicine, how to prepare medicinal tinctures and salves and oils and things like that. And the beautiful thing about foraging is that you don't have to go to some farm far distant forest and tromp through watching out for bears and cougars. You can forage right in your neighborhood. And I teach people about urban foraging, which is basically stepping outside your front door and knowing that the dandelion that's growing in the crack in the sidewalk is edible and medicinal. I mean, you probably don't want to eat that one because it is right in the sidewalk crack.

But, yeah, watch out for dog pee and everything else. You have to. You do have to be careful of that.

You do.

And, you know, dog pee and exhaust and those sorts of things. And you do want to be mindful of where you're foraging. But, you know, the beautiful thing about urban foraging is it's a great way to get to know your neighbors and your neighborhood. Because if you've got a neighbor with an elderberry tree like I do, I can go knock on her door and say, hey, Carol, is it okay if I come in and, you know, harvest some of your elderberries? That's how I met her, was I saw her elderberry tree in the backyard, and I went up and knocked on her door.

So super excited. Because we love foraging and we love finding things. And I know I was talking to one of our providers as I was walking down the Charles river, and there was a. This was a couple months ago, there was mulberry. And I'm like, oh, is this mulberry? And I just started eating it. She. She freaked out.

So I. I've encountered that before when I've been out in the forest with, you know, friends, and I. I look over and, oh, my God, there's a huckleberry. And I start mowing down on the huckleberries, and they're.

Are you sure?

Are you a hundred percent sure? Yes, I'm 100% sure. There's actually very little in nature that's out to kill you. So how about. How about.

No, I'll tell you later.

But the disclaimer. But I do want the disclaimer is, if you're not sure, don't put it in your mouth.

Absolutely. Yes.

That is the disclaimer.

That is the disclaimer. I used to run a program years ago for children and their caregivers, and it was called Tiny Trail Trekkers. And the whole program was about taking basically families out into our local park systems, many of which are quite wild, and educating them about what they could eat, what they should perhaps not put in their mouths, the way that the indigenous peoples used the land and the resources. And there would be a craft and there'd be a story and that sort of thing. And what was so fascinating was the children, the little ones, were so curious about what they could and could not eat, and they were the ones really absorbing the information. And the parents would come to me afterwards and say, I took my child back out to that place we went. And he knew, he knew everything. And he told me, mama, don't eat that. Teacher Megan said, don't eat that.

That's awesome. What do you suggest for people who.

Live in the city?

What do you recommend they do to.

Where do people start?

Yeah, where do they start? And what do you do for people who just. They don't live near nature, but they.

Do live near nature. It's how you define nature. If what we're thinking is nature is only that which is outside of an urban environment and we have to go out into the forest in order to benefit from nature, then we're limiting what's possible for ourselves. Most major cities have green space. They have parks. Now if you're living in a, you know, I don't know, downtown Manhattan and you're in a high rise and you don't even have a balcony, it's going to be a little more challenging. But I would ask people to rise to that challenge. You know, once you get out of your apartment building and your feet are on the ground, look up, look around you see if there's a tree that you could just go and hang out with, even if that tree is encased in concrete. Most cities and city planners have put an included green space and trees and nature. Or go to the grocery store and if your grocery store sells houseplants, go and spend $5 on a little 4 inch pot of something that you really feel a connection with. You love the way the leaves look or the flowers or whatever and bring that into your home. That is still nature. So I'd be hard pressed to find anybody who could tell me that they don't have any connection or ability to connect with the natural world in some way or another.

Megan, what about in the urban places? What are plants in the urban areas that people can identify and say, okay, these are safe.

Most garden plants are edible. Most flowers are edible and also medicinal. In Victoria, over the last few years, the city of Victoria has planted along all of the borders and the big, like in between the streets in those planters, they've planted echinacea, like thousands and thousands of echinacea flowers. And they're beautiful, but they're also medicinal.

Can you eat the flowers?

You can eat the petals and then you can also use the flower to make tinctures for coughs and colds and that sort of thing. Yeah, daisies are edible. Rose petals are edible. Violets are edible. These are all things that fancy restaurants sprinkle on their salads and then charge you $25 for that little salad. You've got them. You know, if there's fruit trees in your environment, there's a pear tree right outside my window. In my neighbor's yard, we've got cherries. A lot of cities plant these ornamental blooming plants that then can produce fruit. If they do produce fruit. Not all of them do. Some of them are. They've been neutralized. They don't produce fruit. But let's see, what else. Any of your herbs. So a lot of. A lot of places use herbs as ornamentals. So rosemary, lavender, thyme, sage. These are all edible and medicinal. If you just walk down your street, you'd be amazed at what is available to you, that you can just start, you know, picking.

What's the fruit that I eat that nobody in the family eats? But anyways, nobody ever, ever eats them. And I'm just. I go and pick them and I.

Don'T care for the flavor of them. And the, like, the. It has all these.

It has a lot of spit out.

Too much like work. Too much like work.

Too much like work.

Well, and that. That's actually a good point. Wendy, to your point, too much like work foraging is work preparing. Once you've got your bounty home, you have to process it. My friend and I, the friend who we go out mushrooming all the time, we always have to allow a good three hours or so and at least a bottle of wine to that processing period where we're cleaning them and then we're chopping them and then we're cooking them or we're drying them, whatever it is that we're doing with them, that's also part of it. That's part of the joy of it is that processing and creating the food and the medicine from the things that we've. That we've foraged.

Yeah. There's definitely a sense of accomplishment. Right. Like I did this.

Absolutely. Absolutely, yes. And then in the middle of winter, when you pull out that bag of frozen chanterelles and you pop it into your sauce or your soup, that whole forest comes back to you. That moment of being in the forest and finding that perfect patch of mushrooms, it all comes back. And there's. There's medicine in that as well. I'm getting my goosebumps. I get my goosebumps. And we really get excited about something or say something. That's true. It's true. It's a whole. I don't know what even to call it. It's just. It's a whole thing. And the health benefits just keep going. Yeah.

I do want to emphasize, yes, it's time and it's energy and it's a piece of health. Like people can spend their time watch like quote, unquote, relaxing, or they can spend their time foraging. I would say foraging will give them a better sense of health than quote, unquote relaxing health benefits. And a lot. And a lot more benefits. And in terms of grocery versus forest, you're gonna get wild. Tends to be much more nutrient dense food. Even if it's the same food.

Yes, 100%. 100%.

There's a whole thing. And if we can get our kids involved, that is truthfully, the like, if we like we spend our. We spend the whole day foraging. So it. It's way better than all day on screens or all day whatever. It's just being outside.

Oh, absolutely. 100%. There's no comparison to the health benefits of being outside with family, passing on this knowledge and then doing that together as a family. Anything that we do together as a family, within our family has health benefits for us. Just because we're connecting a day spent in front of Netflix versus a day out in the forest or out in your local park or down by the river or whatever it is. There's no comparison. There just is no comparison. And too few of us are doing it right.

I want to transition into talking about people who are new to foraging. How do they identify what plants are safe and edible if they're like, I've never done that. I didn't grow up with it. What are you talking about? I mean, really? When he suggested we pick mushrooms, I was like, what? You want to pick mushrooms? Like, no. We have young kids and I worked hard to bring them to the world. You are not going to off them with a mushroom.

And for people, and this is even a bigger disclaimer for people that are thinking of picking mushrooms.

Don't.

That's not true. Just identify. What I for myself have done is one new mushroom a year that you learn one new mushroom that you're 100% certain. Mushrooms can be very, very dangerous.

So join a mushroom group on Facebook.

Check their reliability, get the mushroom book, go on foraging.

Take a clearance.

Yeah, so sorry. I didn't do this alone. Don't. Don't. But it is important for mushrooms not to do it alone.

But okay, let's not start with mushrooms. Let's start with things that aren't mushrooms. People are in nature and they are like, is that safe for me? How would I know? What can they, how do they identify what's even safe?

Right. So you've both answered the question already by listing off these really important things. Find yourself a really good quality guidebook. You want it to be specific to your area. You want it to have full color clear photographs, not blurry photographs. And you want to make sure that it's reliable. Now, unfortunately, there's a lot, or there are some foraging books that are being published these days that are AI generated. Stay away from those. Look up the author. See if you can really find some history on who that author is and what their expertise is. Definitely go with a friend. Go with a friend. I mean, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's way more fun when you have a friend with you. Secondly, you've got a second pair of eyes that could confirm as you're looking in your guidebook, what it is that you're looking at. And then thirdly, from a safety perspective, I've worked over the years with people who are afraid of the forest. They're afraid of nature. They've been taught to be afraid of nature, and that's not uncommon. Unfortunately, there's nothing in the forest that's out to get you, certainly not in North America, but it is the wilderness. So there are creatures that live in and are sharing the same space as you. And up here on the west coast, we have bears, we have cougars, there are large birds. Now, the birds aren't interested in us, like the eagles and the vultures. They're not interested in the human beings, but to be aware of what is in your environment. So it's not only important to know what you're picking, it's important to know what is around you. Is there poison ivy? Is there poison hemlock? Do you have a trail map or are you just going out into the forest somewhere? You know, what are the rules and the laws around the land that you're on? Do you need permission to be on the land? And that's different from state to state, from country to country, from province to province. So these are all things that are important to be aware of, but not to stop you from doing it right. I know it sounds like a lot of things, excuse me, to be. To consider, but when you break it all down, these are just common sense things to be aware of. Now, there's a lot of apps on phones now, and I get asked this question a lot. You know, how accurate are these apps? What's your favorite app? I don't Use an app on my phone. But then again, I have the advantage of having been doing this my whole life. So I'm very familiar with what things are. What if I'm not sure and I still come across things that I'm not sure? I come across mushrooms that I've never seen before. I've got a book that I keep in my car. I put it in my back pocket when I go into the forest, or it goes in my knapsack and I will look at it. I will compare the picture in the book. I may take a sample of it and bring it home and do a spore test or do more research on it. I'm not going to put it in my mouth or cook with it until I understand if there's any edible value to it and if there's any medicinal value to it. Now, I know that's taking it up to, like, the expert level, but as you said, Ed, it's one thing at a time. Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by how much bounty is out there, because there is a lot of it. But pick one fruit, pick one fungus, and make them your best friends for that season until you really feel comfortable with it. And pick mushrooms, for example, that are really easy to identify where there's really no lookalike. Chanterelles are one of those. Here we have something called a false chanterelle, but once you see them side by side, you know that that is not the chanterelle chicken of the woods. You cannot mistake that for any other mushroom. Right. So it's like there's the beginner mushrooms or the beginner berries, and then there's the more advanced. So you start at the beginning, you keep it simple for yourself.

Yeah. I find something really simple that always amazes me is that people don't pick the blackberries, raspberries, along. Like, it's just the simplest thing. There's no way of poisoning yourself, like, and it's awesome. Yes. But nobody. People are still afraid.

Yes. And that's. That's the unfortunate thing is that people are afraid because they have not been exposed to it. It hasn't been in their upbringing potentially. Or they've just heard things about how you shouldn't do that because it's bad for you or whatever. And again, it would be lovely to recreate that narrative. And I think that's what we're doing here today. And anytime we have these conversations, you're going to spend seven or eight dollars a pint for blackberries in the supermarket, or if you know where there is in your urban environment. Some blackberries. Go pick those blackberries. But know again where you are. You know, if it's right along the highway, those are probably not the best blackberries to pick because they're going to be covered with exhaust. You are going to be working with prickly things, so you're going to want to be dressed properly, you know, high heels and miniskirts when you're picking blackberries. Although I have picked blackberries in my bathing suit before, but that was on the beach, so that's the exception to it. But. But, yes, but also people. People are busy. You know, people are busy. They. They drive by the blackberries and go, oh, it would be nice to pick some of those. But it's easier to go to the supermarket and spend $8 on a pint of blackberries. Is often the case, too.

All right, Megan. We've been going to this apple orchard since I was, like, 4 years old. It's in. It's in Massachusetts. And now we have all these kids. We're married. We have all these kids, and we go to the apple orchard, and we're on our way home. And was it our son, I think, who screamed out, there's a chicken. And I'm like, don't hit it. And he goes, no, no, growing on the tree.

And I was like, oh.

So I'm with Ed. I would not have stopped. I'd be like, that's nice. And Ed's like, well, let's stop. So we stop. We're in the middle of rural nowhere, and we stop and we knock on the door and say, are you aware that you have chicken of the woods, which is an edible mushroom, on your tree stump? And she's like, no, but I don't want it. And my son very brazenly goes, can we have it? Sure. And there's more mushrooms in the back if you want, too. So we literally meet a stranger and go tromping through their lands and pick a whole bag full of mushrooms.

I love it.

We met them, and they said, that tree is actually getting cut down next month. So it's perfect.

How sad that the tree was getting cut down.

Was it dead or was something. It was, like, on its way out. It was pretty. Pretty sad.

And what's the chicken? Usually? It's. The tree is on its way out.

Oh, really?

Well, that's what I was about to say. Yeah. The chicken of the woods is a parasitic fungi, so it can take many years, it can take decades for chicken of the woods to destroy its host. But eventually it will. So it's one of those indicators of the tree's health and it's absorbing all of the nutrients that the tree would normally use and using that for its own growth. And in fact, I love that you brought up Chicken of the woods because I found some. Two weeks ago we had a bit of rain and the next day I'm driving along a road I always drive on and there's this big, huge, beautiful orange shelf mushroom slam on the brakes. Now, it was on the city boulevard, so I didn't have to knock on anybody's door. But I realized when I got up and looked at it, I wasn't the only one who knew what it was because somebody else had already come by and taken a piece of it. But because it was so huge, there was plenty to go around. So I took a piece and left some for the next person. And then when I drove by the next day, somebody else had come along and taken their share of it. So we were sharing the bounty.

Nice. That's pretty cool. I haven't gone enough. I haven't. That's in two weeks. The plan to go mushrooming because, yeah.

This is our rainy season and so we go to the Cape on Provincetown. And that's as much as I'm allowed to say is that they go because it's a closely held secret, apparently. And so they forage in a place in Provincetown and pick mushrooms and come back with buckets. It's crazy.

Yes, I love that. I do the same thing. I've got a dear friend and we've been mushrooming now for about 20 years. I taught her everything that I know and now she and I go out together every year and we take a week in October and we book a place up island and again, I can't say more than that. And then we just spend the whole week going to the various spots that we know and also discovering new spots. And that's a level of dedication to foraging that is pretty up there.

So I have a weird question, Megan. We live in the United States where there's incredible bounty and there's access to supermarkets for most of us. So why forage when you can go into the grocery store? It's much easier, it's faster, it doesn't require any of your time. Why? What's the benefit of it?

Sure, the supermarket is easier, but the supermarket doesn't have necessarily the sorts of things that we would be foraging for. They might at this time of year here in bc, the grocery stores start to get chanterelles in. And as soon as I see the chanterelles on the shelf, I know, right, time to get out there, Time to go. If I hadn't already gone out there. But you know what? They're $30 a pound. Last year, my friend and I picked about 70 pounds of chanterelles over the course of a few weeks.

Do you dry them or what do you do with them?

Oh, we dry them, we pickle them, we saute them and freeze them. We do all kinds of things with them. Yeah, everything, Everything. But you do the math. 30 times 70. Now, for someone who loves mushrooms, that it's worth my while to go out into the forest, just from a financial standpoint. But more than that, while a trip to the grocery store can be a lovely social occasion, if you happen to bump into a few friends, you're not in nature.

Right.

There is healing, medicinal healing for us when we step into the forest. And this has long been documented, loads of research. If you've ever heard of forest bathing, something the Japanese came up with, it's now come to North America and essentially it's taking a walk in the forest. There's medicine in the forest. The oxygen levels are different, the air is different. When you're immersed in the forest, when you can see the forest for the trees, when you know what it is that you're looking at and it's not just a big green blur, you're connecting on a level that you're not going to do in the grocery store, you know, it's a whole different experience. Now, when I talk about urban foraging, I do talk about foraging in the grocery stores, and that's when something's on sale. So let's. A couple of months ago, we had a huge shipment of garlic come in to one of our local grocery stores that had started to sprout on root. So they had it at this massive discount. Now, there's nothing wrong with sprouted garlic. It's still perfectly edible and perfectly medicinal. But they couldn't sell it for what they would normally sell it for. So I came home with a bush, like just a huge bushel of garlic. And my husband and I spent the next three or four days processing all of this garlic. For me, it's the same rush as if I go out in the forest and I find a bounty of mushrooms or berries or whatever it is. It's that same feeling of accomplishment and of knowing what to do with it.

Well, I think that what you're saying deserves a plug for the actual physiological benefits of what happens when. When you Forest bathe. So if you are breathing slower and deeper, you're activating your parasympathetic recovery which helps with tissue repair and digestion and system function. And so it's not just this woo woo, like, yeah, go in the forest and take a deep breath and look around. It's how can we train your body to then rest, relax, restore and digest so that the stress of daily life isn't quite so stressful.

Right.

It is actually physiologically beneficial to us to go and be walking in the forest.

Absolutely, absolutely. And the research and the science supports that. The knowing that our brain waves change when we go from a city, urban environment where we're in a concrete jungle and we step into a serene, beautiful natural environment, or a park for that matter. Anywhere where we are immersed in that serenity or that calm, it makes a difference. And if somebody could have the opportunity to go for a walk in the forest rather than take a Prozac, they may have a very different experience of what it is that they were originally taking that Prozac for. If it become therapy, if we could prescribe, you've got to go to the forest for 20 minutes or you're local park or your local arboretum or wherever it is, you have to step out of the busyness and you have to sit for 20 minutes underneath a tree and you have to do that for the next three months. How amazing would that be? And now the research has been done that demonstrates that the effect of that is equal to, if not more effective than masking the symptoms with a pharmaceutical medication.

Sure, hold on, we got to underscore that. So you just said that the benefits of being out in nature on a consistent basis for a sustained period of time is equal to or better than that of taking medicines to deal with anxiety or depression. Did I hear you right?

Yes, you did.

Well, that's like a microphone. You were going on the concrete. I'm going to go on the woo.

And say, well that's, that's how we roll.

Perfect. I love it.

So right now we're using the Internet and we're on the electronic Internet. When you're in the forest, if you can plug into the Internet of the forest, which is the mushrooms, the mycelium, and really go deep into that, that's a completely different plugin. So really plugging in to land in nature is very different than plugging into the electronic.

Do the mycelium cross oceans? You know, because I know within a land based continent that we're all con, that it's all connected it really is. It has this whole inter. Connectedness, but I just didn't know if, if, you know, we're connected to Europe in the same way.

I'm sure we're. I'm sure it doesn't cross oceans from a direct point of view, but I'm sure there's mycelium, like things in the ocean that will, that we either know or will discover that everything's connected. That that's just how the world works.

Okay. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Now I will say ethical foraging is different than clear cut foraging. And when people first start foraging, they get really excited. And we do live in a culture that is an instant gratification kind of a culture. So somebody goes out, oh, they found chanterelles. They know that it's chanterelles. They pick every single chanterelle and then they come home and they do whatever they're going to do with it. That's clear cutting. Ethical foraging is recognizing and understanding that while there is bounty, there is a limit to that bounty. And we as responsible stewards of the earth must understand and respect that. If we clear cut, then there's nothing left for anybody else. But there's also nothing left for the forest to regenerate itself. So we always leave mushrooms behind. We don't pick the little teeny tiny ones, for example, we pick the bigger ones. If something has got started to go mushy, we leave it. And we always leave something behind. Right. It's just footprints. That's what we leave behind. We always, we take our garbage out with us. But. So there's all these different ways to ethically connect with the environment that we're in. And remembering that we only take as much as we need, we don't take it all. Yeah.

And there was a Native American, the way they used to do it, in terms of what I learned is anytime they forage, they left tobacco or some other offering to whatever plant or animal that they. Well, plants that they forged so that they can grow.

Absolutely, absolutely. In some traditions, you never pick the first one that you see because there's this amazing phenomenon that you've probably encountered when you're out foraging, is that at first you don't see them, you don't see what you're looking for. You can't find the mushroom, but then as soon as you see one, your brain goes, right, that's the pattern I'm looking for. And suddenly they're everywhere. But so in some traditions, that first mushroom, when the mushroom decides to show itself to you, you know, you've been deemed worthy by the mushroom. You don't pick that one. You leave that one behind and you're always in gratitude. So when I'm picking, especially if I felt like, let's say winter chanterelles, do you guys have winter chanterelles out there? Oh, they're a wonderful mushroom.

How should I know?

They're so beautiful. Did you know that every mushroom has a fragrance? They're like flowers. So if you've got a bouquet of mushrooms, each one is going to have a different scent to it. Winter chanterelles, they're in the chanterelle family, obviously, and they grow in large swaths and they're quite small. So it's really easy when you see a whole patch of them to just go, oh, yes, I'm going to pick them all. But we don't do that. We leave some behind. And we also always say thank you. So when I'm picking and I. And there's that bounty from my heart, I'm saying thank you to the forest, thank you to the mushrooms. It just becomes a habit that I just say either out loud or in my mind. And it is that honoring because we are in relationship with nature. And yes, we're getting a little into the woohoo here, but that's awesome. Let's get into the woohoo. We are a part of it. It is a spiritual connection. And so within that spiritual connection, I feel for myself that it's really important for me to honor that, to recognize that. And so that's part of, for me, my ethical foraging. When I teach people about it, that's a part of it. Don't just come in there with city eyes on and just be saying, right, I've got mushrooms now. Immerse yourself in the entire experience because that's where the medicine is.

Yeah, yeah, 100%. Megan, it's been amazing. And I actually think I could talk to you for three hours, but that's. That's another matter. Maybe we'll do the soft light. Where can people find you? How can people learn more about you? How can people learn more about the ethical foraging and urban foraging and mushroom foraging and all this amazing stuff?

Well, as a Gemini and a busy mind in many places, I have many ways that people can reach me. I do have two websites. One is Megan Edge Healing, and that's more of the healing work, the trauma healing work that I do, the counseling, the spiritual coaching and all of that. So that's meganedge Ca. And then my other website is beyond the Garden Gate Botanicals and Beyond The Garden Gate Botanicals is where I do all of what we've been talking about today, and not only in terms of helping people understand their connection to nature and the ways in which they can immerse themselves in nature. I also have my own line of healing products that I create from the ocean and from the forests and from the fields in the form of tinctures and teas and salves and oils. And all of that you can find through beyond the Garden Gate Botanicals and the Etsy Store.

Beautiful.

Beautiful. We'll put that all in the show notes.

That's exciting. I want to look now. I want to look now.

He's going to go look.

I know.

I'm going to be like, get off the computer.

Go ahead. Time. Well, in that case, it's okay. You can. You can be on the computer to look at that.

So thank you for being on the podcast and joining us for this episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. It's really been a privilege.

Thank you.

Freaking amazing.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed it.

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