Cure light wounds (pine pitch)

Pine pitch grows on trees, of course, or at least comes from trees. The clear gum drips like crystal tears, its delicacy against the pine bark strikingly lovely. As it ages, it hardens and dries. If left undisturbed, it will harden into copal, and ultimately can fossilize into amber.

Not for cooking. Probably. Or not much. Although retsina, and I can imagine the sharp medicinal flavour working well in some settings ... and deep in the subsequent pages of a google search, I found a few oddities: pine resin potatoes, and pine resin chocolate. And, oh happy day, these people after my own heart making all sorts of bitters and syrups and shipping them from Colorado.

Pitch can be incorporated into a balm or used alone as an incense. The pitch is also traditionally used in the southwest and Mexico to remove splinters, spines, or glochids. The balm is useful for small cuts or irritations, for soothing rashes, as a barrier cream, and generally for minor insults to the skin. It even makes a pretty reasonable emergency deodorant.

Gather the fresh resin with a stick, because wow it is sticky*. It's also almost overwhelmingly tempting to touch it, because the partly dried droplets are gummy, squishy, stretchy, and generally a source of tactile satisfaction.

So it's good to know that oil will unstick the stickiness - hand sanitiser/rubbing alcohol too, but not quite as well. Oil will also dissolve the resinous gum, making a strongly pine-scented maceration which can then be blended with other ingredients as usual to make various creams and potions. I use a lot of pine balm and I like the foresty smell of it, so when we saw quantities of pitch out in the wild recently, I thought I'd harvest some and figure out how to make my own ... luckily, the internet, and little figuring was required.

Currently I have a big jar of pine pitch oil sitting in the kitchen. With the greenish oil and lumps of pitch slowly dissolving, it looks like something that would be more at home in a potion master's dungeon-cum-office. But one day soon I will turn it into perfectly well-behaved and seemly balm. More to come ...

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*Q. What's brown and sticky? 

A. A stick. 


Cure light wounds specification.

A desert sage adventure

Desert hills, sage in foreground

In the Mojave National Preserve, desert sage is everywhere, acres of it, whole arroyos full of it, great gardens spread out lengthwise over hillsides. Its leaves smell recognisably like common sage, only stronger, spicier, and more like armpits (hmm, maybe I'm not overselling it here?) Some plants have an almost coyote-pee stink to them.

This is not the world-famous white sage, used for smudging. Nor is it the giant Mojave blue sage, whose flower spikes have huge magnificent spheres of blue rising up out of the grey-green foliage, one of the only Mojave flowering plants that you can buy in nurseries. This is the desert sage, salvia dorrii, also called Great Basin sage or purple sage. It grows all over the place around here, but in very specific kinds of terrain: not too high up, not too low (too hot in the desert valleys), usually on sloping ground, often in wide washes.

Caruthers Canyon

Towards the New York Mountains

A spring weekend morning, an unexplored road, and a 4x4 with new tyres is a sure recipe for happiness. The trusty 'Hiking in the Mojave Desert' won, yet again, with another spot-on recommendation. 

Caruthers Canyon reminds me of very old descriptions of canyons in the desert southwest - the isolation and unspoiled beauty, the trees, flowers and peacefulness. (Probably those 19th and early 20th century authors did not have the near-constant noise of planes overhead though.) 

She gets a bit bumpy aye.

We could camp here. Look! It has a table!

This haven of pine trees, granite, and wildflowers is just three hours from home. Two of those are over dirt roads, of which some are graded and not too washboardy, and some are tracks that would make you yelp. (Barreeeee!) 

We picnicked in the shade of an oak tree. These desert species are non-deciduous and have sturdy little leaves, almost like holly leaves. The warm sun on nearby junipers made a fragrant accompaniment.

Then we walked up the track to the camping - and immediately wished we had driven up there before lunch. The pines shelter a few primitive campsites, and the granite outcrops are all sorts of picturesque. There are grizzly-bear-prickly-pears sprawling low to the ground, and stony hills rising on three sides. 

We could buy it. Look! It has a wall!

On the way out from the canyon, we saw 20 acres for sale and had to be quite stern with each other. We already own an ample number of tumbledown out-of-the-way properties. (Surely just one more couldn't hurt?)

Our drive home took us along the Mojave Road, a 500-year old trail westwards through the desert. In many places it is sunken six feet or more below the level of the surrounding desert, and you have the feeling of being immersed, or of tunneling through sand. And my word, but the Mojave is astounding in bloom this year. Hillsides purple with sage or golden with - eh, IDK, yellow flowers, I guess. Lots of globe mallow making fields of orange, and splashes of day-glo cactus blooms and paintbrush.

There's something soul-cleansing about being out in the middle of that rich dense everything, all calmly going about its normal occasions. Sometimes it's even enough to last me all week.