March 30, 2023: I grabbed the 5:50am ferry to Vashon Island to make sure I was really early for a Washington Trails Association (WTA) trail construction day. That extra time was going to give me a couple hours to wander the forest trails in search of spring delectables, namely oyster mushrooms, stinging nettles, and fern fiddleheads.
No sign of oysters on my wanderings (yet, they were around when I returned with the family in April) but the nettles were abundant. Using leather work gloves I grabbed a grocery bag worth, only harvesting the more tender uppermost leaves but I couldn't bring myself to try the fiddleheads. There is just something about their fuzziness and variable textures that gives me pause... maybe next year I will work up the courage.
The WTA work was a lot of the normal tasks: pulling roots, trimming brush, packing mineral soil, etc and then there was the main event. This particular trail needed to support horse traffic and the new bridge consisted of three massive beams that each took twelve people to lift and maneuver onto the supports. As you might observe from the pictures, this is not the demographics of a power lifting team (myself included) but all three lifts were successful and nobody got squished.
Back at home it was time to process the nettles. This consists of a quick dunk in salty, boiling water (to deactivated the formic acid that causes its sting) followed by an ice bath and then strained. At this point you can give them a good squeeze to remove excess moisture. What you are left with is a lump of green that, if you don't look too closely at the little spikes, looks just like some defrosted spinach.
This particular lump of green went into a tasty nettle/potato soup that had a nice foresty taste. Feeling inspired, I went to a Seattle city park (off trail to avoid any bonus doggy flavors) and gathered a second bag's worth that made a very tasty nettle/artichoke dip. That marked the end of my nettle picking for the year but I couldn't help but notice along many a trail this spring there were the telltale missing tops of nettles where fellow pickers had grabbed their PNW spinach.
P.S. - In the city park, the dog and I also found some beautiful "artist conks" (aka ganoderma applanatum). These are not edible but the white underside bruises very easily and a little pressure from a fingernail will leave a durable, high contrast trail:
