The Wild Sierra Mint

By Rex Burress

Restless with pending medical concerns, I arose in the dark of an early stormy morning and sat in the chair watching flickering lights on the wall. It was like a sinister shadow show, and I had to look outside to see whence the beacon was coming from. Wind. The neighbor's palms were being whipped to and fro and the street light played its part. Every thrashing plant was a potential enemy that must have terrified roosting birds and worried the twisting trees.

Strangely, the thought that came to mind was of the Sierra Mint (Pycnanthemum californicum), that grows wondrously serene in the summer along Spanish Creek before it empties into the Feather River 60 miles up-river from Oroville, CA. On that cold stormy February day, mints and all the neighboring meadow plants must have been plastered down by rain and maybe snow, but nevertheless, I yearned for a whiff of Sierra Mint. Just the thought of it was soothing to troubled times.

Maybe it was because I needed some healing, and the mint is conducive to a healthy style of life, not only because of its medicinal qualities, but because of the healthy habitat where it is found. Just the thought of breathing that aromatic breath of life in the floral community where hundreds of plants offer their uplifting vapors, is an enticement sufficient to create a CNPS field trip...or give comfort on a stormy morning in your parlor.

Sierra Mint is not flamboyant in bloom and the small white blossoms are barely noticeable, but crush a leaf and you will know you've tapped the vats of eternal life so invigorating is the elixir. It seeks the shadows more than mugwort (Artemisia douglasiana), another nearby fragrant medicinal plant, but more pungent and less appealing.

There is fascination in the way plants and animals survive cold winters, and from all appearances the herbal plants are dead. But on a warm day, the mint sprigs will peek timidly out of their subterranean fortress as if to see if the lurking winter monsters are gone, and once clear, quickly rise to life.

The transformation will happen over in nearby Butterfly Valley where the pitcher plants were battered into brownness by winter forces, but the flame of life is just asleep, and one grand morning there will be resurrection and a new season of growth. The Indian Rhubarb along the creek will also rise again in warmer days.

In a particular meadow along the Berry Creek rivulet that flows into Spanish Creek a few hundred yards below the gate of Oakland Feather River Camp, a handsome collection of natives grow, including the Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), part of the yarrow-mugwort-mint trio of Indian medicine plants. The Ox-Eye Daisy grows there, too, as well as a bordering of shrubs. I love that sheltered nook where there is a sufficient variety of wild plants to occupy you for hours. Berry Creek comes out from a railroad culvert to drop into a reflection pool where leopard lilies grow and an alder leans out over mysterious depths. It is magic there, and a place to restore the soul and breathe deeply of enchanted aromas accented by the ponderosa pine leaf mats on the surrounding hills.

The scarlet gilia grows there, too, as well as the columbine and a hundred other species. You don't have to be a native plant devotee to fully enjoy the floral beauty and spiritual atmosphere lingering there, but it always adds more depth to your understanding of the world we live in to learn about plant and animals facts and at least their first names. Often a little information will provoke one to learn more.

"We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the wilderness with its living and decaying trees, the thundercloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshlets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander," said Henry David Thoreau. John Muir echoed Thoreau, saying, "Rainbows blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod...When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and try to hear what it had to say."

Just up the road from Reflection Pool Meadow, within the Oakland Camp grounds, there is a monument dedicated to famous Oakland naturalist and botanist, Paul F. Covel, and on the plaque is embossed "Going to the Woods is Going Home." –John Muir. This idyllic setting is near the everlasting rapids of Toll-Gate Creek, a bubbling, rock-strewn channel angling down from mountain lakes, and appropriately harboring a riparian oasis rich with flowers of the Sierra. Adding to the enrichment and wild flavor is the call of the coyote, the nests of the woodrats, the track of the bobcat, the spice of rattlesnakes, and even the hidden dells where the rein-orchid grows. Look forward to the future! "Take a child to the wild!