10/21/10 wild dandelions

People say dandelion greens taste too bitter, but you shouldn't believe them. Their tastebuds have been skewed by even the most healthful American diet, and require serious recalibration. In our culture, we cover up the bitter with all manner of sweetness--of taste, appearance, manufactured goods, travel, relationships. What if we allowed ourselves to feel the bitterness that underlies it--the selling of people and things, the dark agreements, the negotiations.

In the springtime in suburban Boston, someone once told me to look for the Italian women around the highway 93's edges in the weeks before Easter. I saw them a few times, gathering wild dandelion greens for Easter without violating the local parks' injunctions against harvesting. In dark dresses, kneeling close to the ground like figures in a religious diptych, they looked like they were making ablutions. So foreign to our lives, you don't see them unless they are pointed out to you, like the ships of Columbus to the Taino indigenous peoples, according to the film, "What the &*%$@# (bleep)" They are reclusive, arcane, their ritual ancient.

Dandelion, I've been told, is less bitter in spring before the first flowering, and I imagine, also in the fall, when flowering has ceased and it collects the last drops of sunlight with its rosette of leaves. To me, it tastes like itself year-round, and the only time it's close to inedible is when it's from a hot, drought-y midsummer vacant lot. But still, I'd try it, if the lot were clean.