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She coasted to a gentle stop, dismounted, and before she even chained her bike to a not-yet-blooming crab apple tree, she unzipped her backpack, unearthed a jar with dark-brown liquid and offered, “Here, I brought this for you. Dandelion coffee. Best kidney and liver cleanse you can drink.”
Then Klehm, 42, took a seat on a grit-strewn patch of would-be grass. Looking out, she took in Sears Tower and Fulton Market Cold Storage to the east, a colony of Dumpsters to the south, and mounds and mounds of asphalt, discarded chairs and shoes and desks, barbed wire coils, broken bottles, and those tracks, ever-narrowing to the west, as far as she could see.
She pronounced this just about her No. 1 spot to forage in the city.
You read that right.
Klehm — an eco-landscape designer as well as a teacher, artist and cheesemaker — also is an urban forager, scarfing up tender leaves and robust roots, collecting seeds, gathering fruits and blossoms from what you might think are merely weeds.
They’re not weeds to Klehm. She whips up a fine burdock-nettle-wild-onion soup. She makes a mean wild-spinach lasagna with garlic-mustard pesto. Every year at the winter solstice, she breaks open a vernal dandelion wine.
And, except to shop for tortilla chips, chocolate, coffee and the occasional vintage wine, she rarely steps into a grocery store.
While she’s out foraging every day, her dedication, she says, is all about a land connection and living healthfully. She is adamantly not a part of the “freegan” movement — a corps of folks around the world who are finding ways to live outside the mainstream economic grid, consuming minimal resources. She is simply hooked on what the urban soils offer.
“I came to the city because I was interested in ideas,” said Klehm, who grew up on a farm in Barrington, Ill. “I found myself lonely in that world of ideas, and needing to get outside.
“I prefer someplace like this to a park,” she said, running her hand over the soft, broad leaf of burdock, growing just inches south of where someone’s back tire was wedged tight against a crumbling concrete curb. “I prefer a place less choreographed by human hands. Transportation corridors provide clear access to the western suburbs, and beyond. Birds migrate here. Animals travel; I’ve seen coyote. And seeds can blow down the tracks. ...
“Almost none of the plants here are natives. All are really important pioneer plants. Pioneer plants go into highly disturbed, toxic soils and flourish.”
Pioneer plants, she explains, put down roots, making air shafts, allowing rainwater to trickle in, bringing on the insects. Pioneers, you might say, are soil resurrectors. And Klehm is among their hardiest believers.
For 19 years she has walked these tracks, ever since she moved to Chicago to take a job at the Field Museum, where she worked in the anthropology and photography departments. Heck, she has even buried her cat here.
She knows, because she has cataloged the mile-long stretch from Racine to Damen Avenues, that 13 food plants, 18 medicinals and three different building materials are to be had here.
And that is why, this sunny spring afternoon, she came equipped with an “old-lady spade” and pruning shears in her backpack, a jackknife in her front pocket.
Klehm crouched down beside the curb. Right within arm’s reach, she spied what she considers the essential pharmacopeia — “you’d want these in your medicine bag.”
Dandelion, to cleanse your insides. Yarrow, to sweat out a cold or pack into a wound. Evening primrose, should you be bothered by PMS. Catnip, if you’re in need of a mildly sedative tea. Mullein, not bad for asthma, but better yet if you are camping and have left behind your, um, papier de toilette.
Klehm reached down and yanked off a burdock leaf. From her backpack, she pulled a vat of homemade raw-milk cheese she’d mixed with wild onion. She slathered the cheese on the leaf, which she rolled into a curbside canape.
“Here, taste,” she urged. “It’s great for digestion.”
Perhaps, her taster thought, she hasn’t noticed that that muddy tire was mighty close to where the canape, in prerolled state, was soaking up exhaust and fumes and standard-issue city grit.
Not far off, Klehm saw what passed for a hill. It was awash in rotting timbers, computer parts, old tires, a smashed-up bike helmet.
She climbed the hill, rested her hand on a tree-of-heaven that boldly emerged up top. From there, she spied a crop of dark green stalks off in the distance. She wasted no time. Spade at the ready, she dug, and came up with wild onions for her supper’s salad back at home.
“This is all about connection,” she said on the way back to her bike. “This is about experimentation. And I do enjoy the oddball public space performance. Bird watchers, tai chi and foragers are all moving really slow.”
It’s not uncommon, she said, to bump into first-generation immigrants who know well the treasure of what you might call a weed. Poles, Russians, Mexicans, Chinese, she said, are in shared pursuit of what the city has to offer, poking through its cracks and faults.
“(Foraging) can be born of necessity, but it can be born of taste. The taste you get from these plants is completely different. The survivalist and the gourmand in me are completely linked.”
Klehm, who has foraged for salad along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, waded the rice paddies of Bali and learned herbs from an Aborigine, said she worries little about bumping into things you might not want to swallow.
“I’m more interested in embracing the complexity of my environment than in trying to protect myself from it, or deny it. I feel like there’s more medicine and food value in a couple leaves of dandelion collected along the train tracks than in an apple harvested in New Zealand, shipped and stored on some shelf for five months.”
With that, she tucked her wild onion into her backpack, unchained her bike and rode off, across the tracks, away from where the wild things dare to grow, off to where she dares to call them breakfast, lunch and dinner.
To learn more about urban foraging, e-mail Nance Klehm at jane@salvation jane.net.
REAP WHAT THE CITY SOWS
Yellow dock: A tincture of the bitter yellow root helps clean the liver and kidneys, said urban forager Nance Klehm. Add young leaves to salads or use as a cooked green. Grind mature seeds for a protein-rich flour.
Catnip: Makes a calming tea for you, but will drive your kitty wild. Hide it in an upper cupboard, and watch your cat climb the walls. Klehm says it also helps stop diarrhea.
Yarrow: Flowers make a first-rate tea for sweating out a cold. If you get a gash while out in the woods, pack the wound with yarrow leaves to keep infection at bay.
Burdock: The root is delicious raw as well as in a soup or mashed. Klehm says it also aids the liver and kidneys.
Wild carrot: Add the slender white root to salads. Or simply take a bite and fill yourself with nature’s best vitamin A. For thousands of years, the seed of wild carrot was used for birth control.
