I’m not sure how I first heard about “Wildman” Steve Brill and his foraging tours. After reading Michael Pollan’s excellent Omnivore’s Dilemma, in which Pollan collects and cooks an entire meal of food he has personally foraged, I was intrigued. I’ve been interested in eating more locally and more environmentally responsibly, and foraging seemed like the perfect marriage of the two.

I had read a lot about the “Wildman” on-line before I called to make a reservation on his tour of Prospect Park. I was not prepared for the soft-spoken voice that answered on the first ring: “Wildman Steve Brill, good afternoon.” This sounded like no “Wildman” I had imagined. He was very kind and gave very specific instructions about what to bring on the tour, including lunch, drinking water, gloves, something to dig with, and exact change (each tour costs $15, though his website says that no one will be turned away for “lack of funds”).

On the day, “Wildman” arrived with his three-year-old daughter Violet in tow. He also brought a sampling of the books he has written, all for sale. The group I was a part of was about 20 people, and was pretty diverse. There was a young Indian couple, a group of 4 from a local synagogue, a couple with their two young children, and a group of Japanese tourists, among others. We spent about half an hour at the Grand Army Plaza entrance to Prospect Park before we got started, mostly because “Wildman” had to go bring the unsold books back to his car before we got started.

Luckily, once we got started we found interesting things right away. “Wildman” really knows his stuff, and pointed out the inedible as well as the edible. The poisonous Star of Bethlehem looks a lot like the delicious field garlic at first glance. The greens of wild carrots are easily confused with mugwort, which is used to a brew a cramp-relieving tea.

We didn’t find an abundance of anything, except a leafy green called curly dock down near the lake. Most of what we found was just coming up, being so early in the Spring. This scarcity made the discoveries more exciting, and members of the tour were quickly making finds of their own. I was seemingly the only one there to collect food for eating; most of the others were there to learn a little bit and to spend a nice day in the park. This meant that even when other people found things, after a quick taste test they passed the find to me.

The biggest problem with the tour was the presence of Violet. Of course the “Wildman” wants to teach his daughter about these things, and of course she is his biggest priority, but this meant that she was dominating the tour. He was sometimes concentrating too much on her to pay attention to his surroundings. Other times he imposed on the couple who came with their kids to babysit his daughter. It was all a little strange.

“Wildman” Steve Brill is definitely a character (don’t get me started on the Brill-o-Phone), but he’s exactly the kind of person to lead these kind of tours. Knowledgeable not only in the identification of the plants but also in how to cook them (he is a vegan), he is someone from another time, a disappearing kind of person. I highly recommend going on at least one of his tours, and I plan on attending more of them myself as the seasons progress.

The final haul: curly dock, hedge mustard, mustard garlic, field garlic, roots from the common thistle, roots from the evening primrose, wild carrots, kentucky coffee beans, sassafras root, day lilies, baby dandelion greens, goutweed, and japanese knotweed sprouts.

Next: Cooking with the foraged foods!

Posted by Howard

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