Lessons in Foraging with Jack Yuen

I’ve learned that foraging really comes down to noticing. It was one of the first things I observed, one day in early July, as I followed Jack Yuen on a foraging outing. We were walking down the Caroline Tuthill path — a Sheriff’s Meadow trail that I thought was familiar to me. Little did I know how much I’d missed. 

You may recognize Yuen’s name from the Vineyard art world. His paintings are displayed at Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven. But the purpose of my walk with Jack was to learn about one of his other passions.

As we entered the trailhead, I took note of how Jack’s body language shifted. Walking with purpose, but not too eagerly, Jack led the way. His head was in constant motion, scanning the landscape that moved below and around us. As I made a sorry attempt to do the same, I realized that I’d never really noticed the plants before. Rather, they often melted into the landscape as an element, but not my main focus. Unlike me, Jack knew how to notice the plants. 

Jack was born and raised in Oak Bluffs and lived there until he moved away to college at 18. While he now lives in Providence, where he continues to make his artwork, Jack considers the Island an important part of him, and he visits often. His first memories of foraging are from when he was eight or nine years old. “My friend introduced me to this plant called Sheep Sorrel. We picked some, we tried some. It has this very lemony flavor. It’s pretty cool and it’s quite good.” This introduction to Sheep Sorrel opened his mind to foraging. “Up until that point I thought food only existed in the grocery store or maybe a garden. The fact that you could eat something from what I considered a wild space was fascinating to me.” His curiosity about nature and our relationship to it began to grow.

Over the years, Jack accumulated knowledge about edible wild plants here and there, mainly by word of mouth. In recent years, Jack began taking foraging more seriously. “Foraging has really been a way of deepening my relationship with nature.”

As a person with little foraging experience (aside from the occasional outing to harvest wild berries), I was curious to learn what tools Jack used to become such an avid and confident forager. 

“It’s amazing that we live in the time of the internet where you can find all this information about foraging pretty accessibly online.” He also emphasized that you should be 100 percent sure of what you harvest — and sometimes the internet can get it wrong. That’s why he suggested taking advantage of our libraries and public resources for triple checking. “A good rule of thumb is having at least three resources that you can look at when identifying a species, to cross reference.” 

To me, this was the daunting part of learning this hobby. I mean, what if I pick the wrong thing and poison myself? But Jack encouraged me to try: “You can just go out there and see what you can find. You don’t even have to eat it. See what you can learn and find. I think the most important part of it is creating these relationships with our local ecosystem. That’s the most valuable takeaway — even more than a bountiful harvest is creating a connection to your ecosystem.”

For Jack, there is no pressure to be successful every time. And in fact, you won’t be successful every time — at least, not if we’re measuring success by the weight of our basket at the end of the day. Indeed, for much of my outing with Jack, we didn’t find much. We passed some wintergreen plants, which generally aren’t ready to pick until the winter, and we found the sparse remains of Juneberries, whose season had just passed. With foraging, Jack notes, there are “all these small windows for certain things that you are interested in harvesting.” While some might find this frustrating, Jack sees it differently. “I think it’s pretty cool how you can get a keen sense of what season you are in.”

While we weren’t having luck finding the most “desirable” plants, Jack explained that there is always something you can do with what you do find. “For instance, if there are no blueberries, you could make tea with the leaves of the blueberries!”

Jack values foraging as a means to deepen his connection with the land — more even than taking home a basket of wild goods. “I think foraging leads to this increased feeling of land stewardship and responsibility for the land,” he said. “If I’m foraging, I want it to come from the cleanest environment.”

Additionally, Jack reminds us that foraging is rooted in traditional Indigenous knowledge. “I think it's good to be mindful that a lot of this, if not maybe all of the forging knowledge that we have, came from a community — a culture. Having that awareness and trying to go about it in a respectful way I think is important.” Foraging is a practice that should be enjoyed, but also carried out with care and respect for the land and the Indigenous communities that have stewarded it for generations and preserved the knowledge that enables us to enjoy the practice. You want to forage moderately, keeping in mind the health of the plants and the habitat where you’re foraging. It’s important to make sure that it’s legal to forage where you’re exploring. Opt for places like those managed by Sheriff’s Meadow and other public land trusts. Conservation lands may prohibit the practice. At Felix Neck, for example, foraging is not permitted. Each conservation organization has its own rules and regulations regarding foraging, so check with them first. 

When Jack and I were just about ready to call it quits, with about four Juneberries in our basket, Jack noticed some Lowbush Blueberries off the trail. He recognized the leaves right away, but he was doubtful that there would be berries yet, since it was still early in the season. To our surprise, we were able to pick a couple of handfuls of berries — small handfuls, but oh, how rewarding it felt! After an hour and a half of harsh luck, those two handfuls felt like gold. Jack stowed them away in a wooden box for later, and we made our way back to the entrance. 

I was excited to have something to bring home. Our harvest was nothing to flaunt, but it helped me understand why people love foraging. Foraging gives us the opportunity to slow down and simply notice. The art of noticing in itself is fulfilling. To me, what was even more exciting than bringing home the blueberries we’d picked was that now I could come back and actually recognize something I wouldn’t have been able to identify before. 

Jack sees parallels between his love of creating art and his passion for foraging, noting that “when it comes to foraging and painting scenes from nature, both require going out and practicing being very aware of your surroundings.” He explained that when he’s searching for a scene to paint, he’s “looking at all of the details and how they all interconnect.” Similarly, with foraging, “you're looking for the details of the landscape in order to find something that you can collect. They have parallels where you’re going outdoors and slowing down, practicing this sense of awareness.”