Author: Dave Greschner

So far I’ve left the adventure of seeking for leeks to my in-laws while Northwoods camping in late spring. I’ve also left the cleaning and cooking of leeks to my sister-in-law. But I readily partake in the tastiness of this wild vegetable.

I didn’t know much about leeks until a few years back when my brother-in-law and his wife showed me where the low, broad-leafed vegetable grew wild in the wooded area behind their rural home. I’ve always avoided mushrooms for fear of picking the wrong kind, so I didn’t think wild harvesting in spring was meant for me. I head for the natural stuff in late summer to pick blackberries and wild plums and gather butternuts.

But there they were, wild leeks with wide, green leaves rising half a foot above ground and thickening near the ground into a bundle of leaf sheaths, which disappear below the surface into a short, oblong bulb with roots. So the edible part is from the bundle of sheaths to just above the roots, I’m told. All I know is that the edible part of the wild leek smells like onion and tastes like mild onion with a hint of sweetness, however that is possible.

On our Memorial Day family camping trip, my inlaws found leeks, and they were sautéed with other vegetables in a tasty side dish to the main meal of salmon slices over a campfire. It all went well with the beverage of each one’s choice, with my German heritage coming out with my choice (always) of full-bodied beer.

I’m now reading everything I can about leeks, how they have 12 vitamins and six minerals, how they can replace all the greens and spices in a recipe, including spinach, garlic and onions, a culinary fact reinforced for me by naturalist Emily Stone of the Cable Natural History Museum.

My spring woodland hikes are now more than about wildflowers and finding what winter left behind. I’ve discovered leeks.

What is the comfort in the return to something familiar? Why does it feel that good to return to what we know, what we like, what is comfortable? Perhaps we are returning, in spirit or flesh, to where we were happiest.

Spring is a return, a happy return, to what we like, what we know will be pleasant, what we remember as being exciting—creeks and frogs, buds and grass, exploration along trails abandoned since last fall, save for four-legged travelers. And perhaps it explains the excitement and pleasure in another return, that of numerous songbirds who once again have chosen our yard, our tree, our box on a field post to start anew with nests and chicks and the whole propagation of the species.

The return of birds now dominates the conversation of at least the folks I hang around with. A friend calls daily to report new sightings—a loon, killdeer, bluebird and oriole. The sightings turn competitive. Who sees what first? Through it all there’s comfort in the normalcy of migration. For what if the birds didn’t return?

But somehow in all the comfort there’s a little irritation, a sticker in the stock, for birds not easily identified suddenly appear and just as suddenly flit away. It drives me crazy.

I came around the corner on a woodland trail the other day and half a dozen rust-colored birds danced away through the leafless branches. Rust-colored and 6 to 8 inches long is all I could gather. And now I wonder: Veery? Brown thrush? No matter what, they returned. They were here. I found comfort in that.

The word patience came across my reading twice in the past couple of days, causing me to consider patience in regard to spring. In my birding journal that includes tidbits and quotes about birds, it’s noted that Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”

Spring pretty much arrives grudgingly, haltingly every year. We wait, impatiently, through too many March and April days that are too cold, too windy, too wet, too gray. There are good days, only to have spring fever dashed suddenly with frost and flurries.

But nature is patient, on a course sometimes fast, sometimes slow but always headed for green grass, singing frogs, budding trees, nesting songbirds. Robins are a picture of patience, arriving on our lawns and then waiting for thawing soil to give up worms.

Grass perks up on a warm day, only to wait again under a light covering of snow. Walleyes wait for the right water temperature to spawn. Swans wait in field ponds before continuing their trek northward.

In “Grace for the Moment,” Max Lucado says patience is freely offered, citing a verse from the book of Galatians, “The Spirit produces the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience.”

With patience, we will see the joy and peace in nature and fall in love with nature, which is quite amazing every day, whether that day is chilly or warm, windy or calm, wet or dry, gray or bright with sunshine.