This is a season of transformation. Many of us are feeling it, experiencing rapid shedding of what we no longer need. It isn’t always a comfortable process, but sometimes we receive a little trans-kingdom support to ease the way. This week I had occasion to meet a new plant ally in a wetland across town.

The plant is called calamus, or sweet flag. I was with my merry mates in foraging, Greg Monzel‘s bicycle/forage group that I blogged about here. This time we parked our bikes to walk the paths of the EcoLab, a 55-acre native plant paradise tucked away on the city’s north side.

The plan, as usual, was to look for persimmons and other edible/medicinal forageables as the sun went down. But Greg also had a surprise for us–a meditation in the company of sweet flag.

He invited us to remove our shoes and make contact with the rhizome network of a colony of dormant sweet flag. To sit or lie among their spicy-sweet fragrance in silence and keep an open heart. What did we experience?

Various images and impressions came to me, and because the experience was sacred, I don’t want to go into detail here–other than to say that I felt a gladness, and a reciprocity in the gladness. My body loosened and my thoughts slowed. At the end of our meditation I felt clarified.

Greg told us afterward that the plant was used traditionally to hold soil and filter water. Beloved by cultures all over the world and called by many names, sweet flag has been used to treat human ailments as well as environmental. It’s supportive to the nervous system, with antioxidant and antimicrobial properties (among other things). Greg gave us a beautiful image of how this rhizome grows with feet in the muck, rising up in beauty and fragrance.

Sweet flag would have been a solid friend to our ancestors in their wanderings–carried along to new places, or found along the way.

I went home and slept hard, and in the morning when I woke up early early, I still felt held and supported. My nervous system has been on overdrive processing all the changes, but for once I did not wake up in a state of alarm.

I find that when I stay open, unexpected friends appear at just the right time. I’m grateful to Greg for introducing me to sweet flag.

Have you ever had trans-species or trans-kingdom contact that bolstered you? I invite you to tell us about it in the comment section.