Ep #3 | Hermina Glass-Hill | Foraging While Black

The Wild Spectacle Podcast

Show Notes

Welcome to The Wild Spectacle Podcast, a flash-cast series with host Janisse Ray about our ongoing and meaningful participation in a world that matters.

Hermina Glass-Hill is like a rainbow or a bouquet--many things wrapped in one beautiful human. She’s a writer, historian, preservationist, sustainability advocate, Afro-Eco strategist, social justice activist, wife, mother, and friend. Hermina directs the Susie King Taylor Women's Institute and Ecology Center, an eco-sanctuary that flourishes at the nexus of research, experiential education, and empowerment. She is the preeminent scholar on the life of Susie King Taylor, a woman who was born into slavery, became educated, escaped, and then served with the Union Army. Hermina is currently organizing to establish the Susie King Taylor Escape to Freedom Underground Railroad Park in Taylor’s birthplace in Liberty County, Georgia.

2:45—How wild is Hermina? She locates herself on the wild chart.

3:29—She talks about being on the Bartram Trail.

3:35—Hermina leads a plant-based life.

4:00—She is on indigenous lands on the Gullah-Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor.

5:19—The local, indigenous plant that Hermina searches for.

6:00—LeConte pear comes from this LeConte plantation.

7:00—Roaring engines are approaching.

7:21—Hermina realizes that she is in danger.

8:05—What elders tell her about being alone in the wild.

8:35—“Foraging while black.”

12:48—Every day Hermina is in awe of nature.

13:30—A bird builds a nest in the mailbox.

15:00—Hermina gives us one suggestion for rewilding.

*

“Think about epiphany. Think about change. Think about the moments that make your face burn, your fingers tingle. Wild Spectacle is about those shocks, encounters that shift the way we see the world and ourselves in it…If the water we drink is maybe older than the sun, then ancient magic pounds inside our skins, too. So speak it. Tell it forth. Cry aloud and call it back home.”

-Joni Tevis, author of The Wet Collection and The World is On Fire

*

Thank you for listening.

If you like what we’re doing here, give this show a thumbs-up, post it on your socials, follow it, and/or forward it to your friends.

Janisse Ray’s book Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans inspired the podcast. If you’d like a copy of the book, visit your favorite bookstore or library. Or you may order at www.janisseray.com/bookshop.

Find Janisse on Facebook at “Janisse Ray, Author” and on Instagram @janisseray_writer.

Thanks to Axletree for their beautiful music, “Clothe the Fields with Plenty,” an orchestral piece inspired by a traditional Hampshire folk song, “The Painful Plough,” from Axletree’s project “Music from a Hampshire Farm.” Thanks to the Free Music Archive.

We’re eager for new voices on the show, so if you’d like to come on and tell a story, be in touch at Janisse Ray’s website, janisseray.com/contact.

If we’re going to make a dent in changing ourselves and how we live on this earth, we have to understand what kind of amazements it contains. So many people begin to work on behalf of the planet because they see a natural phenomenon, large or small, that infuses them with admiration and wonder. So get out in nature. Take a friend with you, especially a child. Go see a wild phenomenon. Amaze yourself. Connect yourself.

Now go get wild!