On Being a Hedgewitch Vol.1

It’s poplar bud season again. Despite the snow and rain and their branches breaking in the winds, the buds of the poplar trees signal the first strains of Spring’s sap rising. They may look water-logged or brittle in appearance, but on closer inspection you will find bright amber-red tears of resin forming in the folds of the tight mahogany buds.

The ethical way to harvest poplar buds is to scavenge the ground for broken limbs after a late winter storm. The best way to identify these branches in the storm-tossed mulch of leaves, alder limbs, and blackberry brambles is to hold a small twig of poplar like a divining rod; with the gnarled and mottled grey brown of the twig’s bark in the foreground of my vision I can more easily pick out the larger branches on the forest floor. I always feel triumphant, like I’ve solved a mystery, when I discover a small mountain of poplar branches lying in plain sight.

I took a friend out harvesting last season. As we wandered through the woods, she mentioned she had read my newsletter musings on “liminal space” and was struck by a correlation between this interest and my altar-ego’s name, Hedgewitch. She said that in permaculture terms, a hedgerow is considered a liminal, or transitional, space where wild nature meets agriculture. Hedgerows that divide fields are places that house birds and insects, as well as wild plants and medicinal weeds. Hedgerows nurture diversity.

Previously, I had imagined liminal space as a place made of iridescent particles; a city of clouds filled with dispersed, non-physical energy. Applying the term “diversity” to liminal space transformed it into a kinetic, even frenetic, technicolour landscape. A Hedgewitch may, and must, also exist in an active and robust, really REAL space.

When I chose Hedgewitch as a handle it was because I knew there was lore that they could move between the realms of the physical and non-physical, between the wisdom of plant medicine and scientific medicine, between intuitive knowing and empirical understanding; taking in what they need and weaving the knowledge of both realms together. Not surprisingly, the healer, the Hedgewitch, tended to live at the edge of their community—at the hedgerow.

I’ve always associated these witches, or all witches, with crows and ravens. Many cultures know these blackbirds to be shapeshifters; they travel back and forth through dimensions with ease and without notice. I wonder if calling them spaceshifters would be more apt. In my imaginings, a crow doesn’t morph into a different creature to fly across the dream or spiritual plane. I feel certain that they would still look like crows; they are at home in every realm.

When I lean into my practice of herbalism, perfumery, and esotericism I often feel isolated; like I am inhabiting a spaceless space—a liminal space. Although romantic and mystical, I am also a fleshy entity that exists in the real world of laundry, disappointment, and miscommunication. But now I understand, as a Hedgewitch, a liminal space is one of fecundity, vitality and diversity. It seems bloody obvious to me now. The poplar bud harvest heralds the beginning of the season when the last thing you can do in my kitchen is eat; every surface will be covered with drying herbs, bottles, and scribbled formulae. As a Hedgewitch, I am a spaceshifter. Like the crows, I have a place in both realms.