🔥 The Torchbearers: A Call to the Witches Who Stayed

 

🌼 Arrowleaf Balsamroot: Golden Bloom with Sacred Roots

Bitch, let me tell you about a plant that’s more than just a pretty face on a dry hillside—Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata) is the golden queen of the high desert and mountain slopes across the Pacific Northwest. She's been holding it down for millennia, long before colonizers started labeling things “wildflowers” and slapping them on tea boxes at Whole Foods.

This sunflower cousin isn’t just beautiful; she’s medicine, she’s food, and she’s sacred. And like any elder worth her salt, she deserves respect.

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🌿 Sacred to the Land, Sacred to the People

For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest—like the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu), Salish, Kootenai, and many others—arrowleaf balsamroot is more than utilitarian. It's a plant ally, a teacher, and a sustainer. These communities have long known what Western science is just catching up to: this plant is a powerhouse.

Every part of it is useful:

• Roots: Pounded, dried, boiled, or chewed—used for respiratory issues, coughs, and to draw out infection.

• Leaves: Used as poultices for wounds, and sometimes cooked like greens.

• Seeds: Roasted and ground into meal or eaten whole. High in fat, they were a traditional food staple.

• Stalks and buds: Eaten fresh or steamed, with a flavor somewhere between artichoke and honesty.

And honey, don’t confuse this for “survival food.” This isn’t some last-ditch effort—it’s nourishment, medicine, and ceremony all rolled into one.

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🍃 Colonization and the Erasure of Plant Knowledge

Let’s be blunt: colonization didn’t just displace people. It tried to erase whole ecosystems of knowledge—relationships between plant, land, and spirit that were (and are) deeply reciprocal. Balsamroot’s presence is a reminder that these connections endure. That knowledge wasn’t lost. It was stolen, dismissed, and buried under concrete and cattle grazing.

But it’s still here. And it’s making a comeback—on the land and in the collective memory.

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🌞 Working with Arrowleaf Balsamroot Today

If you're lucky enough to live where balsamroot grows, approach with care. Don’t just trample up to it with your trendy foraging basket and an Instagram caption in mind. Ask permission. Leave offerings. Learn the protocols of the land you’re on—especially if it’s unceded territory (spoiler: it probably is). Just a side note, you don't want to deal with BIA or Tribal Police if you're caught on the rez foraging on private property, and ALL rez land is PRIVATE PROPERTY.

And if you're not Native, ask yourself: Why am I drawn to this plant? What can I learn, not just take?

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🖤 Truths Burnt into the Earth

Arrowleaf balsamroot isn’t just a healer of bodies—it’s a healer of memory. A golden flare in the springtime that says, “We’re still here. The land remembers. Do you?”

Right now, she's spread out all over the hills and valleys that are just outside my hotel room window. The flowers are bright and sunny, heralding in the springtime and the renewal of the earth, and reminding me every day, that I have a purpose in life, greater than any I could have imagined. But I digress, this is about the Balsamroot. Let her shine.

Let her remind you of resilience that’s rooted, of medicine that doesn’t come in a bottle, and of truths that, like burnt sage, linger long after the smoke clears.