I’ve always been an outdoor person, and I spent a lot of time playing in the woods or splashing around in a creek not far from my childhood home when I was young. This love of nature has continued throughout my life. Knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, however, was something I only got into later in life. Although I consumed all kinds of easily identifiable plant life and fruit when I was a child (wild onions, cattails, honeysuckle, kumquats, etc.), I never really dedicated any kind of serious attention or study to the subject. I think this first began to change when I lived in Japan.
