Palmerston North forager Helen Lehndorf pens memoir on finding her heart in nature

In her newly released memoir Helen Lehndorf discusses foraging, joyful activism and why being contented is the new radical.

A Forager’s Life: Finding my heart and home in nature presents the benefits of foraging and stepping outside “human time”.

The memoir stems from essays written over 10 years and reveals the solace and support she received from nature after her son, Magnus, was diagnosed with autism.

Social isolation followed his diagnosis at age 4.

“When you’ve lost your footing and you’re out of kilter with people, plants and the natural world can support you in a different way,” Lehndorf says.

Going for big walks with her two young sons provided somewhere safe they could be out of the house.

Stepping into nature is to “step out of human time, clock time. That constant sense of urgency”, which Lehndorf says is instantly soothing.

The Palmerston North resident is an urban forager and refers to “edge lands” as the best places to find food in the neighbourhood.

“Round the edges of parks and reserves and school fields is a place to find wild greens.

“Once you have a vocabulary of wild plants, you’ll probably never buy a bag of greens again.” Recipes are provided at the end of each chapter.

As well as a foraging enthusiast, Lehndorf is a passionate gardener and community organiser – turning her whole front lawn into a vege garden in 2020 – and volunteers with Manawatū Food Action Network.

A younger Lehndorf “did the type of activism when you’re against stuff. Where you write submissions against laws or you protest against things happening.”

However, when her boys were small, she made the deliberate choice to turn her “activist spirit” into something generative and future-focused, “joyful activism”, and now enjoys empowering others to grow or forage their food.

“I love those moments of catching people when they’re at the beginning of that journey. When they’ve got the curiosity and you’re just helping them into the room.”

Foraging and a closer connection to nature not only provide personal benefits but Lehndorf believes a path into a climate-changed future.

She advocates localising the growing and processing of food, plus shifting from a sense of self-sufficiency to community sufficiency.

“I think the way forward is by looking backwards to simpler, more naturally enmeshed times.

“In our current society, feeling like you have enough is pretty radical and being contented is wildly radical because how many people do you know who would say ‘I’m really contented with what I’ve got?’”

Lehndorf hopes her memoir will ignite curiosity and share a message of simplicity, of “slowing down and pulling back”.

“I think our whole society is driven by scarcity mentality. We feel like we don’t have enough. Our experiences are not enough … we’re ongoing projects that need fixing.

“What if all we had to do to earn our place in this world was just to be?”

The memoir is Lehndorf’s third publication, following her poetry collection The Comforter, and Write to the Centre about journalling.

Published by Harper Collins, A Forager’s Life will be launched on March 17, 5.30pm at Central Library.

Sonya Holm is a freelance journalist based in Palmerston North