New to thinking about blogging so I didn’t take a picture or two, and I really don’t like to read long posts without pictures.
San Gabriel is the last town on the way up the mountain to where the scrub oak grows. Scrub oak is my favorite variety of oak to work with for venous toning (along with a couple of others). When you find scrub oak it is usually in a dry and marginal area at least where I have collected it. So if you follow doctrine of signatures it is a drying and constricting plant.
This is the dry season in Oaxaca, the rains started a bit but have not come in full force so nothing is green and lush in the mountains right now. The oak was no different. Usually I like to collect and tincture the fresh leaves and small limbs. But, no leaves today and I’m out of oak tincture, so trying the bark and small limbs only for the tincture.
As you can see it’s pretty dried up and the leaves are wilted and brown, so this will be a new experience. And, I will update the information when it is finished and provings done.
The highlight of the experience was arriving at the high side of San Gabriel, still below the scrub oak altitude with no plants in sight. On either side of the road are posts with a rope strung between them stopping traffic from going higher. Four men sat beside the road with one in a mask and three without (this won’t make any sense once the covid nonesense is over).
So in my best guerro spanish I ask why the road is closed and they proceed to tell me the area is closed due to the covid. Now I’ve already driven through town and out the other side so it is only the high mountain being closed. Not making a lot of sense to me.
So after explaining what I was after (after using roble instead of encino which after pictures they kindly corrected me), the four men had a discussion and let me through. There was some recommendation that I get a machete but I had a knife so no problem.
Once collecting the plant and coming back down we had another talk. They wanted to see the plant I collected. And they told me there was no plant medicine person or temezcalero in town there. Very sad. They had to go to Oaxaca City of plant medicines and temezcal.
Really nice people then informed me when I come back after the rains start to take another road and I will find many more trees in better health without having to go through the road.