Sarsaparilla Tea

~ This article first appeared in The Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

I was pretty sure the plant growing in abundance throughout our woods was Ginseng.  Known for its ability to command a high dollar value at market and to increase virility at home, Ginseng is the stuff of legends.

For a solid twenty-four hours after initial observation I enjoyed vivid fantasies of myself strutting confidently around the house with bulging muscles, money to burn, and probably a beard.  A few swigs of this stuff and it won’t be the stupid cat greeting me at the door anymore, no sir.

You can imagine, then, the depth of my despair when approximately twelve seconds of actual research revealed it was not Ginseng that groweth in great bounty, but wild Sarsaparilla, a common plant that does nothing for a man’s sex appeal and even less for his wallet.  Foiled again by my own imagination, the fall from forager’s la-la land was not graceful. 

Not keen on giving up after making such a stink over the plant I decided to press on and see just what it is growing in the woods.  Sarsaparilla, after all, is something I’ve heard of in reference to old fashioned drinks; maybe there is something to it.

Apparently the Jamaican Sarsaparilla is what everyone wants for root beer, not backwoods Pennsylvania Sarsaparilla.  Yet, it is a useful plant.  Employed by Native Americans to cure any number of ailments requiring detoxification of the body, roots of the plant were a valuable dietary supplement.  Hunting parties would eat the roots or drink tea in order to obtain stamina for long travels followed by rigorous ambushes on unsuspecting game.

Hey, I walk a lot: Someone in my situation can always use extra stamina.  And considering my lax hygiene protocol and the abuses I’ve leveled against this body throughout the years a little detox sounds good, too.  I figured I’d make some tea.

The brew was concocted at my parents’ house one evening while my wife was still at work (she’s unenthusiastic about my incessant desire to consume everything I drag in from the woods).  What I ended up with certainly didn’t remind me of root beer; it tastes like a cross between radish juice, potato skin, and dirt.  I drank most of the pot before my dad finally asked “You’re sure you picked the right plant?” 

Well, gee, I’m about as sure as anyone can be if they’re trusting the internet.  According to various articles and some Youtube videos I probably have the correct root and, after consuming it, any number of things can happen to me, ranging from tremendous endurance, to diarrhea, to death.  In other words, by leveraging the extraordinary wealth of information available to modern man I was able to conclude absolutely nothing.

What I need is somebody with experience willing to take me out, show me the plants, and help me learn.  What I have is the Molotov cocktail of information, a dangerous combination of unsubstantiated proof just waiting to explode.

This is a problem much more severe than it seems.  Our wealth of information has become so encompassing that it disagrees with itself.  Peoples’ psyche is under attack by the vagaries of information, and the inability to grasp anything solid is causing stress.

Consider nourishment.  In the retail space we hear about the full gamut of dietary guidelines that people are attempting.  Using the same source of information, people conclude with scientific backing totally opposite results.  I know when I start to research I get overwhelmed quickly because I can both prove and disprove what I’m trying to learn, depending on which source I trust.  How do you give any credence to your results in that situation?  That’s a stressful predicament when you’re trying to feed yourself.

The information dilemma expands beyond food.  Here we are in political season when citizen IQ drops below 10 (mine included) as we adopt and regurgitate the “facts” provided by whichever side we choose to align with.  We can research the hot topics and conclude whatever we want to based on which group of friends we want to hang out with.  If anyone can research and prove whatever conclusion they want, their opinion is flimsy at best.  We end up with potentially poisonous politics, much like my Sarsaparilla tea experiment – despite my research, Dad wasn’t too excited about trying any tea because deep down he knew that I didn’t really know anything.  We should all be so wary of the soup they’re serving us.

The cat was not displaced from his point position at the door. Yet my encounter with Sarsaparilla tea yielded surprisingly good results. What I learned is that having access to all the world is a rose with many thorns. We aren’t meant to have exposure to everything; we need intimate knowledge of just what’s around us. Here is another strong argument for family bonds, neighborly bonds, and community bonds. In such a situation it is experience that teaches, flowing from one generation to the next without ceasing. We might not know it all, but what we do know cannot be uprooted by a search engine. That’s a good position from which to raise a family.