Urban Tree Oracle: Walnut
Tree: Walnut
Aspect: unruliness
Season: autumn
Sense: movement
Score for Black Walnut
Walk a straight line, changing direction at the suggestion of a Black Walnut, repeat until you are out of control.
Draw your path—a mandala for calling up your unruliness.
Black walnut is one of the deepest inspirations, guides, and allies in this project. My relationship with them began over a decade ago when I first made ink from their staining nut rinds. Black walnut gives of themselves so generously, raining hoards of nuts down each autumn. Their ink practically makes itself as the pigments so fervently release.
No gathering is yet planned for Black Walnut. I’m waiting for the perfect time and place, when Black Walnut calls. If you have any interest in working with me and Black Walnut, let me know.
Black Walnut
Juglans Nigra
Excerpt:
Black Walnut is resourceful and resilient. Their lacrosse ball-sized nuts are protected in a tough armor and similarly their thick bark and durable heartwood make them well adapted to fire. Rodents love to hoard the nuts for winter food, making Black Walnut easily dispersed and one of the most abundant trees in the Northeast. Humans find walnuts messy, loud, staining, and denting; this energy is not tidy or always welcome. Their distinctive spicy odor can conjure a rowdy, challenging, occasionally obstreperous approach. Black Walnut can help us collectively imagine other forms of kinship and community that embraces the unruly ones who are not accepted in the dominant order.