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Hunting the Wild Asparagus 

How a childhood search along Colorado irrigation ditches shaped my relationship with nature—and my artistic practice.

Where My Relationship with Nature Began

The natural world has long been the inspiration for my artistic practice. But when did that relationship truly begin? Looking back, it was not on the many camping trips my parents took me on. It was not during a Girl Scout winter camping trip at 8,000 feet in the Colorado mountains, where we competed to see who could boil water first, or during the summer camping trip when we caught and ate rattlesnake. My relationship with nature began much closer to home: in my own backyard, on a small farm near Boulder, Colorado.

Finding Wildness Close to Home

I was twelve when my mother first showed me how to hunt wild asparagus. It was not truly wild in the sense of being native to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. It was wild because, sometime in the past, it had escaped from an early homesteader’s garden and found a home along the banks of creeks and irrigation ditches.

The plants grew along the upper south banks of the ditches near our farm, thriving in a precise balance of moisture, shade, sun, and distance from the water. My mother taught me how to recognize that niche, how to spot the fern-like green fronds, and how to move the grasses aside to find the tender spears in the cool, damp air near the soil.

The spears rose from crowns, an underground web of buds and roots. I would cut them at ground level, then return a week later to find another harvest waiting. If the spears were too thin, I would leave them to go to seed and build stronger roots for another year. From then on, I loved hunting wild asparagus on my own.

I kept every secret location committed to memory and checked each one faithfully as I made my rounds. Every now and then, I would discover a new patch. On a good day, I came home with a basket full of fresh, tender asparagus, my arms and legs scratched from pushing through underbrush and crawling beneath barbed wire.

What was it about hunting asparagus that spoke to me? I wandered alone along the ditches, searching for telltale fronds that were too young to eat or had been left uncut. Those fronds told me the tender spears might be nearby. The asparagus did not grow in the neat rows of a garden. It appeared here and there, in perfect niches of light and moisture. In searching for it, I discovered wildness.

From Wildness to Art

When I think about my artistic practice, I return to that wild, untamed exchange between myself and nature, which has always been my subject. I think of the joy of the hunt: wandering, exploring, and finding. I am alone, searching for what has not been arranged for me. What inspires me is not tame. It speaks of forces beyond human control, a place where inspiration flows from the creative energy of the universe and imagination has no boundary.