November 2007 | Last Words
A Terroir-ist’s Manifesto for Eating in Place
Sit down at the table with your countrymen and friends
And ask your lips, tongues, minds and bellies some questions,
Questions that remind us that our bodies and spirits
Are either nurtured by place
Or swallowed up by tasteless placelessness.
Ask aloud: Just what exactly is it
That we want to have cross our lips,
To roll off our tongues and down our throats
To be transformed and conjured into something
Altogether new by thousands of gut microbes
To surge into our bloodstreams
To be carried along with insulin for one last wild ride
and to be lodged within the very cells of our bodies?
Just what do we want to be made of?
What do we claim as our tastes?
and what do we want to taste like
When we, in our own turn, are eaten
by wolf, vulture, raven, condor, coyote or bear?
I, for one, and perhaps you as well,
Wish to taste like the very country in which I reside:
Like great plains bison wallowing amidst the prairie turnips,
Like salmon running up a cold and clear mountain stream,
Like gators crawling into a swamp stewing with sassafras leaves,
Like wild rice hand-harvested from the azure waters of a northern lake,
Like maple syrup gleaned from woods where Robert Frost once walked,
Like cactus fruit falling off a tall saguaro into a handmade basket below.
These plants and animals are asking us
to pledge allegiance to what is local, what is loved,
to what is seasonal, what is unique to each American place.
If old Walt Whitman were sitting at our table,
Supping with us today, he’d be celebrating
That wild old slumgullion stew that all of us together make,
Singing a song that goes like this:
“Taste America’s uniqueness, taste this earth,
Taste our terroir, savor its worth,
And by tasting, you will see!”
—Gary Paul Nabhan, Renewing America’s Food Traditions
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