Submitted by Ursula Kovacs, Folk Herbalist & Owner of Saltblossom Botanicals
Located at "The Wild Soul" on Route 114 in Riverside-Albert
Folk Herbalist, Owner of Saltblossom Botanicals @ The Wild Soul on the 114 Riverside Albert NB
Located at "The Wild Soul" on Route 114 in Riverside-Albert
Folk Herbalist, Owner of Saltblossom Botanicals @ The Wild Soul on the 114 Riverside Albert NB
On my recent adventures further down the shores of the Atlantic coast, where the salty waters ran clear and the sharp edges of the rocky cliffs were carved by the bold open ocean, the waves lulled me, for a brief moment, to sleep. Under intermittent clouds, the wooden deck solid against my belly, tested the resilience of my healing back. The warmth of the mid summer's sun peaking through was soothing amidst the salt tinged air.
In my mind, I saw the bright fuchsia of fireweed tips and the lush green of the leaves that will be rolled into beautiful sweet balls, set to ferment, then dried to make a deeply nourishing "Ivan Chai" Herbal tea. This is just one of the many wild plants that mid July into August I hold so dear. The season of foraging is in full swing and the sultry days of July thus far, is what lead me to this next bit of writing. To honour the tides, the fog, the moon, adventures on the east coast, and now with August making its grand entrance, continuing in the direction of daring to dream.
I have always followed the water. It is my place of peace, my refuge and my sign.
Long before I lived beside the Bay of Fundy, you could find me wandering through the forests of Muskoka, barefoot on moss-covered lands, climbing over old dead falls, and root riddled paths, swimming in lakes, wading through rivers, and finding my way through the quiet places where water and land meet. Lost in curiosity of plants that I came across, time and time again.
I was drawn to the places where things change—the edges of forests, the banks of rivers, the places where stone meets current and roots meet shore. Water has always been my teacher, a healer, and a place of solace.
It teaches patience.
It teaches movement.
It teaches resilience.
A river does not force its way through the landscape; it finds its path and makes it part of itself.
A lake holds stillness and reflection. A waterfall reminds us that surrender can also be powerful.
And the ocean, the hauntingly magnificent Atlantic ocean, carries an ancient rhythm all of its own. The only thing more influential to it, is the always present, powerful moon that guides and pulls at it eternally.
When I arrived along the Bay of Fundy, I discovered a new chapter in that same conversation. The forests were slightly different. There were new plants, the shoreline carried salt instead of freshwater, and the tides replaced the quiet gentle rhythm of the inland lakes I had known my whole life.
It felt so very familiar, still.
Water was still telling the story.
The salt marshes, the spruce forests, the coastal cliffs, the cold mountain riverbeds, the hidden swimming holes, filled with rocks of all colours, and the wild plants growing along and within their edges are all connected.
They are all part of one living landscape.
Perhaps that is why I have always been drawn to plants—not as objects to collect, but as companions that reveal the stories of the places they call home, the history of folk lifestyle, and the past knowledge of them all.
Twice each day the Bay redraws its own map, as it has the highest tides in the world, cycling every 6 hours. Mudflats become ocean, ocean becomes shoreline and cliffs watch patiently as millions upon millions of gallons of seawater arrive and retreat, just as they have for centuries beyond memory. We mark our calendars by dates; the Bay keeps its own ancient clock.
I suspect that is why the plants growing here feel different. The plants growing here learned the same lesson.
If you look closely along our salt marshes, rocky shorelines, and quiet coves, you'll find an extraordinary community of plants that have adapted to life where saltwater, wind, fog, and earth meet. Through the seasons, they still hold their ground.
Consider sea asparagus—often called samphire. It grows where the tide reaches twice each day. Crisp, bright, and naturally salty, it has found a way to thrive in a place many other plants never could. It reminds us that resilience isn't always loud. Sometimes it's simply learning to flourish exactly where you are rooted. As in the past, as is still done in the present, samphire can be pickled and canned. It can be sautéed with just butter and garlic, served over fresh caught fish or blended into a stir fry full of garden and wild delights. Take a moment, learn a new food, but ALWAYS harvest sustainably. Never take the root, always just cut above ground. There's an ethical responsibility to our environment, and a respect for everything in it.
Then there's Goose tongue greens. They appear in our coastal marshes each spring and summer, quietly continuing a tradition that stretches back generations. Long before "foraging" became a fashionable word, coastal families gathered these tender greens for the table because they knew the nourishment they offered. Delicious added to stir-frys, roasts, and stuffed into a fish bake, these sweet lanky, salty tinged greens were, and still are an East Coast favourite.
And of course there's Fireweed , although not just coastal this one, but it paints roadsides, old clearings, and weathered wharfs with impossible shades of pink. Swaying in the turbulent winds, it has long been one of my favourite plants—not only because it makes an incredibly vitamin rich nourishing tea, but because it often appears where the earth is healing itself, and in turn, does that for us in reciprocity. There is something comforting in that.
Beach peas scatter purple blossoms across sandy dunes, asking for very little while giving so much back.The tiny peas great for a wee snack, or added to a shoreline cookout, while their roots help steady the shoreline, holding sand in place through wind and weather while feeding bees, and reminding us that even the smallest things can quietly support an entire ecosystem.
My final pick, though there's so many more, tucked into our bogs and wetlands, sweet gale fills the air with its spicy, resinous fragrance. Once used in everything from traditional remedies to flavouring beverages, creating folk ales, it speaks of a time when people knew their landscape not as scenery, but as a source of wild food and medicines.
Perhaps that is what draws me outdoors to forage, time and time again.
It’s not simply just gathering herbs or filling baskets. It is remembering - remembering that the tides have been teaching patience long before we arrived. It teaches patience in every aspect: from the tidal highs and lows, to the fog that rolls in unnoticed till you are in the deep thick of it.
This fog doesn't hide the landscape; it simply asks us to move more slowly within it. Arriving like an old storyteller, it asks for nothing, announcing itself with silence. Shorelines disappear. Spruce trees shaped by the winds become shadows. Fishing boats fade into whispers. Sounds shift. Distance changes. Even time seems to slow beneath its grey veil. It is impossible to rush through a Fundy fog, and the coast insists that we surrender to it, for but a moment.
It's the feeling that those who live by the Bay know, but often struggle to explain.
That fog being so thick that the world disappears, and suddenly you're walking through something that feels beyond ancient. It's standing on the shore while the tide turns and realizing you're witnessing a rhythm that has been repeating for millions of years. It weaves into your soul, it alters your perception.
It humbles you. It changes you. It speaks to you.
The fog doesn't hide anything; it simply asks us to move more slowly, to listen, to feel, and just be where you are.
The plants growing here are not separate from the story of this place. They are the story. They have weathered the storms, the harsh winters, the winds, and the sunshine in quiet, enduring resilience over centuries.
As August waits quietly on the horizon, arriving as it always does, perhaps this is our invitation:
Walk the shoreline. Feel the cool mud between your toes. Take notice of what is growing where the salt meets the land. What clings to the rocks between the rugged coastal cliffs, the meadows past the dunes that dance with the unpredictable winds, each and everyday.
Be curious, be humble, be ever so grateful, sit long enough to hear the waves between your thoughts. Then just the waves - and surrender. Sit with intention, with reflection and grace.
There are places we visit, and there are places that slowly grow into us, until we no longer know where the landscape ends and we begin. The Bay of Fundy is like that, telling its story for thousands of years, in us, for generations.
This summer, slow down long enough to listen.
I have always followed the water. It is my place of peace, my refuge and my sign.
Long before I lived beside the Bay of Fundy, you could find me wandering through the forests of Muskoka, barefoot on moss-covered lands, climbing over old dead falls, and root riddled paths, swimming in lakes, wading through rivers, and finding my way through the quiet places where water and land meet. Lost in curiosity of plants that I came across, time and time again.
I was drawn to the places where things change—the edges of forests, the banks of rivers, the places where stone meets current and roots meet shore. Water has always been my teacher, a healer, and a place of solace.
It teaches patience.
It teaches movement.
It teaches resilience.
A river does not force its way through the landscape; it finds its path and makes it part of itself.
A lake holds stillness and reflection. A waterfall reminds us that surrender can also be powerful.
And the ocean, the hauntingly magnificent Atlantic ocean, carries an ancient rhythm all of its own. The only thing more influential to it, is the always present, powerful moon that guides and pulls at it eternally.
When I arrived along the Bay of Fundy, I discovered a new chapter in that same conversation. The forests were slightly different. There were new plants, the shoreline carried salt instead of freshwater, and the tides replaced the quiet gentle rhythm of the inland lakes I had known my whole life.
It felt so very familiar, still.
Water was still telling the story.
The salt marshes, the spruce forests, the coastal cliffs, the cold mountain riverbeds, the hidden swimming holes, filled with rocks of all colours, and the wild plants growing along and within their edges are all connected.
They are all part of one living landscape.
Perhaps that is why I have always been drawn to plants—not as objects to collect, but as companions that reveal the stories of the places they call home, the history of folk lifestyle, and the past knowledge of them all.
Twice each day the Bay redraws its own map, as it has the highest tides in the world, cycling every 6 hours. Mudflats become ocean, ocean becomes shoreline and cliffs watch patiently as millions upon millions of gallons of seawater arrive and retreat, just as they have for centuries beyond memory. We mark our calendars by dates; the Bay keeps its own ancient clock.
I suspect that is why the plants growing here feel different. The plants growing here learned the same lesson.
If you look closely along our salt marshes, rocky shorelines, and quiet coves, you'll find an extraordinary community of plants that have adapted to life where saltwater, wind, fog, and earth meet. Through the seasons, they still hold their ground.
Consider sea asparagus—often called samphire. It grows where the tide reaches twice each day. Crisp, bright, and naturally salty, it has found a way to thrive in a place many other plants never could. It reminds us that resilience isn't always loud. Sometimes it's simply learning to flourish exactly where you are rooted. As in the past, as is still done in the present, samphire can be pickled and canned. It can be sautéed with just butter and garlic, served over fresh caught fish or blended into a stir fry full of garden and wild delights. Take a moment, learn a new food, but ALWAYS harvest sustainably. Never take the root, always just cut above ground. There's an ethical responsibility to our environment, and a respect for everything in it.
Then there's Goose tongue greens. They appear in our coastal marshes each spring and summer, quietly continuing a tradition that stretches back generations. Long before "foraging" became a fashionable word, coastal families gathered these tender greens for the table because they knew the nourishment they offered. Delicious added to stir-frys, roasts, and stuffed into a fish bake, these sweet lanky, salty tinged greens were, and still are an East Coast favourite.
And of course there's Fireweed , although not just coastal this one, but it paints roadsides, old clearings, and weathered wharfs with impossible shades of pink. Swaying in the turbulent winds, it has long been one of my favourite plants—not only because it makes an incredibly vitamin rich nourishing tea, but because it often appears where the earth is healing itself, and in turn, does that for us in reciprocity. There is something comforting in that.
Beach peas scatter purple blossoms across sandy dunes, asking for very little while giving so much back.The tiny peas great for a wee snack, or added to a shoreline cookout, while their roots help steady the shoreline, holding sand in place through wind and weather while feeding bees, and reminding us that even the smallest things can quietly support an entire ecosystem.
My final pick, though there's so many more, tucked into our bogs and wetlands, sweet gale fills the air with its spicy, resinous fragrance. Once used in everything from traditional remedies to flavouring beverages, creating folk ales, it speaks of a time when people knew their landscape not as scenery, but as a source of wild food and medicines.
Perhaps that is what draws me outdoors to forage, time and time again.
It’s not simply just gathering herbs or filling baskets. It is remembering - remembering that the tides have been teaching patience long before we arrived. It teaches patience in every aspect: from the tidal highs and lows, to the fog that rolls in unnoticed till you are in the deep thick of it.
This fog doesn't hide the landscape; it simply asks us to move more slowly within it. Arriving like an old storyteller, it asks for nothing, announcing itself with silence. Shorelines disappear. Spruce trees shaped by the winds become shadows. Fishing boats fade into whispers. Sounds shift. Distance changes. Even time seems to slow beneath its grey veil. It is impossible to rush through a Fundy fog, and the coast insists that we surrender to it, for but a moment.
It's the feeling that those who live by the Bay know, but often struggle to explain.
That fog being so thick that the world disappears, and suddenly you're walking through something that feels beyond ancient. It's standing on the shore while the tide turns and realizing you're witnessing a rhythm that has been repeating for millions of years. It weaves into your soul, it alters your perception.
It humbles you. It changes you. It speaks to you.
The fog doesn't hide anything; it simply asks us to move more slowly, to listen, to feel, and just be where you are.
The plants growing here are not separate from the story of this place. They are the story. They have weathered the storms, the harsh winters, the winds, and the sunshine in quiet, enduring resilience over centuries.
As August waits quietly on the horizon, arriving as it always does, perhaps this is our invitation:
Walk the shoreline. Feel the cool mud between your toes. Take notice of what is growing where the salt meets the land. What clings to the rocks between the rugged coastal cliffs, the meadows past the dunes that dance with the unpredictable winds, each and everyday.
Be curious, be humble, be ever so grateful, sit long enough to hear the waves between your thoughts. Then just the waves - and surrender. Sit with intention, with reflection and grace.
There are places we visit, and there are places that slowly grow into us, until we no longer know where the landscape ends and we begin. The Bay of Fundy is like that, telling its story for thousands of years, in us, for generations.
This summer, slow down long enough to listen.
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