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"The California Indigenous Peoples Using Fire for Agroforestry"

"Prescribed burning is the main tool in the Karuk and Yoruk tribes' agroforestry systems, which encourages proliferation of traditional foods, herbs, and medicines."

"Frank Lake stoops beside a low-growing shrub, cups one hand beneath a cluster of cobalt berries and swiftly claps it to his mouth. The purple-lipped grin he flashes leaves no doubt. Huckleberries.

Lake offers me a taste: They're wilder than blueberries, with a tangy sweetness. Huckleberries are just coming in season, says Lake, glancing around for other fruits to sample on the hillside that rises behind him.

Bright green bushes are scattered across a carpet of bronze tanoak leaves. Knee-high bracken ferns spread broad flat fronds at the edges of thickets, where seedling pines and cedars poke out of the undergrowth. Towering above them are 100-foot tanoak trees. Beyond are the rugged Klamath Mountains, a geologically jumbled range jutting along California's northwest border into Oregon."

Jane Braxton Little reports for Pacific Standard October 16, 2018.

Source: Pacific Standard, 10/22/2018