One Sunday morning in mid-August, I left Asheville for the one-hour drive to my friend Doug Elliott’s wooded homestead in Union Mills, N.C. During my last visit, around the exact same time of year, he showed me how to harvest and prepare elderberry for tincturing. I didn’t know what lay in store this time, other than he said we would be “working elm,” but I knew it would involve swatting mosquitoes and flies, dodging briars, poison ivy and random angry yellow jackets. Why drive 50 mountain miles to play victim to nature’s sadistic instruments? Doug is one of America’s preeminent herbalists, natural history authors, and folklore storytellers. As an elder living in organic union with the land He is celebrated among new age wild crafters, ethnobotanists, and urban foragers.