Recorded March 30, 2023, released July 24, 2023
Featuring: Doug Elliott and Lia Grippo

In this podcast, Early childhood educator Lia Grippo interviews storyteller Doug Elliott about his storytelling process. As an example, he shares the background for each of the verses from his iconic story song about the black snake eating the plastic egg.

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When we were keeping the chickens, catch the snakes, sometimes I’d keep it for a while. And then if I had a school program or something like that, I’d bring it and let the kids play with the snake. So I would say the snakes are getting jail time and community service for eating our eggs.

In today’s episode, early childhood educator Leah Grippo talks with storyteller Doug Elliott about his storytelling process.

Thank you, Doug Elliott, for joining us today. You’re welcome. I’m very grateful to sit in conversation with you. I wondered if we might just begin by you telling us, if you would, what’s the first story you ever remember being told?

My dad used to work regular hours. My mom was a full-time home person, and she would do things with me and my brother. We’d go to the beach, or we’d go walking here, or we’d go to the store, or whatever. And then my dad would come back and when he’d come home, they’d have a little talk about what they did that day. And then when it came time to settle me down, he’d go, here’s a story about the little boy who lived in Round Bay. That was the name of the community. And he would just take off on all the things that we did, run that through again. And so I guess that is probably some of the first stories, not a particular story, that I remember. But I did that with my son and that was always fun.

Your father would run through the story of your day with you.

Right. I was a little boy who lived in this community.

And I imagine, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine that for him also, that was a way of connecting with the separation of the day where he’s working away from home.

I guess so.

Yeah. How lovely. Do you remember as a child, did you know that those stories were about you, or did you have the feeling of, oh, I did that too.

I think I was little enough, I don’t actually remember the stories, so I just think it just was engaging.

I noticed when I had a little boy, I noticed that a narrative could pull him out of the temper tantrums or fits and like, did you hear? And then start telling a story and he had to quiet down to hear it.

Don’t we all have to quiet down to hear it?

That’s right. Life hadn’t changed that much.

Yeah, right. And were there other people in your life, other than your father, that you recall telling you stories?

Well, I mean, basically we all tell stories. We all tell about what we did. And that’s basically that makes our whole sense of reality. So in some ways, anything anybody tells you is basically a story, if they were telling something they did.

So you feel like you were surrounded by stories all the time because you were surrounded by people?

I think we all are. Yeah.

I think that’s true, too. Yes, we tell stories all the time. Do you remember the first story that you ever told with the recognition that I’m telling a story, a tale?

More in my adult life, I guess, realizing I would tell various stories in an accent. I remember Barbara Freeman and Connie Reagan Blake. They were one of the first storytellers that became public as a stage event. And they were traveling around and they kept saying, You’re a storyteller. And I was like, Oh, I guess I am.

How many years would you say you would consider yourself having been a storyteller at this point?

I guess we’re getting on 40 years anyway.

I imagine in that time, myself telling stories now and again, imagine in that time, the stories themselves have taught you a thing or two from the telling. Do you find that when you’re telling a story over and over again, that you learn something new in the story as you tell it?

Maybe about the crafting of the story and what story is ready for what audience and what way do you tell it to make it fit for the audience.

How do you feel that? Do you know what that process is? Do you name it? Name that process?

I think just watching the audience. And sometimes I’ll get together with some other storytellers and we’ll actually work on crafting our thing. What works for you about this? Here’s what I’m thinking about. And then tell the story, did that work?

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is how ancient this craft is of storytelling and how it’s one of our oldest technologies for passing information on from generation to generation, possibly even for a generation we may never meet. I think so much about how so often the answers are all out there and we’re looking for the questions. Right. And so often when I’m listening to you tell stories, I hear and I see in my mind’s eye someone who’s willing to let themselves step into a state of innocence in order to see the world as it is. I wonder if you see yourself that way at all in storytelling.

I think if there was a formula to what I do storytelling wise, a lot of times it’s basically an incident, an encounter, a problem, or a question. You know what I saw? This thing did this, this, this, this. Well, you know what I found out? Because they do this when this happens. And I talked to an old Native American guy, and he told me that they always believe this is blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I went and looked in the books and I found this out. And so actually my story ends up becoming basically a narrative about my investigative journey. And as far as teaching material, that’s a great way to go because you portray yourself as innocent and ignorant, and we’re all innocent and ignorant about certain things. And so it helps you bond with the audience.

I found also that in so many of the old stories that get passed down over and over again. The one who can solve the really complex problems is usually the fool, the one who gets called the simpleton, right? The one who comes with innocence. And I see that. I see that in how you position yourself in your stories. I love hearing you say that everybody can relate to that. We all can, right? Stepping into the place of the unknown or stepping into the place of the wow, I wonder. And I find so much of that in your storytelling as well. So I wonder, do you ever find yourself going out and hunting for stories? Or is it really that in your daily life’s adventures, you’re catching them?

I think it’s the second more. I’m always thinking of, oh, that could make a story. Some particular incident, encounter, a problem or a question. A lot of these stories just sit around on the back burner for decades sometimes. And all of a sudden a new piece will come along, Oh, that’s perfect. That’ll finish it up right. I always like the Joseph Campbell stuff talking about basically, I guess his philosophy is that basically there’s only one story. It’s basically the hero’s journey. It’s what we’re all on every day. We wake up in the morning, we come out of the void and we live our life. And then in our lifetime, we’re born and then we come out of the void and we go back into the void again. And whatever happens in between is the journey. And that’s what we’re all involved in. And he divides it up into lots of different parts. And one of the parts is the call to adventure, where he says that you just got to discover it and I paraphrase it a little bit, ripples on the surface of life that reveals hidden springs as deep as the soul itself.

Whoa, there we go. What does that mean, that little thing? And how can we learn from it? And what does it teach us?

Lovely. We have to be paying attention in order to have that moment of, Whoa, look at that.

Was it Mary Oliver that said, instructions for living a life: pay attention, be astounded, tell about it. There it is. That’s it. Right there.

When you’re storytelling with a group of children, how do you find that you, as a storyteller, change what you’re doing?

I just try to talk to them from their perspective, I guess. Tell stories that I think that they would relate to.

You feel like there’s anything in your telling that changes when you’re with a group of children versus a group of adults?

Oh, sure. Particularly the content.

In what ways would you say that content, is it something children might directly have experienced themselves? Is it a simpler question? Is it more of the comedic?

Well, I always try to put humor in about everything. I can’t say there’s a particular way that I change. Some of the material might actually be the same, but it may be just played a little simpler or slower just to make sure they catch up with it.

There’s a story that you told once that I happened to hear that involved a snake eating a plastic egg. Right. Which to this day, I just love, love, love, love. The part of that story where you come home and get told, No, you have to take responsibility for this. You have to go solve this problem. But also the imagery of you helping that snake push that plastic egg out to me has really, really stuck with me.

It was an extraordinary adventure. And in some ways, that’s probably my figurehead story. Probably, if I have one story that people remember, that’s one. Just because it really happened and it’s so visual. So that particular story just led on to one thing after another. And I ended up writing a little song about it. And it starts with, There’s a big black snake. He’s crawling across my yard. Big black snake. He’s crawling across my yard. He may be moving slow, but Lord, he’s working hard. He’s a slippin’ and a slidin’, slippin’ and your part, slippin’ and a slidin’. Slipping and your part. Slipping and a sliding. Slipping and a sliding. Weaving and a gliding. Weaving and a gliding. Creeping and a crawling. Creeping and a crawling. Lord it’s really hauling. Lord it’s really hauling. That big black snake, he’s crawling across my yard.

And then I realized all these little incidents happened. The first thing was this snake, of course, eating the egg. But after that plastic egg incident, we stopped using a plastic egg and we needed a nest egg. And if we need a nest egg, we leave a real egg in the nest. But the problem is if snakes in the summertime come in, you got to eat them. And then we had our chickens were being free range. One time we had this settin’ hand. And a settin’ hen  is a hen that once she decides she wants to sit on the nest and raise babies, she won’t hardly ever leave that nest. You almost can’t get her out of the nest. And one day we come out there and we look and she’s dead. What’s this? This dead head laying there. We looked and all her feathers on her head and her neck were all sticky looking, kind of ruffled. And we realized that what happened, she wouldn’t leave the nest. That snake came in, said, this smells like bird. I eat birds. Probably constricted her, probably strangled her right there. Started swallowing her head. Got to her shoulder, she realized it couldn’t work.

So then the verse comes, with that big black snake he mess with my settin’ hen. Big black snake he mess with my settin’  hen. I run him off, but Lord, he’s back again. One of my neighbors was pointing out to me he had Martin gourds, which is the gourds, they put them up on poles and then they had colonial nesters. Well, look, Martin’s didn’t come that year, but a bluebird did. And he went out there one morning and there was a black snake that had crawl up a two inch pole 30 feet up in the air and were eating those blue birds. What was he mad? This thing is that good a climber that it could climb up a smooth pole. Well, that big black snake he’s hanging there in my tree. Well, that big black snake just hanging in my tree. I’m watching him, but Lord, he’s watching me. He’s slippin’ and a slidin’. Slippin’ and a slidin’. Weavin’ and a glidein’. Weavin’ and a glidin’. Creepin’ and a crawlingin’. Creepin’ and a crawling.

Lord he’s really hauling. Lord is really hauling. That big black snake, he’s crawling across my yard. Well, we started free rangeing our hens. We realized it was easier to keep hens out of a garden than in a pen. And so we dispensed the garden, let the chickens run all around the yard. And there was a little shed out there, we have square bails of hay. I separated the square bails of hay, so there was a little space, so they had  little nesting places. But of course, being free range like that, you got to check on them regularly. And in the summertime, it’s like we go out there and there’s a snake trying to swallow it. Darn it, those eggs. You’re supposed to be out there eating voles in the garden and rats and mice. Not our eggs. Those are our eggs. Give me that egg. I’d take the snake out and we put it in the garden. And it’s amazing. You take a five foot snake and put it down and there’s one little hole in the garden and it just disappears. Realize the voles have this whole network underground there.

One day I come out there and there she is. It’s this not very large black rat snake. And she’s working on this egg. And she is working so hard. And she’s stretched out to her max, trying to get this egg down her throat. I think, Oh, all right, you can have the egg, but I’m waiting here till you’re finished and I’m taking you out to the garden. I’m waiting, and she’s struggling, trying to get this egg down her thing. I’m waiting, I’m waiting. All of a sudden, out of the back of the hay bails comes this other much bigger black rat snake. Starts following every contour of her body. Starts vibrating his belly. And next thing you know, there are two cloakas, that multi purpose opening at the base of their tail. Were locked together and time stood still as they rolled together there in the hay. Meanwhile, she’s still trying to swallow this egg. Finally, I guess he’d done what he’d come to do if you know what I mean. And he gave her a few fond flickers of his tongue and off he went. And finally, finally, she gets that egg into position and she can roll it, rolls her body and you hear the egg go crack.

And she finally finished that egg. And she looked up and it’s hard to read the expression on the snake, but you wonder what gave her more satisfaction. But then I wrote one more verse. It goes like this.

Well, that big black snake he’s really on the make. That big black snake, he’s really on the make. I saw a fresh laid egg get swallowed by a fresh laid snake. He’s a slippin’ and a slidein’. Slippin’ and a slidein’. Weavin’ and a gliden’. Weaven and a glidein’. He’s a creepin’ and a crawling. He’s creeping and a crawling. Lord, he’s really haulin’. Lord, he’s really haulin’. That big black snake, he’s crawling across my yard.

I learned an important thing about that. They always say females are better at multitasking. Now I believe it.

Thank you for that.

Well, it took years to build that up. every little thing I got to add to it.

Stories, they’re living beings. They change and they grow just like the rest of us. I guess that’s true. Do you sit and watch the rat snakes often?

Often. Yeah.

And that’s just in the course of daily living, right? Because they’re here with you, living with you.

Right. And we keep some snake boards around with boards that are lifted up off of the ground just a little bit to give the snake room places to hang out. It’s a way of monitoring if we have copperheads in the area, but also a way of giving them shelter and always handy. When we were keeping the chickens, they would catch them in there. I’d catch the snakes sometimes I’d keep it for a while. And then if I had a school program or something like that, I’d bring it and let the kids play with the snake. So I would say the snakes are getting jail time and community service for eating our eggs. In exchange for eating eggs. But apparently they have a thriving community, too.

Friendships, relationships. Well, at least temporary.

At least temporary.

That’s right. That’s the one day stand. I don’t know.

Having an adult child of your own at this point who’s living a full, rich, independent life and having lived through 40 years of catching stories and sharing stories. If you have any advice for those of us grappling with these questions of how to serve the young people so that we keep those connections alive with story telling.

I guess tell about your own mistakes, I guess.

That place where you played the innocent or the fool yourself, huh? Right.

I’d say you’re trying to be humorist, though, and talk about different kinds of humor. There’s a humor of power where you make fun of somebody else like an ethnic joke, and you show that you’re powerful. Power. And then there’s taboo things, like jokes about sexy, scatological things, because we’re all that way, so we identify. But you can’t really tell any of those in public. But the only time you can make fun of somebody is when you make fun of yourself. And a lot of times it’s a great way to really… Like I always tell the story about following this old mountain man around and trying to learn the plants. I couldn’t learn it. I had to learn which berries you could eat. I found these little brown berries on the ground. I couldn’t find what bush they came from. I said, What are those? He said, Those are smart berries. Don’t you know them? And I said, Will, they make you smarter? He said, Yeah, you ought to try a couple of them. I tasted one and said, It smells like deer. It tastes like deer poop. He said, See, you’re getting smarter already.

Just making fun of myself.

Thank you for your time. Thank you for talking to me. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for listening. For more information about Doug Elliott and his schedule, see his website at dougelliott.com. Leah Grippo is a co-founder of the Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers. You can find more about her at forestkindergartenacademy.org. Please visit our website at earthavan.org, and sign up for our newsletter so you know what’s happening at the village. This podcast is produced by the School of Integrated Living in Western North Carolina. Have a great day.

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Broadcast May 12, 2022
Featuring: Doug Elliott and Debbie Lienhart

Doug Elliott is a naturalist, herbalist, storyteller, basket maker, back-country guide, philosopher, and harmonica wizard. For many years made his living as a traveling herbalist, gathering and selling herbs, teas, and remedies. Doug currently lives in Rutherford County, near Earthaven Ecovillage.

Doug shares his early mentor experience while growing up in an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. Later he moved to North Carolina as part of the back-to-the-land movement, learning from old timers. Along the way, he shares how shoestrings made from groundhog led to him meeting his wife and how important it is to help older people be who they are.

Transcript

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The best way to understand the creator is to study creation. And that’s kind of been my mission in life, is just looking for points of contact with nature. Is it catching a frog? Is it picking an apple? Is it picking wild Juneberries? Points of contact.

Hello, everyone. I’m Debbie Lienhart, and welcome to the Earthaven Ecovillage podcast. And today I am so excited to be here with one of our neighbors, Doug Elliott.

An early mentor

We’re a similar age and going from “we used to have mentors” to now “are we mentors” and what does that mean? So, we thought we might talk about that today. Would you like to tell us about one of your early mentors?

I guess there’s an early mentor. I was actually raised in Maryland, raised in an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay. I can remember there was some wilder, rougher kids that lived around in the area. And I can remember them showing me. I remember going out with my crab net, trying to catch crabs, and I can remember taking a dip with the crab net, dipping it forward and getting it stuck in the mud. And this guy is a little bit older than me. He said, just turn around and pull it towards you. And I learned that’s the way to work a dip net.

I think in some ways I of learned at an early age that some of those people that are more closely connected to the Earth have a little more experience, and I could learn a lot from them. Since that time, I’ve always been a nature kid. I’ve always been interested in the natural world. And I’ve always found that people that have a deeper connection with nature can often teach me a lot.

Connecting with old timers in the Southern Appalachians

As I moved down to the Southern Appalachians, I found myself really interested in talking to old timers. At the time, I’ve been pretty interested in herbs and medicinal plants. I can remember just talking to the old timers about that. So many people have so many insights and experiences that it’s always been great. I ended up in Yancey County, ended up kind of actually living right next door to an old fellow, my old friend Theron Edwards. He was raised right there in the holler and he knew a lot of medicinal plants. He would make medicines and things like that. I remember going off with him and we’d hike around in the woods and stuff.

Eventually I was traveling with kind of an herb mobile, I guess you’d call it. And I go to old time music festivals and the traditional music festivals. I’d set up a booth with old time remedies, herbs, teas, and old time remedies. And what was nice about that is that any time anybody had anything to say about herbs or wild plants, they’d come and talk to me. In some ways, that was my classical education. And so somebody who knew 100 banjo tunes, they also were probably country enough to know about a number of different kinds of herbs and plants. I met a lot of different people that way.

Theron would say, well, you come around here a lot, and why don’t you just move into that old cabin of mine? He had an improved cabin and he had an old cabin. So I stayed with him for a while. I stayed there and eventually ended up buying land there and built a little house there. And although I don’t live there now…  we moved down to Rutherford County just because the situation has got even better down here.

What was really fun about going around with Theron is that I had names for plants, and he had names for plants, and we had different names for the same plant. I’d ask him, what do you call that? I call that rattleweed, he said, what do you call it? I said, well, the books call it black cohosh. Oh, yeah, I heard of that. And next thing we talk about it. And so we had a lot of adventures like that, just gathering wild foods, gathering apples up in the mountains, and showing me about different kinds of plants and birds.

What I was impressed with him is he had a deep knowledge of so much more than just herbs and wild plants. I remember one time we were up on the mountainside gathering some wild catnip that grew up there and I hear a yellow breasted chat. Now, the yellow breasted chat has this whole variation of calls, buzzes and twitters, and it’s the largest warbler, and it kind of whistles and sings and does the different collections. I said, Theron what kind of bird is that? And he said, that’s a Mockingbird. And I was kind of disappointed because I thought, well, he didn’t know his birds. But I, of course, would never argue with a traditional person like that. I said, what does he look like? He said, oh, he’s a little… got a big yellow breast and kind of greenish on the top. And there’s a Texas Mockingbird. That’s the one that’s gray with the white on the wings. You find them down around town. And he knew exactly what that bird looked like. He had a different name for it. But to me, that deep knowledge was what really intrigued me. And he called wood thrushes chitterling. That’s kind of what they sing like “chitterling,” and then catbirds were called corn planters. When he showed up, it’s time to plant your corn. And he did different things by the signs and had lots of different things.

The best thing you can do for an older person

The whole topic of eldering, elders and eldering, has really been up in the primitive skills movement, and at Earthaven too. What makes someone an elder?

Well, I guess you have to define that for yourself. I remember one time being called by another old friend of mine up in Yancy County when I moved down to Rutherford County, an old man I used to go out and hunt ramps with, and we’d do a few different things, and he’d call me every now and then. “You ought to come up here and help me do something.” Well, I live two hours away, so it was a big deal to come up there, so I didn’t go up there very often. But one time he says, I got some…  my bees are building up. I need some help with them bees. So, I went up there with a friend of mine. And he was really very tottery, but he wanted to go get the honey off his bees. I remember my buddy and I got on each side of him and taking him up the hill to his beehives, and then literally almost carrying him, just helping him. And he kind of stood there and just talked to us about it all and supervised, and we took the honey off his hives and took him back down the hill, took him to his house, and we cut the honey out of the combs and did all that.

I realized that I wasn’t really there as a neighbor, like to help him go to the doctor or whatever like that. But what I was there for was to help him be who he was. He was an old mountain farmer beekeeper, and that’s what he did. And I realized then, right then, even with my own family, that’s the best thing you can do for an older person is to help them be who they are. And I realize that my mother liked art, so I could take her to an art gallery and just help her be who she was. And I realized, I’ve got the beginning of Parkinson’s disease, so I’m not as able as I used to be. And when people helped me come to these gatherings, things like that, I realized they’re doing just that for me. They’re helping me be who I am. That’s an incredible gift that you can give to an older person.

Well, and letting someone do that for you is an incredible gift you can give to them, too. Well, I guess that’s a nice way to look at it. I hope so. Part of the making life wonderful game. We try, don’t we?

Biodiversity and cultural integrity in the Carolinas

Sometimes people ask me how I ended up in the Carolinas and why I ended up being here. I often say it’s for the biodiversity and the cultural integrity. So biodiversity, like where we’re sitting right now, we’re about 40 miles from cottonfields like you’d see in Mississippi. We’re also 40 miles from spruce fir forest, like you’d see in Maine and Canada. And so, talk about diversity. We’ve got a whole lot going on here as the altitude changes and the cultural integrity. Just like I was talking about with the old timers, the area has been less touched by civilization in many areas. And so, there’s more of a cultural appreciation for the environment and a cultural connection to the environment.

And that’s what I live off of, exploring that human connection to nature, since we’re all part of this miracle of creation, to realize that sometimes… I say that the best way to understand the creator is to study creation. And that’s kind of been my mission in life. It’s just learning more ways that I can connect with. Looking for points of contact with nature. Is it catching a frog? Is it picking an apple? Is it picking wild Juneberries? Is it chasing a snake, sneaking up on a deer? Points of contact.

One of the funny things the old timers sitting around the store, they often hang around the old country store. They hang around. One day they’re saying… there was sort of like this whole movement in the late 60s, early 70s, this back-to-the-land movement, where after the Vietnam War, a lot of us said something is not right with the way the society is going. Let’s see if we can be a little more connected to this miracle creation that we’re all a part of. And so a lot of people move back and to seek out the wisdom of the old timers and people who learn how to live there. The old timer’s sitting on the bench saying, “yeah, saw ol’ Zeke, he’s out there plowing with his mule. Yes. Had his hippie with him.” I think I know who they’re talking about.

Becoming a storyteller

Now it seems like you’ve turned a lot of this wisdom and touching of nature into stories. Well, there you go. More points of contact. You can go out there, take pictures. You can go out there and gather things, also go out there and collect stories. A lot of my stories end up being basically an incident, an encounter, a problem or a question. I go out and I see something and then explore it, and the narrative becomes what I learned about this thing from talking to different people.

Here’s a story. We can maybe talk about one time I was up in my little cabin up there in Sang Branch up here in Yancey County, and I always loved talking to my neighbors. They’re mostly traditional folks, and they often had lots to say about life. And one day I look over and I see my neighbor Lije, an old mountain man with gray hair and bib overalls, coming up the trail to my cabin. The cabin was perched up on the edge of the hill. So he had to come around the back to get into the cabin. It looked like he was carrying something, but my lawn was about waist high and I couldn’t tell what he was carrying. And I come over there. “Lije, what brings you here?” I often was down there talking to him. I was surprised to see him come to my house.

“Doug, I brung you something. Something you’ve been wanting.” And he flops the dead groundhog on my doormat. I’ve been wanting a groundhog?

“Well, thank you Lije, I appreciate that.”

“Well, Doug, you said you was wantin’ one of these things.” And I remembered that I’ve been up to his house talking a few weeks before, asking about the old days and how they got along. He said, “well, time is tough around here sometimes Doug. We didn’t have a whole lot to eat. Sometimes we just have cornbread, some greens. That would be about what we’d have, a glass of water. Now and then somebody shoot him a groundhog buddy. And everybody come around to get some. Oh, yeah.”

His wife, she’s saying, “that’s right, Doug, them groundhogs, they good.”

I said, “well, I’d like to try that sometimes.” I thought I’d get invited to dinner. It looks like dinner just come to me. Now, I’ve cleaned and skinned and cleaned animals before, prepared while game. But of course, you never learn anything by telling what you know. You never learn near as much as you do by just asking questions. “Lije, anything I need to know about how to prepare this thing?”

“Well, Doug ya skin ’em clean like anything else.” He says “now up one of them front legs these little scent kernels, buddy. And you cut them out of there and under them armpits cut them out of there. And it’ll keep them from tasting so gamey. I mean, you thought you had gamey pits. Let me tell you, a groundhog’s got you beat.”

“Well, thank you, Lije. I’ll do that.” And I was looking for a place to hang it up.

“Doug, you’d be sure you save the grease.”

“Save the grease?”

“Yeah, buddy, that’s a fat groundhog. He’s been in my corn patch the whole summer, buddy, he’s corn fed. He’ll be fat.”

“Okay Lige. What would I do with the grease?”

“Son, there’s 1001 things you can do with groundhog grease.”

I said, “like what?”

He said, “make medicine out of it.”

“Make medicine?”

He said, “yeah.” He said, “I’ve cooked many a spoonful. I’ve been coming up and it’ll help you,” he said.  “Doug, be sure you save the hide.”

“Save the hide?” Groundhog doesn’t really have a lush fur because they hibernate all winter. They don’t really need a big… Not like a mink or a raccoon or something like that. And I said, “Lije, what I do with the groundhog hide?”

“Lord, there’s 1001 things you can do with groundhog hide, Doug.”

“Like what?”

He said, “take it and you tan it and you make shoestrings out of it.”

 I said, “shoestrings?”

He said, “yeah.” He said, “in the old days, we couldn’t go to town and just buy what stuff we wanted. We had to make what stuff we had. We need good shoe strings, buddy. We get ’em a groundhog hide. We tan it.”

“How do you tan it, Lije?”

“Well, you take it and get your dish pan with some ashes and some water. And soak it in there and the hair will slip. And then you work it over the back of a chair from the time it’s wet ’till the time it’s dry, buddy, and you have you a tanned groundhog hide. You cut your shoestrings out of that.”

“Okay. Now, what about the grease, Lige?” I said, “how do I deal with that?”

He said, “you render it out like you would lard.”

I said, “how do you render out lard?”

He said, “son, how can I tell you anything if you don’t know nothing to start with?”

“So, like bacon grease?”

“Yeah. Put it in frying pan. Just put on a low heat and it’ll render out.” So, I did that and I skinned that hide. And I actually made some groundhog hide shoelaces.

Actually, I was at the 10th anniversary of the National Storytelling Festival 30 some years ago, and I was telling a little bit of this story, and I said, by the way, I’m wearing my groundhog hide shoelaces. If anybody wants to come and see me, see the shoelaces they can come up after the program.

After the program, this dark-haired woman with sparkly eyes and long, dark hair came up and said, “let me see those shoestrings.” She looked at the shoestrings and she disappeared in the crowd. Later on, I went to visit some friends who were camping near there and she was there with them. And actually, she’s not a dark-haired woman anymore. She’s got what I call a possum blonde. And we’ve been together for 30-some years, and our son is almost 30 years old. So that’s kind of a sweet story.

And anyhow, I cooked that groundhog up and it was delicious. And I realized, I thought about who there’s this animal. If you have ever had one in your garden, you know what a pest they are. They’ll go down the row, they’ll eat up everything in your garden, they completely destroy your garden. And they’re considered to be a real pest. But in the traditional context, it’s not only food, but also medicine, also clothing, or at least shoestrings. And also they use groundhog hide for a banjo head. You make music with a groundhog — music, medicine, food, clothing, and there’s even songs “shoulder up your gun and whistle up your dog, shoulder up your gun and whistle up your dog, we’re going to hunt for the old groundhog.”

So anyhow that’s out of the beginning of kind of a journey of investigation. And when I get into groundhogs and I’ll probably be talking about it some more groundhogs. There’s Groundhog Day that marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. And there’s groundhogs and dogs. It goes on and on.

We’re here in the Southern Appalachians, and we always hear about, Punxsatawney Phil, but is there a local equivalent? Like, is groundhogs related to Groundhog Day? Traditionally?

I think it’s more of a German custom leftover from the time of the totem animals, of hibernating animals seen as a metaphor for the human spiritual journey, that the groundhog goes into the ground in the fall of the year. And it’s like he’s buried, he doesn’t come up till spring when the times ready to be reborn. Now we’re all followed by our shadow. We all have our dark side. When they put us in the ground, that shadow, that symbol of the soul, is set free. When the hibernating animal goes in the ground, the soul of the animal is set free, and then it sleeps the sleep of death. And when it comes out in the spring, if some of the old soul, that old shadow is still there, the process isn’t complete. So, we say if Mr. Groundhog saw his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter. And that’s where that all came from, from ancient bear and badger cults.

That was an amazing thing to learn about that. Yeah.

Plans for this year

Looks like on your calendar you have a busy summer. I get to come to Earthaven at the end of May (2022). Then I got invited to go out to Utah to the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, which is one of the biggest ones in the country. I’m hoping I can get that together. So, thank goodness I can still mouth off. I got a little bit of Parkinson’s disease so a lot of my skills are… I realize that being able bodied is a temporary condition no matter who you are. And all we can do is enjoy it as long as we have it.

I have about ten recordings out there. A lot of them are on Band Camp. Some of them you can get from CDs. And I have a bunch of books out, about five books, if you call them all books. Some of them are hardcover, some of them are soft cover. And I guess my website, dougelliott.com two t’s in Elliott.

Conclusion

Mary Oliver has a great quote which I think sort of embodies a whole lot of instructions for living a life. “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

That just says it all, doesn’t it.

Thank you for listening. Please visit our website at earthaven.org and sign up for our newsletter. This podcast is produced by Earthaven Ecovillage School of Integrated Living in Western North Carolina. Have a great day.

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