On the benefits of harvesting cactus
Prickly pear, quarantine, and autumn got me in my feelings. Just kidding, I'm always in my feelings.
This week, I dug all my sweaters out of storage and washed them. It’s still in the high 80s during the day, but that’s a big drop from the high 90s of last month, and I’m hoping that my sweater-optimism will nudge the weather even cooler. I’ve been in isolation at home for the past seven days: after avoiding it for two-and-a-half years, Covid finally came for me. And so, I am reluctantly resting, watching hours upon hours of television, and enjoying the transformations of the season in my garden. A handful of late-summer roses are still blooming, and the prickly pear cactus is full of purple fruit almost ready to be harvested.
The most widespread of all cacti, the Prickly Pear Opuntia species range across the Americas, from Alaska to the southern-most tip of Argentina. Surprisingly tolerant of freezing weather, some species can survive temperatures of almost 60 degrees below freezing, aided by how low they are to the ground, and their ability to reduce how much water is in their cells. If the desert has taught me anything, it’s that I know nothing about the wild ways in which things grow here, far beyond my expectations of what is possible.
Out where I live, there are more than two dozen species of this particular cactus, and many subspecies and hybrid variations. It was one of the first things I planted in my front yard: I’ve always been drawn to their paddle-like pads and bright yellow flowers, and I find the fruit delicious in all forms, but especially in the candies that the Hatch grocery store sells on its tourist aisle. These cacti feed wildlife such as pronghorn, deer, javelinas, and small mammals and birds; they also host the cochineal insects that are the source of a bright red dye used historically by many of the native peoples of the Americas. When the Spanish colonized the Americas, the dye was a coveted American export, one of the only ways to color fabric a deep, rich, royal red.
Used in a wide range of beverages and food, both the fruit (tuna) and the pad of the cactus are delicious and have expansive healing properties. Topically, the cactus can be used to treat wounds and burns. Its spines were used historically to puncture infections and to scratch infected tissue off the delicate skin of our eyelids. Prickly pear cactus poultices were applied to snakebites and warts, used for inflammation, and to help new mothers with nursing. The pulp and juice from the cactus heal a wide range of stomach ailments, reduce pain, and can treat acute injuries. It acts as an antiviral, reduces the discomfort of hangovers, may help to reverse neurological damage, and assists with diet-related health conditions such as diabetes and high cholesterol. It is even, apparently, a natural form of birth control. Western medicine is just beginning to study these effects, widely known by the original inhabitants of the cactus’s many landscapes.
Out here, prickly pear lives in a symbiotic relationship with creosote bushes: birds perch in the creosote after digesting parts of the plant. When they drop seeds under the shrub, it protects the cactus seedlings from the elements. As it grows, the cactus’s shallow root system drinks all the water that falls there, effectively keeping it away from the deeper roots of the creosote. And, once the creosote dies, the cactus can flourish. Eventually, the prickly pear is eaten by small animals or destroyed by harsh winds, and the creosote returns to the same place, re-starting the cycle.
I am writing to you about this cactus because I love its strangeness and its healing properties, and I am curious about how it might open a conversation about the protective structures that you build for your work. How do you shield your creative space, particularly in the messy early moments of a new idea, of growth, of experimentation? What structures do you use to keep your practice safe at its most vulnerable moments? How do you build protective structures, use them, and—importantly—dismantle them once the cactus is strong enough to support itself? Do these support structures ever get in the way of your work? And if you don’t think you build this kind of protection into your practice, what might such a shield look like for you? What kinds of cover would allow your work to be as healthy and expansive and rooted in its early development as it possibly can be?
I know that I need to harvest the prickly pear fruit soon, before it drops to the ground and spoils. And this year’s crop is significantly larger than last year’s. And yet, the tiny glochids—little hair-like spines that slide easily into skin and then are painful nuisances—still deter me. I’ve been watching videos online of how to remove them. There are many ways we might think about these prickly yet unassuming spikes as metaphors for how we protect and care for our creative work. But I’m also so tired of thinking about how to stay safe, and forcing metaphors. Instead, I am studying how we remove the spines from the cactus where I live. To access the prickly pear without being stung by its glochids, the Internet tells me to use a torch and set it on fire. The hairy spindles will burn away quickly and the flame will brighten the purple skin into a luscious ruby color, ready to be eaten, or made into juice. And yet—gah!—the metaphors persist (I am sorry & I blame it on the fever): How might you set your sharp protective structures on fire and liberate your creative experiments? When you burn away this spiky exterior, what does it feel like to get to the good, magical, healing, delicious sweetness underneath?
Asking for a friend.
With my warmest regards, from quarantine,
LA
Prickly Pear research drawn from: Dara Saville, The Ecology of Herbal Medicine: A Guide to Plants and Living Landscapes of the American Southwest (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2021); and Carolyn Dodson, A Guide to Plants of the Northern Chihuahuan Desert (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2012).
Laura August, PhD makes essays and exhibitions, lumpy pots and wild gardens. She has curated more than 20 exhibitions as an independent curator working between the U.S. and Central America. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, and her writing about contemporary art in Guatemala City has been recognized with an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Alongside her consulting practice for artists and writers, she teaches a process, practice, and professional strategies class for artists at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She currently makes her home on the edge of the Chihuahua Desert, and she is the first full-time Curator at the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts at The University of Texas at El Paso.