There exists, in the vast and peculiar kingdom of cacti, a species that has a special place in my heart.
Opuntia ficus indica, commonly known as prickly pear, tuna, nopal, etc was first introduced to me by Jill as we meandered along the East Coast of Australia aboard the good ship Kailani all those lifetimes ago.
I met Jill while anchored amidst the serenity of the Keppel islands.
She lived onboard a 1800’ wooden beauty, a vessel as storied and weathered as the sea itself, with her 20 year old cat.
This group of islands had been her cruising pasture for a few years so one day she guided us on an extensive ramble around Great Keppel, regaling us with tales of the early explorers who had stepped upon these shores centuries before.
It was they who brought the cactus, along with wild goats and who knows what else, to provision future wayfarers.
There I was, knife in hand, communing for the first time with the spirit of this tenacious, spiny bush.
The initiation involved getting hands and tongue studded with invisible prickles as I endevoured to sample the fruit.
Its taste had no major effect on me at the time, but it stirred something deeper.
I felt honoured to somehow be involved in this ritual of plant wisdom shared under Jill’s watchful, knowing gaze.
Fast forward a few lifetimes I found myself on another island, in a different ocean, bowing in admiration to a huge tunera forest under the guidance of who subsequently became one of my dearest humans on this planet.
He has been gatekeeper, guardian angel, adopted grandfather and so much more in my base camp in Atlantis.
His father had planted the cactus thick around the homestead, a living firebreak against the potential wildfire threat during hot summer months.
Together we spent many sessions circling the cacti bush, absorbing the stories, the quiet teachings, the patient craft of the old ways.
I felt priviledged to witness how he harvested the fruits with a home made plier-type contraption with long handles and a foam padded grip (in order to hold the fruit snuggily without squashing it).
One by one, he laid them upon a bed of pine needles, gently brushing away the wicked spines with a sprig of heather.
It was as if he were tending dragon eggs: magical, dangerous, precious.
Once safely de-prickled, our bounty was gathered into buckets and carried to the shade.
There, under the dappled light, the peeling began. As with every stage of the ritual, this too was carried out with a quiet, deliberate grace, a certain surgical artistry honed through generations.
We feasted on the fruits, piling them up halved, and later putting them to dry under the sun until they transformed into dense, sun-sweetened morsels, candied amber, cactus marmalade from the gods.
Slowly but surely, my connection with the cactus became not just botanical, but ancestral.
It came to embody something older than time: a remembrance of the old ways, of patient hands and sunlit silences, of the transference of knowledge from elder to younger.
And then, as fate would have it, I encountered the prickly pear again, on yet another island, in yet another sea: the Caribbean.
(to be continued …)
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