This morning I woke up surrounded by growing green things. More so than usual, this summer in Vermont is lush, splendid and infinitely edible—inspiring me to take my budding forager-self out to the forest and look for free things to munch on. What will it be? Mushrooms? Garden chard? Blueberries? Today, I think I’ll seek out the stingy bits of the yard, clip them, and make nettle soup.

I have noticed lately that many of the smaller things happening in my life can be expanded as metaphors for many other, larger things. More important things: A walk down a dirt road becomes the mythical journey through the forest of life; the making of brownies becomes, in my mind at least, a tinier version of the fertility and possibility inherent in the world. Today, too, this over-metaphorization of my life continues, but this time with nettles.

The North American stinging nettle is pretty terrible to run into when you’re not expecting it, and pretty wonderful when you are. Chock full of vitamins, minerals and other things that are really good for our bodies, the nettle seems to get overlooked in most kitchens, probably because harvesting it can be a bit painful. So I set out with a basket, gloves and scissors to find my prickly friends, well prepared for the possibility of getting stung.

As I walk out through the long, rain-damp grasses towards the edge of the yard that borders on forest, I remember a story I read last week about nettles. Tom Brown, in his Field Guide to Edible and Medicinal Plants, introduces each plant by telling of his first encounter with it—for nettles, his first encounter-story was painful to hear. He recounts that when finding the plant again with his teacher, a Native American Elder he calls Grandfather, the teacher was able to grasp the plant without getting stung. This was due, Grandfather said, to the fact that he had greeted and thanked the plant, all while showing no fear.

I approach the nettles by the edge of the yard remembering this, and wondering if it would work. Greeting the plant, I thank it and try to feel no fear as I reach barehanded for an emerald green leaf—lo and behold, no sting! I’m thrilled. I harvest happily with left thumb and forefinger for twenty minutes, filling the basket with what will soon be a ridiculously good cream of nettle soup.

And walking back into the warm kitchen, I begin to feel a bit weird in the fingertips. As my hands heat up, I realize that the nettles did sting me, but that it didn’t kick in until late. Reflecting on this as I put on the gloves to continue cutting leaves off stems, I think about how love and relationships are kind of like nettles, or at least like my experience of nettles today.

What I mean by that is not that love and life are painful and they sneak up on you. Sure, parts of life are painful, and love sure can hit you over the head if you’re not paying attention. Sure, sometimes love stings long after you thought it was over. But just like nettles have immense nutritious and healing properties, so too does love—so does life have benefit and possibility inherent in it, beyond and aside from the parts that can hurt.

Going out into the damp, fecund fields that are life can be dangerous—small holes to twist an ankle, streams to get feet wet in, maybe even a little snake to bite. But if I didn’t go into the fields, I wouldn’t find the blueberries, the chard, the mushrooms, and the nettles. Without leaping out wholeheartedly into the melee of life and love, without risking getting stung simply for the sheer wild adventure of living, it seems to me that life is a little boring, a little too sheltered. Call me crazy, reaching for nettles with my bare hands, but it seems to me that risking something for the possibility of something else beautiful and delicious is what it’s all about—regardless of whether, in the end, your fingers feel stingy for a couple of hours.