Working with plants, their healing potential, and their influence on human health has opened me to a relationship with nature, place, and herbs that goes far beyond the simple and effective uses of plants as medicines. Plant medicine and herbalism as a tradition belongs to more than just our contemporary impulse to identify, name, label, and cure with “this herb for that”, although this is often the initial spell that so cleverly draws us into the long, lost woods where our ancestors once foraged for talking roots carrying handwoven baskets into places with mythic names and hollow trees that open to the Underworld.

The plants dazzle and enchant us

Even with hardened, colonial hearts we are inspelled.

They have not lost their magick

We follow them back to ours.

Plants and trees have been an integral part of human civilization and culture since life evolved on Earth. In fact, human beings have co-evolved with our green relatives and so, we have been genetically programmed to interact mutually and synergistically. We contain similar biological patterns that are expressed in a variety of adaptations. We all hold the exact same building blocks or elements, such as carbon, but arranged uniquely  making us a separate system and yet, inextricably linked to all life. We and all other living organisms are descended from the same biological source; our ancestors, bacteria. Each and every species on Earth was sourced from these original life forms as they  initiated new forms and structures evolving into more complex and creative functions.