“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Herbalist. The term can make the role we fill sound as if it’s a single job rather than the multitude of overlapping and intersecting skills that it actually is. Gardener, Wildcrafter, Clinician, Medicine Maker, Field Botanist, Educator, Counselor, Activist, Accountant, Grant Writer and Advocate are just a few of the most common roles many herbalists find themselves filling. We will often find that our work is most powerful and authentic in the borderlands where these roles meet and overlap. To be an herbalist, especially in this era and place, is to walk the edge.

The word edgy is so overused as to be a cliche unto itself. And yet, that’s exactly what this work is. It’s learning the language of traditional medicine and conventional medicine and trying to speak it in an understandable way to people who may understand neither or have a distinct prejudice against either or both. It’s teaching gutter punks and retired RNs physiology from a new perspective and opening their eyes to the complex array of plant life that surrounds us at all times. It’s making old-fashioned medicine from common weeds and then attempting to understand how that medicine might interact with newly introduced pharmaceuticals or affect organ systems that scientists are just beginning to understand the function of.

Some would have us think that herbalism remains the domain only of “primitive” peoples or, on the other hand, conventional medical professionals who have the accreditation considered necessary to treat clients. And so we walk another kind of edge, within the legal system and the regulations created by entities such as the FDA.

These edges are important, imperative even. This is a time of many people being both disempowered and disconnected from even the most basic healthcare, often from a lack of education and finances. As herbalists, we’re pushing at the borders of what’s considered normal, sensible, and sometimes even acceptable, within mainstream society. Regardless of how straight we look, speak or feel, the very act of teaching or treating with botanical medicine tends to immediately place us on the fringes of standard American culture.

Within my practice, teaching, organizing, editing and writing I constantly strive to further acknowledge and embrace these edges and borders. To walk them consciously and with intent. Plant Healer Magazine and TWHC have been a furthering of that boundary pushing and edge walking. Wolf and I are in constant discussion and reassessment of that this means and how we can be most effective.

This is not easy work, especially when we live a culture that asks us to separate ourselves into pieces. That suggests we have different social media accounts for each and every one of our personal and professional roles for our many fragments, and the masks they each wear. That tries to insist that we splinter ourselves into cliches and titles and aliases until even we can’t remember which part of us is talking and what’s safe to say. But don’t worry, there’s a social media app for that.

My big mouth, constant questioning of the status quo and sometimes unpopular opinions have earned me more than a few disparaging comments both locally and in the larger herbal community. I admit that it’s sometimes tempting to shut up and play it a bit safer. To keep my opinions neutral. To make every response politic to the expected audience.

But really, fuck that.

For me, herbalism always has been about and continues to be primarily about the plants. Their beauty and inherent value as living parts of a larger organism we call Earth. The miracle of how even being near them in their chosen habitat is healing in and of itself. The myriad ways we interact with and rely on them. The magic, yes magic, of their bodies as medicine for our bodies. Only when all of these layers are present and integrated do I feel whole and happy with my work, my life, my self.

Occasionally I have to remind myself that my work with clients isn’t as a doctor, dictator or a magician, but simply as a matchmaker between person and plants. It’s that simple, and that difficult. There are other sorts of herbalists of course, and this description of my approach isn’t meant to be a definition of what you or anyone else does or needs to do. It’s here as remembrance that there are many ways to work in the diverse and dynamic field of herbalism.

As the snow clouds hang low over the canyon and surrounding mountains I realize that I’ve never before looked on the long, cold months of Winter with such anticipation. After more than two years of frenzied activity of putting together the TWH conference, Plant Healer Magazine and various teaching projects along with still seeing clients and trying to keep up with wildcrafting and medicine making, I realize I’m more than ready for some time turned inward.

It’s been easy to lose myself in the work of organizing and managing, to be subsumed by the large personalities I spend so much time promoting and working with. To forget the strands of my mission that are rooted in the Appalachian culture I come from and the New Mexico mountains that are my home. To find myself too exhausted at the end of any given day to nourish myself. To remember how to integrate all of the skills and roles into a functional whole.

While the deadlines and effort required for my work are undeniably endless, I’m creating new ways to reprioritize my time and energy. As the last copper-tinted leaves are blown from the Cottonwood trees, I find myself returning to the projects that keep me most in touch with what I care about, and what I most love about herbalism. I notice that I’m more frequently wandering into the kitchen to muse over my favorite Siberian inspired elk pelmeni recipe or breathe in the warm citrus scent of White Fir tea simmering on the woodstove. The mornings have more often been spent on a lichen clad boulder staring through the long threads of Usnea out at the Ponderosas bending with the winds and the river rippling sinuously between its banks.

As a result, I’ll be blogging more often, and my posts will return to their previously personal and wide topic range. You’ll also notice I’ve updated my blog header and am in process of updating the overall feel of the site and my writing. While it sometimes seems easier to restrict the subject matter on the Medicine Woman’s Roots to being strictly related to botanical medicine, I’ve found that this negates the original purpose and even the title of the blog. I don’t want a fracturing of myself into personal and professional personas. My vocation is a huge part of who I am and it’s more than a job, it’s my passion and a lasting love.

And if I ramble on about the color of Monkeyflowers and rant about the pseudoscience that passes for medical research and eat with my hands in public and climb trees in high heels and swear with great enthusiasm, well… you were forewarned.

Expect tales and monographs, case studies and rants, pictures and ramblings.

Expect to find yourself up against the edge, gazing out over where the vast diversity of traditions, medicine, cultures, plants and peoples come together.

Spring in the Country of Lichen & Spines: Fragments of Home

by Kiva Rose

~~~~

Warm temperatures have arrived early in my corner of the Gila, with the Golden Smoke blooming sooner this year than I’ve ever previously seen. This follows a cold (-35F is plenty cold for me, thank you) and dry Winter. Now our seasonal winds blow the sand up in spiraling circles until it dances like the shifting forms of whirling dervishes against New Mexico’s lapis colored sky. The skeletal limbs of shattered Russian Thistles caught up in these little whirlwinds give sharp edges to the dancers.

Golden Smoke (Corydalis aurea)

~~~~

The Canyon trees bend in the same wild winds and yet last year’s withered purple Juniper berries cling to their branches as they’re tossed about in the breeze. They retain their pungent yet sweet flavor as well, a little drier perhaps, but still strong with the distinct magic that comes only with being the fruit of a Red Cedar tree.

One Seeded Juniper (Juniperus monosperma)

~~~~

Even in drought these mountains remain a country fraught with magic. If anything, the enchantment is turned up enough in these extreme conditions. Walking among the apricot and lavender colored volcanic rock I often find myself with a sense of the surreal, or more accurately, the hyperreal. The contrast of the barbed tips of white and black cactus spines draped in swaths of green Usnea fallen from the limbs of tall Pines is in itself strange enough to be disorienting at times. The sharp wrapped up in the soft, the colors blending and emerging as something altogether new.

~~~~

Mountain Candytuft is our first showy flower each and every year since I’ve come to the Canyon. It’s purplish leaves and violet to white flowers dot the mountainsides and draw the first butterflies. A member of the Brassicaceae, the spicy-sweet taste of its flowerheads is reminiscent of a more flavorful broccoli and I’m always so excited to add it to my Spring soups and salads.

Mountain Candytuft (Noccaea fendleri subsp. glauca)

Mountain Candytuft (Noccaea fendleri subsp. glauca)

~~~~

The Cane Cholla is blushed a vivid pink from the cold temperatures but will return to its usual green color before producing flowers in a month or so. Clambering up and down the arroyos and dry creekbed, I peek under likely boulders looking for a few fronds of green and rust colored ferns and run my fingers along the ragged margins of the many-colored lichens that grow from almost every stone surface here.

Cane Cholla (Cylindropuntia spinosior)

~~~~

The New Mexico Olive has just begun blooming and it’s golden spray of flowers will eventually give way to the bittersweet blue-purple fruits that Loba and I will harvest and brine and use as tiny but flavorful olives in our meals. When I stopped on my way home to photograph the flowers a spring-mad hare leapt from the brush and went galloping off in typical jackrabbit fashion, too quick for me to even snap a picture.

New Mexico Olive (Forestiera pubescens) in flower.

~~~~

Moonwort emerges from dust and sand, its silvery leaves streaking the landscape with a tenacious grace and filling the air with the warm sagey fragrance so peculiar to the West. The sweet butterscotch scent of Ponderosa resin mingles with the Moonwort and makes the canyon air at once heady and sensual. Crouching down in the leaf litter as I gather the Moonwort leaves and chunks of pine resin to infuse into warm oil, I press my face against the puzzle piece bark of a Ponderosa and breathe in the medicine of place. I sit back on my heels to absorb the whiplash power of something so simple, so fragile as awareness of this unbroken moment where I remember that this is what I’ve always wanted – all my stories and songs unraveling in the face of amber-skinned trees and downy bitter leaves. Sometimes the beauty of life just can’t be comprehended as anything rational, my body (including my brain) just have to experience it as this tactile, skin-shivering beast that it is. Fuck analysis for a moment, just drink it up.

Moonwort (Artemisia carruthii)

~~~~

Arizona Sycamores raise their tangle of bone-white branches to the sun and drink in the cold water that curls down the mountains to pool around their roots. The first hummingbirds beat the air with a breakneck rhythm that well suits their warrior ways yet also belies the expectations sometimes created by their seemingly delicate beauty. Like the land itself, what appears fragile at first glance may be reinforced with a deeper strength.

On the Catwalk, near Glenwood, NM

Femail Broad-Tailed Hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus)

~~~~

My home is a fierce place, fragrant with the scent of aromatic plants well adapted to aridity, populated with the varied songs of the myriad birds that take refuge in the trees and long grasses and sparkling with the glint of the Southwest sun on a thousand volcanic rocks forming these cliffs and arroyos. The Canyon is wild with the tracks of mountain lions and coatimundi, the soundless rush of opening flowers and the singing winds that circle and play among the emerging leaves.

~~~~

In the river, blue mica glimmers among the sand as the fish gather and part, gather and part with the tidal impulse of all things that love water. Spring in the country of lichen and spines feels warm under my bare feet this evening, and I dance to its strange, liquid music.

Bluestem Willow (Salix irrorata) staminate catkins

All Photos ©2011 Kiva Rose

It’s been a good long time since I’ve posted any of my poetry here on The Medicine Woman’s Roots, but the cold season and call to turn inward always brings storytelling of all kinds to the forefront of my mind. I wrote this particular poem last Winter when I began to feel my annual sadness brought on by the lack of green things nearby. Every year I find that I must consciously remind myself to let go a little of the need to grow and go and clamber and instead to allow myself to fall back into a slower and dreamier state. To walk outside among last season’s frost-touched flowers and let the beauty of a different, quieter season seep into me. As the last of the frogsong fades and the mountains slip into the sleepy months to come,  I give you this token of the dreamtime and a reminder to share story and song and silence in the darkness of the cold moons.

The Storytelling Moon

tell me a story, love
in the dark down
in this leaf lined log
where we lay together
and dream
root tendrils

into blooming
dressed in fur
your hair wild
and twisted with braids
and dried flowers
you touch my cheek
we curl together
stalking lunar circles
tracing sun spirals
on each other’s skin

the clacking
of small bones
between us
the stories we tell
of green buds
adorning brown sticks
of warm sweet honey
sticky on our lips

in the dark our tree
buried by
a thousand sparkles
by so many feet
of snow we speak
of swimming
to the cold surface
just to taste sunlight

but I breathe your scent
curl against your chest
arrange our blanket of moss
and brown leaves
turn with the moon
drink stars
and go deeper into darkness

———

Photo (c) 2010 Jesse Wolf Hardin

As much as I love all local foods, there’s something truly special about wild, totally uncultivated food growing right at my feet, and in the case of the Wild Grapes, dangling right above my head. There’s a vitality to be had in wild river-grown Watercress that the best cultivated varieties can’t even compete with. The sharp bite of Mustard, the sweet crunch of Wild Lima flowers and the fine flavor of fresh Cottontail brings me back to my body, and closer to this particular stretch of enlivened land.

Late afternoon often finds me waiting out the heat down by the river. After floating on my back down the cool current I usually gather greens for dinner in the shade of the Cottonwoods and Alders. Come summer, I’ll be able to curl up in the shadow of Red Currants, Gooseberries and Wild Mulberry trees to gather the juicy, tart fruits at my leisure.

Foraging draws me into the woods, gets me up close and personal with my source of energy, with my personal connection to vitality and life. In the eye of the deer in the heat of the hunt, or in the spiny folds of the Cholla bud, I see the gifting cycle spinning full circle. To eat and be eaten, to live and to die, only to become yet more life.

These plants and animals here are tough and willful. While the mountains of the Gila are usually fertile and rich in diversity, they’re also dry and nearly barren for months at a time. The strongly cyclical nature of the Southwestern seasons makes for especially resilient and insistent creatures. Every life I take, every morsel I eat, I honor it with prayers and a deep respect for its primal desire to live. Whether animal or plant, I give thanks for the magic that grew it, the breath that animated it, the land that sustained it. This is the sacrament of the ordinary, of the exrtra-ordinary, of the daily transformation of food to flesh, life to life.

Connection to what is wild spirals me deeper into my own wildness. The thorns and hard edges inspire me to grow stronger. The soft underbelly of the running Elk and the sensual curves of the Rose open me up to my own vulnerable side. We are what eat: physically, energetically, completely.

May what we eat always be beautiful, wild and full of the vital mystery of life.

~~~~~~~

~~~~

~~

I also just did an essay vignette on immersion in the natural world over at the Anima blog, you herb blog readers will likely enjoy it as well, so go on over there and check it out.

some mornings
I lay my face
against
the canyon walls
and listen to the hum
of the river current

while trees tower
along the arroyo
flush with flowering
white petals littering
the path up stone
and earth crevice

and I climb fingers first
into every cool cave
searching for the green
vine of life
as it curls
into fine cracks
uncoiling from pools
dark beneath
the surface world

water seeping
out of arid mountains
moist veins to feed
the delicate embroidery
of green life
to unfold the ivory mouth
of yucca flowers –
desert lilies
that taste
of bitter silk
cold and smooth
on parched lips

life beneath the surface
is a song
that has flowed into me
liquid and silver
as dawn
on the river
as stone
erupting into quartz
as lupine
drinking dew
the flowers
all falling down
on my hair

I press
my hands
against
canyon walls
and feel
the river run

in the spring
green shoots curl
around my toes
and the wind
sings into my veins

wild twist of blue
this river winds
through the root fingers
of willow and wild rose

down by the water
brambles hold me fast
cling to my skirts
and hush my whispers

blood from thorns
sweet like flowers
eaten from their stems
wild as the river shaking
the banks loose
of last season’s skin

the floods of winter
have brought me treasures
of seeds and stickers
weathered roots and red stones
that mark the place the sun stood
as I danced myself free
of the darkest days

in the daytime sky
the moon grows fat
and rolls across the hills
I watch her in the mirror
of this water
rippling and turning
as the first flowers open

as the green shoots unfurl
and red dirt drinks me in

For the Blog Party hosted by Ananda of Plant Journeys: Plant Myths and Archetypes

One of the ways I first came to herbalism was through stories, and especially fairy tales. The many volumes of such stories I owned as a child were read so often that eventually most of them completely fell apart, their spines broken, pages creased and worn cover beginning to crumble. Many of these tales did not present the plants and trees as benign, friendly assistants but as powerful entities capable of both generosity and what could sometimes be considered cruelty. I still remember of some of the horrifying images from a few of the oldest stories, of corpses hanging on Briar thorns, babies tortured to screaming by a cradle made of Elder wood and of ancient forests obscuring a young girl’s safe passage back to her village.

In other, or even the same, books, the plants cured blindness, provided shelter and food, or created transformational magic. Sometimes the plants were metaphors or representations of goddesses, monsters or giants. Whatever perspective the narrative took, it was clear that the plants, and especially medicinal plants were complex, varied with a life and language that is the root of our own. The European forest, still a powerful living force when these stories were first birthed, represented a complex organism that permeated human consciousness and had to be dealt with by rural people and travelers, and touched even those tucked safely away in walled cities and cozy agricultural towns.

These days, children’s books and movies tend to show cheerful woodland scenes with singing animals and helpful flowers. This is an easier approach to take now that many of the great archetypal forests of the world have become but mere shadows of their previous selves, and some have disappeared altogether. We’ve reduced our understanding of these places to whitewashed animation and culturally censored fables. Yet, there’s a special power to old growth areas, a palpable presence of the spirit of the place that is far fainter in fourth growth woodlands, mined mountains, plains stripped of their great migrating herds and whole continents deprived of their predators. This isn’t to say that there’s not magic in every area where the natural world is still present and pulsing up through sidewalks, burned out wastelands, clearcut strips and oil slicked beaches. These places are still important, beautiful and capable of healing. In fact, I feel that wounded land holds special gifts for us humans, we who are so often wounded ourselves. Yet no matter how lovely they may appear or how quickly they grow, they lack the intensity and complexity of the vital force that is present in places where the ecosystem has been allowed to grow, spread and bloom without radical interference for millenia.

The heart of the forest has long held special significance for humans as a magical place that few human ever have the courage or skills to navigate. From the lyrical tales of Tolkien to the enchanted forests of Miyazaki’s movies, we find remnants of this powerful place that still holds a profound sentience, and also the great mystery once so central to the human experience. This is the place at the very center of oldest trees, a place where it is still easy, even unavoidable, to feel and hear the forceful personalities of some of the world’s most ancient beings. How many of us have been there? More importantly, how many of our children have wandered with us through the primal wildness of a place unaltered by development, chainsaws and roads. Not just unaltered for the last fifty years, but for the last five thousand years? Will our little ones grow up to know, recognize and honor the power of these special places?

For most of us, experiencing these places will require conscious action, a pilgrimage of sorts. This is an effort, but it is only through personal relationship with these places that we will remember their importance, their magic and the necessity of preserving them, both for our benefit as living parts of the land and for the diversity of other life that depends on their existence. No matter how far we retreat into concrete, insulated particle board and reinforced steel, we are still a part of the ancient wild places, connected at the roots and bound by the very breath we breathe. The Heart of the forest is our own.
~~~~~~~~~~~

The First Forest

Carry the knife
Carry the dress
Between your teeth
Crawl through
This cold water
Knowing that
You may never
Reach
The other side

This is the myth
This is the story
No one tells
I am the girl
Who will kiss
Your mouth
And be gone
Back to never
Never land
Not so long
Before dawn

Peel this calico skin
Can you see who I am
Can you taste
My body
Taste the sweet
Bite of tree sap
And the tang
Of running blood

I’ll take you back
To the trees
To the first forest
The myth held
Inside stone
Water
and the liquid
States
of the human
Spirit

Whisper then
Walk closer
to every edge
Follow
the spiral
Down to earth
to the mystery
of water
Rising to cover
Everything
You have
Ever known

Listen to me
Let me
Bring you back
to the first
Human home
the original
Wood still
Splintered
with stone
that rises
from the earth

Heaving
with the
Ache of fire
the birth
of myth
and landscape
the human
Hands spiraling
Stone and water

Touch me
Until I turn away
Leaving
Only a mound
of leaf mould
and a million
Flowers still
Smelling
of honey
and the
Sweet scent
of new decay

Hold these
Handfuls
of scarlet
Petals and
Twining
Vines
Give my
Body to
the sky

Remember
the stories
Remember
that all these
Faery tales
are true

Fear of Fire

in flannel skirts and bare feet
I sit among the rare mosses
of a dry land
sweet beds of solace
in a place ghosted by flame
every pine needle a match
every cloud a pillar of smoke

even in winter
I watch for lightning
the one strike, the one tree
that will become a torch

in my dreams, everything smells like smoke
and singed skin

I bury my body in the in the river
and let the cold throb
wash the fire out of me
I let myself remember the liquid song
of my blood

I forget about fire
just long enough
to breathe

—————————

Fire Season

the fingers of the pines are turning brown
each summer a little crisper, the fires a little bigger
in the village, people fan themselves
and look warily at the sky
for lightning or smoke
back then, they say,
we knew how winter was going to be
the forests didn’t burn so hot
the earth told us her name
and the aquecias ran full

up in the Pecos
the pines are naked, bitten
dead or dying
barren as a battlefield
every mountain a memorial
though we give no names to our dead
only mutters of pine beetle and damn drought
and fire season
fire season, that every year
stretches longer

down here, we’re still waiting,
shifting from foot to foot
as we have another monsoon
big enough to get us through
just big enough for the grasses to grow tall
and then dry to kindling in the autumn winds

in the north
fire is what keeps you warm
cures frostbite and cooks food
here it is the telltale ribbon
at the edge of the woods
that sings a death song
for wildflowers and rivers

these fires are hot as hell
no manzanita and fireweed
will spring from the charred ground
no resurrection after three days of sleep
only charcoal, ashes and cracked rock
and the absent rains that refuse to wash them clean

Wet yellow flowers
woven into watercress
the ground cool
and damp enough
that puddles form
around my bare feet
gold petals slick with sundots
late season survivors
of a quick coming winter

on this island of lush life
I linger among the red skinned dogwood
and let the sun warm my cold toes
watching the light turn to gold
as it passes over willows
and the wild hills of the Gila

gathering up summer in my hands
I eat monkeyflowers and watercress
tasting all the spice
and sweetness of heat
as the ice forms along the river

In the night
Purple asters
Curl inside themselves
Give death to autumn

And I
Stand beside the river
Let leaves
Slide from the sky
To shiver against my skin

October falls asleep
Her mute mouth
Pressed against
Roots and dust
She dreams the dark
Beds of elk mothers
Among willow and
Barren alder

She dreams
The wind as it pulls
At yellowing mistletoe
And the red brambles
Of my hair

Among the nettles
She dreams a green birth
Under a blessed snow
The rocks are red
Wet with icy rain
Slick as a beating heart
Laid bare
In the hunt

The hollow click
Of empty chambers
Troubles the sleep
Of a she-bear
Blanketed in red leaves
Roots and a slow rain

Gunshots echo
From ridges
Rife with tired men
The elk mother
Leaps on unshaking legs
She clears barbed wire
Leaves clumsy hunters
Fumbling in their own fences
Far behind

October smiles
And turns over
In her bed
Of dust, wood-smoke
And darkening sky