The School of Plant and Place Connection

 

Spending time with sassafras (Sassafras albidum)

I hope this post finds my readers, fellow hikers, and nature lovers enjoying our winter days. It's been a mild season thus far - which I must admit has not saddened me - with little snow but plenty of cold, crisp breezes, damp spits of rain and slush, and fair shows of sun too. I've been getting outside with trail runs and afternoon hikes as much as possible and settling into spending some time quietly in a circle of trees on the property. I have also been putting a whole lot of time into crafting a program that I've long dreamed of offering. Quite honestly, ever since I graduated herbal medicine school many years ago. I finally feel as if I have garnered the knowledge, the experience, the ability to slow down and listen to share my relationship with the plants with others in a comprehensive, heart-centered program. My intentions are to guide others into relationship with the natural world, specifically the plants, by which I think all else can follow.

Meet the School of Plant and Place Connection! Consider this school part science and part spirit, interwoven. From that mixture, some really special relationships are sure to sprout! The primary focus of this school will be on exploring the ways in which we can work with plants, both wild and cultivated, as medicine and food. However, in learning about the plants we will call upon all of our ways of knowing, from the intellectual to the sensual. We'll spend time being with the land in which the plants grow. We'll spend time with the plants one-on-one, learning their textures, their fragrances, their flavors, and their stories. We'll practice listening closely to what the plants and their fellow inhabitants - the trees, the rocks, the birds, and animals - have to share with us. For all of nature, whether they be of flora or fauna, river or rock, have their own intelligence, their own wisdom, their own felt sensations. This is something our ancestors knew and communed with commonly. This was largely our method of learning the healing properties of plants. However, today we sometimes need a little assistance and perseverance to find our way back to this kind of experiencing, of knowing. Through our time with the plants, we will cultivate kinship with the natural world.

Gathering yarrow flowers and leaves (Achillea millefolium) for tea and tincture 

We'll work hands-on with the plants that grow in field and forest and backyard too. Participants will learn the language of botany and how to identify plants and become confident in accurately identifying those which are safe for consumption. Together we'll wild harvest plants and transform them into valuable home remedies - teas, tinctures, salves, syrups, and more - and delicious meals chock full of nutrients. Food after all is medicine too. We'll spend time in the garden too, learning about those cultivated plants from all over the world that are easy to grow and a joy to tend for a lifetime. Spending time outside with the plants, hands in the dirt, in their slow time is the very best way to develop relationship with the plants. We can further that relationship by bringing them into our lives through everyday food and medicine, and soon enough we find ourselves effortlessly aligning with the rest of nature. A return to our human-animal selves. 

Herbal salve crafted with calendula flowers (Calendula officinalis)

To know how to work with the plants that surround you for medicine and food is to know how to support not only your own health and wellbeing but that of your family, friends, and community. The School of Plant and Place Connection will provide insight as to how to these plant medicines apply to common ailments, deficiencies, and disorders. We'll discuss body and plant energetics and how to bring them into alignment so as to facilitate healing and decrease imbalance. 

Morel mushroom (Morchella) - edible and delicious!

Through our time together, we'll meet medicinal trees and fungi and lichen. We'll learn birdsong and animal tracks and how to walk barefoot. You'll learn terms like corymb and sit-spot and oxymel, and how to recognize, cultivate, and create each respectively.

I plan to launch the full Immersion program in Spring of 2024. This will be a five-month hybrid program, with monthly two-day in-person classes and zoom classes in between. 

This spring 2023, I am launching the Plant and Place Series. This is an introduction to plant and place connection, plant identification and botany skills, and plants as food and medicine. I hope y'all will join me! This is an entirely in-person program. We'll gather three full days spread out over the spring and summer - May 20th, July 8th, and August 19th - to better acquaint ourselves with the plants and the natural world. Experiential homework assignments will ensure your connection and enliven further exploration. All meetups will happen in or near to Milford, Pa (Pike County) on my land and in pristine public lands. If you're coming from afar, there are a number of reasonably priced (or entirely free) campgrounds nearby as well as budget-minded to luxurious accommodations. Reach out - I am happy to provide recommendations.

The website is now officially up and running! Check it out here: School of Plant and Place Connection. Please take some time to peruse and learn more about this special series: Classes I hope you'll join us this spring in exploring this wondrous botanical world that surrounds us and of which we are a part!