We’d like to take this time to publicly thank Chris P. for the many months that she served as a devoted Anima Sponsor… or “supporter” as we used to term it.  It was also an honor to be allowed to aid her process and growth, while encouraging her brave changes.  She steps down in order to invest in regional activities and causes, with our deep gratitude and blessings.  And her departure creates a need, position and mantle that we have to hope you or someone you can recommend will feel called to fill… joining folks like Resolute and Nick as Anima’s most intimate and dependable assets.

Becoming An Anima Lifeways & Herbal School

SUPPORTER

To be an Anima Sponsor is to be an honored and integral part of this place and purpose, a committed financial supporter essential to the functioning of this School as well as the continued protection and restoration of its botanical and wildlife sanctuary.  Your regular monthly, quarterly or yearly donations can help determine if the land and school not only survive but thrive, touching, inspiring, affecting, empowering and aiding ever more people.

Unlike with most schools, Anima gets no grants or other means of funding, and there is no charge per se for Anima opportunities and products.  All Anima on-site and correspondence courses, personal counsel and herbal consultations, retreats and books are offered on a sliding scale donations basis… with a majority of students only able to offer the minimum amount, and with some having no money at all to contribute in return.  It is at the very core of the School mission, that its teachings and tools be a gift to the world, with no person in need ever be turned away because of a lack of money.  What makes it possible to continue and further this work with such low funding, is the fact that the school property has already been paid for, that the School staff live primitively and inexpensively… and that Anima has been able to count on a degree of continuous contributions from a select, evolving family of Sponsors.

Donations that come in because of courses and services are valuable, yet unpredictable.  What’s great about contributions from Sponsors, is that the amounts arrive at about the same time every month, quarter or year, making it possible to anticipate when the School’s most crucial expenses will get covered.  A commitment of as little as 50 to 100 dollars per month can do wonders for reducing the amount of stress and worry there… helping make sure that Anima continues to be developed, spread and shared to the benefit of the world.

It is thanks to faithful support, that the Anima websites and blogs have been upgraded again, with many more free articles and resources, and an ever-more dynamic interface.  This expanded internet presence has greatly increased not only the amount of student applications but also the number of first time readers, as the general public increasingly accesses and learns through these online portals.  Several Anima Lifeways and Herbal Correspondence Courses are being created and released annually, featuring both fundamental conceptual lessons and skill based subjects – with courses on Tracking, Field Botany, and Grassroots Activism currently in progress.

In precarious financial times, it is even more important that everyone carefully consider where our precious assets are spent, and what we feel are the most meaningful, helpful, fruitful and personally satisfying.  If at any point, supporting the work of Anima feels more important and fulfilling to you than the many other contenders for your finite dollars, a commitment from you would be greatly appreciated… and never forgotten.  And if you want to help out but can’t afford any size commitment, please consider if there is anyone you know who might relate to the work of this school and feel called to be one of its champions and pillars.

To read the details of the Anima history, sanctuary, teachings and programs, go to the:

Anima Lifeways & Herbal School Website – www.animacenter.org

To pledge, click below, download, fill out and then return the:
Anima Supporter Form

Thank you so much for helping in whatever ways you can, whether with donations, assistance with outreach and networking, participation in courses and events, or simply providing encouragement and alliance.  And just by opening to and benefiting from what is given, you are each valued adjuncts to this school and way.

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The day after our last white-out, most of the snow had already disappeared and a warm wind began blowing clouds of golden, nose tickling juniper pollen through the air… yet another sign that dates be darned, Spring is here!  Precipitation continues to blow through, each time preceded and followed by temperatures too warm for keeping a long sleeved shirt on.

The photos are of the wild currant leaves bursting out from what a couple weeks ago were still bare stems.  Already they have a deliriously sweet smell, like drops of honey mead from the licentious halls of Valhalla, or the enticing flower garlands of magic canyon faeries.  Or more accurately, it could be said it is the rest of the universe that seeks in its own individuated ways to be as hardy and eager, fresh and fine, aromatic and alluring as the canyon currants’ new March leafage.

The river is finally starting to rise more, pregnant with snowmelt.  We can tell not only by its growing size, but also its shift in color from clear or blue to a shimmering silver like the sides of salmon or Pacific fog as the sun first hits it.  Kiva had difficulty getting out today, with our specially lifted Jeep still waiting to be repaired and returned.  Soon enough though, we may well find there are weeks where we again have to carry all our supplies in on our backs, intermittently skirting and wading the serpentine swells.  Her purpose today was to upload from town her myriad additions and improvements to the blogs and website, which we will no doubt be ready to announce to the general public soon.

The Traditions in Western Herbalism Conference posters arrived and came out great.  We’ve begun sending them out to anyone who can expect to find herbal or health stores that will agree to keep them up until the event.  Printing costs and postage to mail them is high, but if any of you have places in mind for them please don’t hesitate to write and request a given number.  Already some folks are asking for a signed copy, apparently so that they can be hung as art on their own home’s walls.

We have a number of new articles written that are suitable for magazine publication, so if you can suggest any periodicals in your region to submit to, we would very much appreciate it.
This photo of my in-house bamboo gives the impression that it would like to go outside and play.  It embodies the spirit of growth, change, resilience, and insistence… traits that I can personally relate to.

Below this post you will find our daughter Rhiannon’s latest missive, with a new twist.  Along with the entire text as she wrote it, you will find an audio file that you can download if you would like to hear her read some of it aloud.  We would like it if you could let us know if you’re able to do this or not, since if it appears useful for a percentage of readers I will start posting Audio Tales direct from the canyon sanctuary on a regular basis.  First though, I thought you would like the opportunity to hear this amazing 9 year old girl’s voice, and some of you we know have long been waiting.

Blessings to all, from us all, and from this special place.
Wolf

(photos (c)2010 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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Hello Everyone!!

When I was on my alone time, I saw a very amazing thing!  A fox!  It was very beautiful and graceful.  I at first thought it was a coyote, but Mama Loba and I discovered by measuring the tracks that it was a fox.  When I saw it, I had been with my stuffed animals looking at a pretty tree and thinking about making a nice home for them.  Then I heard the sound of little feet pattering on the sand behind me, and I turned round and there it was staring at me looking very interested.  I’d seen one before but it had been far away and not close up like this.  What a lesson it taught me, getting near before I noticed because I was so busy talking to my stuffed friends.  I felt so excited, I couldn’t wait to run back up and tell everyone about my magical visitor.

Not too long ago I went on my first dentist appointment! Well I’ve had a dentist appointment before but that was when I was so tiny I can’t remember it. It was rather fascinating, cause I had never spent that long in town with lots of people around me for a long time. I have to say though I rather enjoyed it. I missed home though, and was happy to be home when I got home. Town is very interesting to me for I’m not used to it. I also love going on rides I was happy and relieved to not have any cavities except for to two in my baby teeth which will fall out so we don’t have to worry about those. One of the things I found strangest at the dentist was the moving chair!!  It felt very strange lying in a chair that the dentist pushes a button on and it moves up or down. They warned me it was going to move first of course. I found it very particular though. I also got to see a picture of my teeth I could see the insides of them and everything. I was quite fascinated indeed.

While we were at town Papa showed me something he had ordered off the internet for me and Mama Loba a Chinese Brush Painting set! It looked very old fashion too. It had an ink stick with pictures of dragons all over it. An inkwell or grinding stone to grind the ink stick into. A tiny mini teaspoon came with the set too, you filled the teaspoon with water and it into the inkwell the make the ink you have ground into liquid. There was two brushes and paints and a plate to put the paint in. Last of all there was three books instructing how to chinese brush paint. Our friend Resolute before that had also sent us a calligraphy set. There was bottles of ink the color of black, blue, red, and burgundy, there was two quills that we can dip in the ink and write on the special paper with. Also there was this special was you melt then pour on a envelope to seal and before the wax hardens you push the sealer thing into the wax leaving a beautiful picture of a fish or flower engraved in the wax. So we are sooooo enjoying our calligraphy set.

Lately I’ve been studying botany. A friend of Mama Kiva’s – his name is  7Song – is coming to teach me and Mama Kiva more about botany. I’m very exited to meet him. Botany and herbal lore has been quite a source of interest for me these days. Mama Kiva got me a book on herbal lore and botany not that long ago with pictures in it I can color. I’m very exited about it too.

Papa recorded me speaking this blog too, I hope you can download and listen to it!

I really hope you all are doing well.  I will try to write another blog post soon.

Love, Rhiannon Cadhla Hardin

To Download an Audio File of Rhiannon reading portions of this blog, click on:

Rhiannon’s Recording

(photos (c)2010 by Jesse Wolf Hardin)

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OLD HOUSES AND HEARTFUL HOMAGE:

Mama Taught To Seek More Than Just Shelter

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

I often think about my precious mother, years after her passing, and especially the attitudes and behaviors that most characterized her… things like her great joy in the process of creating as well as her seeming inability to linger and savor what she had created or accomplished, the unfortunate penchant to endlessly migrate but also the meaningful ways she felt about the various places where she stayed.

She had barely moved into what was to be her last house when her uterine cancer reappeared, and yet she never regretted using up the last of her meager assets to make the requisite down payment… not even for a second!  She rationalized the move as a way of situating her  closer to a hospital and advanced medical care, but more than anything else she wanted a larger space for all her pretty collectibles and artsy second hand furniture.  Neither convenience nor size were factors.  As with each of her many previous transitions, she had been looking “not for a house” but for “a home.”

There’s no doubt that even a brand new doublewide mobile can be such a home, as soon as it’s furnished with one’s treasured belongings, and decorated with the personal touches that mark it as our own.  And a structure becomes enriched whenever it’s filled with laughter and gratitude, and its energies deepened once blessed by the holy-water of its residents’ tears.  But Mom had always preferred either unique handmade houses or else the really old ones, thick with memories, marked by attention and love.  Such as converted barns and Victorian bungalows.  Spanish ranch houses and adobe casitas.  Gingerbread cottages for enchanted grandmothers, with trellising gardens and glad teasing flowers.

And it’s much the same with all vintage houses.  Whether a hundred year old East Coast structure with its basement and attic or a moss covered Oregon fishing shanty – we usually experience a “take off your hat and lower your voice” kind of reverence when we first enter.  Once inside we can feel the accumulative emotions and moods of the previous generations of residents, sense their own devotions to place in the handiwork in each board and brick.  Weathered oak floors polished by the shuffle of sock-clad feet, tongue-and-groove boards reflecting the busy shifting images of families growing, dying, and giving birth.  The fence rails absorb the sweat of little hands reaching up, as well as crippled hands struggling for a helpful grip.  They soak up and then radiate with the intentions and dreams, loss and gain, love and anger, desire and satisfaction of those who have called it their home before.  You can take out all the heavy wooden furniture and the dark floral drapes, the faded woolen rug and the leaded glass light fixtures hanging from the center of the ceiling, and bring in bright acrylic pile or modern art with aluminum frames – and still an old house will resound with the echoes of its history.  Repaint the walls as you like, but something of the past will continue to show through.

The last house that Mama bought was a New Mexico adobe that had been more than a shelter for the preceding generations, and it proved to mean far more to her as well.  Like every other building she had ever lived in, it quickly became her refuge and her castle, her consolation and her reward.  Her playground and her kingdom, her service and her glory.  Like all truly good things, it made her not only more happy but more grateful.

Perhaps this could be the real definition of the word “homage”:  honoring the source of all blessings, through the reverence and care of one’s own home.

(For a personal exploration of related issues, consider enrolling in the Anima “Sense of Place and The Search For Home” correspondence course: www.animacenter.org)

(Feel encouraged to Forward and Post this piece freely)

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Wildscaping, Brief Storm, Turkey Tracks, and the First Hint of New School Programs

Greetings on a truly lovely day.  This morning we awoke to snowfall featuring giant fluffy flakes, that quickly covered the trees and ground.  We hurried Rhiannon from her schoolwork and into warm clothes for sledding before the equally quick melt.  I stepped shirtless into the swirls and gusts to take photos, just as a flock of wild turkeys ambled up the opposite hill like old women moving slowly in a line through a Fall field, hunched over in rhythmic waves as they gather the harvest into clutched baskets or aprons.

If we were farmers with wonderful peach or apple trees rather than being assistants to a wild bounty, we would be afraid that an early budding might be followed by a freeze, and would thus be struck fruitless this year.  The uncultivated currents and willows, however, are unfazed by the crazed fluctuations of temperatures in the mountainous Southwest, and its buds are reddened and encouraged by a freeze rather than being defeated by it.  Such are the benefits of hunting, foraging, and what I call “wildscaping” – a refastening to the wild covenant, helping the proliferation of edible and medicinal native species that are adapted to the area and resilient in the face of local predation and hardship.  Given the amount of water we have been blessed with this Winter past, we can be fairly confident of at least a smattering of gatherable currents, a sizable wild olive harvest, and enough wild mulberries for not only the rock doves, ground squirrels, raccoons and a berry picking Rhiannon, but also for a Loba-baked pie.  And so it is with our work here, our Winter of rooted efforts and flurry of ideas ensuring new growth, new ways of branching out, a fresh flowering, and the sometimes surprising fruits of such loving labor.

Breaking News: In the next couple of days you will see a post describing the new ways in which our courses are being organized.  From now on all courses will fall under new programs identified with mostly traditional village archetypes, including the Village Healer, Shaman, Mentor and parent, Naturalist, Hearth-Keeper, conservationist Earth-Tender and activist Ranger.  There are a number of courses available, including the all new “ReWilding” and “Emptying of The Burden Basket.”  And soon to be released will be the long awaited, in-depth “Foundations in Traditional Western Herbalism” course, the first of 3-parts and long in the making… followed by other skill-centered ones on wild foods gathering and preparation, land restoration, nature-based education, grassroots activism and much, much more.  As they say, you heard it here first.

Also, the amazing artist Katlyn, a longtime friend and ally of ours, has asked for help adapting the “Emptying of the Burden Basket” for a group ritual, possibly incorporated with the building of a cairn.  It could be hard in a public environment to meaningfully discharge all that one carries and is often attached to, or to have the time for unloading of all that needs unloading, but we are committed to increasingly figuring out how to create opportunities including group opportunities that are not only meaningful and symbolic, but that also represent the genuine moving of energy, making real life choices and difficult changes, being remade in the process of remaking our world.  I will let you know what we might come up with.

The sun is blazing through what is only a thin layer of clouds now, with an increasingly blue tint.  The snow that for a time preserved the turkeys tracks, is now all but soaked into the earth, leaving no evidence of their passage except for my pleasing memories… and this brief telling.

Warm regards,
Wolf

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Many of you have been waiting for the release of this special course for a long time.  Wait no longer!  Registrations are now being accepted, just click on the link at the bottom of this post.  We will be announcing approximately 1 new or revised course per week for awhile, including the upcoming first course in the Anima Healing Arts herbal series.  Thank you for forwarding these announcements, to folks you think could most benefit from the various subjects. -Kiva Rose

Announcing the Anima Correspondence Course

EMPTYING OUR BURDEN BASKET:
Unburdening, Evaluating & Then Choosing The Burdens We Bear

with Jesse Wolf Hardin

Suggested Length: 3 Days to 2 Weeks

Included: Assigned readings, exploratory questions, step by step instructions, and assignments for implementation

The Burden Basket is a metaphor for the load that we carry on our shoulders, including not only unpleasant obligations, restrictive schedules and plans, but also the commitments and responsibilities we are proud or pleased to bear.  The worries and fears we’re attached to.  The weight of what we think we know.  The illusions and preconceptions that limit our understanding.  The dogma and certainty, comfort and assurance.  The career that we are bound to.  The family and other people we’re promised to, and the ways in which we are expected to be with them.

Most of our lives we may choose to just keep adding to our Basket, never taking time to do a comprehensive inventory, to see what has grown or otherwise changed since we first put it in there, to assess what is still real and relevant to us and see which continues to align with our needs and priorities  as well as what doesn’t.  The result of such endless accumulation is often a feeling of being over-promised and overwhelmed, beholding to old promises and intentions rather than responsive to current needs, principles, mission and purpose.

You are sure to benefit from the Burden Basket process and course:

• If your daily activities seem increasingly unrelated to your needs, desires and aims
• If you are spending an every larger portion of your days worrying about what you “have” to do instead of what calls to you
• If your preoccupation is with the problems of the past or fears of the future rather than the challenges, lessons and rewards of the present
• If you feel that you owe a debt to somebody or something, rather than feeling a desire to give back
• If you think of much of what you have promised as obligations, instead of as commitments
• If some of your commitments were made mostly to meet the expectations or demands of others
• If your main reason for sticking with any unhealthful activities, patterns or relationships is that you’d feel guilty if you didn’t
• If you have come to resent any of the ways that you give to loved ones and the world
• If current relationships are based on who you once were, instead of on who you are now
• If your relationships, behaviors and missions have evolved, without reappraising and reframing them
• If your vocation doesn’t serve your purpose, or weaken your spirit
• If you mainly cling to the place where you live out of habit, convenience, desperation or familial expectation rather than because it somehow serves and nurtures you
• If you feel stressed over things you no longer truly care about
• If you are unclear on the order of your priorities
• If you are unclear what is amendable, as well as what is irrevocable
• If you mistakenly imagine that it is “out of your hands,” that others have control and you have no options
• If you are willing (not necessarily “ready”!) to undertake a fresh and radically honest look at your life and how you live it, and initiate the major shifts that will be called for

Your course includes deep self exploratory questions, along with assignments that include not only every step of the actual Burden Basket emptying but also the instigation and framework for making the crucial changes in our lives.  More than a rite of passage, it involves a complete stripping down and reassessing, prompting a thorough remaking of our ways and beings, relationships and promises.

It is only with our baskets scarily empty, that we can see clearly what matters most.  It’s then – clear headed, unmanipulated, unmonitored and unburdened – that we can best decide which weighty ways of being, means of income, behavioral habits and systems of perception, long term efforts and worthy pledges to willingly and happily put back into our basket.  It’s then that we are best able to make conscious choices as to what to reincorporate and recommit to, which people to bring back into our promissory fold, and in what ways we insist on relating to them or being treated by them from now on.
Done well, there will not be nearly as many items in the Basket as before, with the unreal, illusory, outdated, unhealthy or no longer relevant left out.  And even if perchance the total weighs as much, you will then be able to shoulder it again with satisfaction as well as determination on your face.

Through the process of this course, you will no longer do anything out of unconscious habit or unhealthy custom.  And you will no longer feel controlled or a victim of past pledges and circumstance.  You will for a period or periods step aside from all usual habits and ways – then re-enter the larger world you will help create – bearing responsibility but not obligation, carrying forward in your treasured basket what will then be your most welcome burdens.

Click Here to Register:

Correspondence Course Application

————-Thank you————-

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Introduction:
Written for general and rural audiences, the following piece by Wolf nonetheless communicates some fundamental Anima principles, such as taking responsibility for our part in co-creating our reality and our world!  It serves as a reminder of the price we will pay if we cling to the norms and rules of a society running headlong towards “distraction and destruction,” but it also applies to every unhealthful thing that we individually stick with, when we know that to honor ourselves and our needs means to make a scary and radical change.  Consider sharing this piece with others, especially with folks you might sometimes have a harder time communicating your ideas to.       -Kiva

Changing Horses:
The Power to Make Major Shifts

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
www.animacenter.org

There’s an expression popular in the Old West and elsewhere, about not “changing horses in midstream,” and that may be good advice when riding across a river with a herd of overexcited mustangs.  Then again, if that same otherwise well-loved horse is determined to paddle headlong towards the perilous edge of a 300 feet tall waterfall, it might not be such a bad idea to hop off and crawl aboard a mount with more savvy and sense.  And in a way, we’re always “midstream” in both life and history, but that’s no reason at all not to try and make a needed change.

“But I’ve put so much time and money in already,” some might say, “I’d be wasting my investment, my hours, my vote, or the years I’ve spent with so-and-so.”  I’ve heard this excuse used to explain pouring more money into fixing a lemon of a car that’s had one expensive part break after another, used to rationalize continuing to support an elected official when they’re obviously blowing it, to justify continuing to stay in an unhappy marriage after decades of mutually administered misery, and to rationalize remaining at a job that kills one’s spirit and prevents them from ever trying to do the kinds of things they would really love to be doing.  This is akin to a frustrated cook repeatedly adding valuable ingredients or spices to a hopelessly botched recipe in vain hopes of salvaging it, when it might be cheaper and more effective to start over from scratch!

The direction of our society and even our species may very well be towards some undelineated yet very real precipice.  But like that cowboy in the old saying, we too have an option – even a calling – to get the heck off and find the best means for getting back to the solid shore.  In this effort, it is crucial that we not stick with what we’ve known if any aspect of what we’ve known proves wrong, that we seek a direction quite possible different from that of both the madly panicking and the too-well behaved herds.

I don’t want you’ve been told, but we can’t let little things like fear, relative powerlessness, busy schedules, depressed moods, massive federal laws and ponderous regulations, world court decisions or politicians machinations, family disapproval or habitual hesitancy, slick-bottomed lawyers or invasive agencies get in the way of our work to stop the unbearable, right clear wrongs, heal what needs healing and redirect a culture going ever further astray.  If there is anything we don’t like about the way things are going, then we have a responsibility to do what we can to alter it.

If we don’t each make a shift, before long we will still be celebrating the 4th of July, but patriotism will have come to stand for obedience rather than great efforts in behalf of human liberty.  We may have reached the point of relative safety from certain kinds of terrorism, but only at the cost of subjecting ourselves to a terrifyingly omnipotent and manipulative system, with our every act monitored, evaluated and either rewarded or penalized.  Citizen owned firearms will most likely be tightly regulated or completely banned, while agencies of oppression, street criminals and outright thugs will carry more advanced weaponry than ever.  The government might make us somewhat safer from outside threats, but at the same time there will be little of the Constitution left to protect us from that government.  We’ll be able to vote electronically from home, but big money and slanted media will still decide elections. All races will be able to be elected to high positions in the government, but they will be just as subject to the established power brokers, funders and lobbyists.  A majority of the jobs in this country could be federally created, funded or subsidized and directed from the top.  Women will have an easier time breaking into careers, but most won’t enjoy their soulless jobs anymore than men do.  Well paying positions will be lost to overseas labor pools, and an ever greater percentage of our food will be imported.  More of that food may make its way into stores, but who knows what chemicals will be in it, and what American farmers can grow will be controlled by official departments and corporations owning the patents to not only seeds but genes.  Zoos will develop ever more realistic enclosures for their captive animals, but outside their walls there’s likely to be darn little wildlife and habitat left.

Unless we do something about it, in the near future there may still be natural, undeveloped places to test our mettle and strengthen our skills, but it’s likely that visitors will be required to show I.D., buy permits, avoid any hunting or gathering of wild foods, stay on the designated trails and promise to not stay past dark.  Salmon could fill a few currently empty rivers and streams again, but if so it’s likely they will be the tasteless, heartless, farmed variety.  Cosmetic surgery could reach new extremes, and scientists may be able to easily manufacture replaceable body parts, but people probably still won’t like their bodies.  Herbs and other forms of self and community healing will be over regulated or made illegal, while the multinational pharmaceutical companies make ever more money on our misfortune and suffering.

What’s more, the video screen will surely feature thousands of stations, yet with still very few programs worth watching.  Every tale ever written will be available on the internet, but hardly anyone will voluntarily choose to read a book when they can be playing video games instead.  Rural cultures will be starved or gentrified, with urban areas increasingly becoming hectic and unlivable.  Even if we can afford to fly to exotic countries for vacations, destination countries will increasingly look all the same.  There may be new technologies developed so we don’t have to depend on expensive oil and gas anymore, but it will be the same profiteering international oil and gas companies that own them, and the average person will still have a heck of a hard time paying for the needed energy.

A major disempowering misconception is that the President, legislature, global corporate heads, think tank weenies, media pundits and so called experts really put our interests first, that they have any clue as to what’s best for us, that even know where they are going or will take us the way we need to go.  Another is the claim that jumping off into unknown, unplumbed and admittedly fast moving waters is somehow more treacherous or dangerous than keeping our feet in familiar stirrups, closing our eyes and holding on!  The biggest lie of all may be that we are supposedly unable or unequipped to decide for ourselves, or that we need anyone’s permission to make the necessary radical switch.  Not only is it our right and responsibility to pick the horse we ride at any given moment, but we also have feet and hands of our own.  From the time we are little, we can walk, and we can swim… and we can all make out the roar of the falls, the nearer we get to the rim.

(A future Anima Correspondence Course will be on the topic of change and choice. Please copy, forward and post this piece freely)

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Another Celebration of The Gifting Cycle

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Every moment is a gift, of course, and yet there is also very little time that goes by here at the Sanctuary that there is not the active gathering, creating and wrapping of presents of one kind or another.  Seldom are they mailed out to meet the obligations of a birthday or holiday, but to acknowledge good deeds, give thanks for assistance, to stimulate the receiver’s self knowledge, to express our affection and love.  It may be a hand painted card by Loba, sentiment and gratitude committed to paper with pastel water colors.  A thank you card by Rhiannon, drawn in her own inimitable way.  A recipe to someone in need of more flavor in their life.  A tool for someone with much to do.  A book of ours that some intent learner tells us they can’t afford.  A bag of woodstove baked granola, or hand me down clothes.

It was only a few days ago that I thought to photograph Rhiannon presenting to her little friend from town, Cassandra, with some lovely shirts and dresses… and if the lighting had been good enough, I would have included them here.  Then I came home with several boxes of hand picked gifts sent to us by our apprentice Resolute, providing another chance to illustrate my thoughts on gifting, and the vital gifting cycle.

By giving, and allowing ourselves to be given to, we are part of an ancient, primal Gifting Cycle… as crucial as the exchange of gases as we and plants share breaths, as the symbiotic give and take of every creature and its connected habitat.  Kiva is giving to her students and readers all day long, via her work on this donated Apple laptop, and so how natural it seems that they often send her packages of medicinal herbs and roots, dark chocolate and handmade crafts.  Or this stoneware Bear Fetish container, the first thing we pulled out when we opened the initial box from Resolute.

What fun, to sit everyone among the spread out bounty, including baskets for food and herbs, a wooden cased calligraphy set for Loba, and an extensive collection of prepared microscope slides (with such amazing micro panoramas as cicada legs and fractal fly eyes).  And to know that every item had great consideration put into its selection, by someone one of those many incredible women and men who care not only about our shared mission but about us personally as well.

I too was honored, with a carved pipe that will help embellish the walls of our enchanted work space.  While you can’t tell from the photo, it is in the shape of a bearded Viking with a look of intense determination, a flattering mirror of my not necessarily attractive trait of needing to always press through, to do, make better, and accomplish.

Not all our gifts this week have been material, can be worn, used or hung.  Others have been in the form of words expressing appreciation for a health consultation of Kiva’s that has dramatically improved their condition, for a timely bit of lifeways counsel or long submerged lines in a book of mine that rose to the surface of their consciousness just in time to solve a quandary or to inspire clear action.  So many ears will never make out the song of life we at Anima help disseminate, making it a touching gift to us every time what we teach proves to be a gift to the person making use of a skill or insight.

-Wolf

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Many deeply rooted changes have been taking place here in the quiet of the Canyon during the cold months. As Spring slowly unfurls her foliate face, we’re increasingly incorporating these transformational shifts into our existing framework of education and healing work. Regular blog readers will first notice that my herbal blog has a new title, and is now called Animá Healing Arts rather than The Medicine Woman’s Roots. Those who visit the herbal blog via the web rather than subscribing through email will also have noticed the structure and content change of the non-blog pages as well as a new front page. Even if you do subscribe via email, I encourage you to take a look at the new, expanded site and additional offerings.

The new Animá Healing Arts name reflects my own (as well as Wolf & Loba’s) increasingly strong desire to provide accessible healthcare and healing opportunities for those who most need it. While this has long been an overriding interest of mine, the current shift is evidence of my deepening commitment to the well-being of our local community, the larger human community and the earthen community as a whole.

Here’s an excerpt and description of Animá Healing Arts and what we offer:

“The Anima Healing Arts Health & Herbal Clinic provides online and on-site care on a per donation basis, with no one ever turned away for lack of funds. Integrating multiple healing modalities in order to provide optimal wellness, we offer lifeways counseling, herbal consultations, nutritional healing & other holistic therapies. We deeply desire to foster a life-affirming, grassroots and common sense approach to healing based around the unique needs of each individual and informed by the wisdom of the natural world.

The Mission of Anima Healing Arts:

• To provide accessible healing services to those who need it.
• To gift the local and larger community with tools for caring for themselves and each other.
• To empower individuals to take charge of their own health and healing.
• To restore a vital connection and integration between the person, their body and the living earth.
• To support the emotional, physical and mental well-being of human beings in order to contribute to the health of the planet.”

Please note that all old links to The Medicine Woman’s Roots blog and bearmedicineherbals.com will still work just fine. Also, if you are a feed subscriber (via email, feedreader, browser etc), your feed will remain intact and no action is needed. Also, you can access the Animá Healing Arts blog directly at: http://animahealingarts.org/blog

The Animá Lifways & Herbal School is also placing a stronger emphasis on skill-based learning, which can be seen in our subtitle on the School blog (and soon the website as well), “Nature Awareness, Healing & ReWilding Skills”. We have always taught a blend of understanding and action, and this recent shift is simply a way of further driving home the importance of ~living~ our dreams, passions and callings in the most real and earthen ways. Wolf, Loba and I feel strongly that it is vital to pass on traditional knowledge, especially in this time where self-sufficiency is so critical to not only surviving during hard times, but thriving. A full update to the School site is also underway, and should be up within the week, with many additions and changes that will, more succinctly than ever, communicate the mission and purpose of our work.

Also be on the lookout for announcements and descriptions of this Spring’s Foundations in Western Herbalism Intensive. This will take place May 6-9 on the School grounds here on our 80 acre Animá Botanical Sanctuary, surrounding on all sides by the Gila National Forest. This intensive will be three days of exploration of the principles and practice of the traditional and vitalist herbalism, including herbal energetics, constitutional medicine, wildcrafting and much more!

Additionally, in the Spring of 2011 we will be introducing a new on-site botanical medicine program for those of you interested in pursuing in-depth herbal study at the Animá Lifeways & Herbal School in person.

Thank you all for your invaluable support and enthusiasm as our healing practice, school and other projects grow and blossom, we appreciate each of you so much!

~Kiva

~~~

Photograph (c) 2010 Jesse Wolf Hardin, Stinging Nettle Watercolor (c) 2010 Loba

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I’m listening to Mari Boine as I write this, a Sami (once called Laplander) woman of incredible virtuosity.  Her powerful voice, singing mainly in her native language, evokes the glowing tipis of the haunting ice-laden north, the mystical landscapes of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia where these nomadic reindeer herders struggle to hold onto their sacred land-based traditions and connection to nature.  It is thus the chill of departing Winter that I hear now, though she is lately as apt to be performing with traditional African musicians of the far South, and her tribal shamanic sound and contemporary rhythms are a frequent soundtrack to our Anima canyon soundtrack as well.  One of the few songs she sings in English, “Big Medicine,” speaks of the power of the healers and creators of our world, a power lying to one degree or another in us all, a song that I wish all healers, herbalists, shamanic practitioners and lovers of the old ways could hear.  (The image of Mari below, is by Carina Musk Anderson.  I suggest starting with her album “In the Hand of The Night”, and then if you like it, getting them all!)

During this long Winter, along with the entire population dealing with the continuing economic downturn, we suffered deep personal tragedy, vehicle breakdowns, and a crazy stalker woman who has still not ceased her efforts to inflict pain, adding a sense of struggle to the period of short days and (for us) to0 little sun. And yet even in the hardest moments, there were has been great satisfaction, reaching and effecting the lives of more students and readers than ever, a deepening alliance with our closest allies and supporters, new ways of tightening the message and making every taught truth practically applicable.   The family has been well, everyone continuing to learn and deepen, Rhainnon’s constantly impressive development into a being of wisdom, compassion and power.   It is she who ensures we embrace the cold along with the warming rays, take joy in the rare snow drifts and the chance for sledding and Calvin and Hobbes snowmen.  Indeed, the Winter is never without its growth, for us in our personal stretching over and through the season’s challenges… but also for the green world rising up through even cold and snow.

Snow in Georgia and Florida, we heard on the satellite fed radio.  Here though, it is Spring already whether their is more of the wonderful white stuff or not, and after the December through January remission of certain species we now mark each day by an eruption of “firsts” again: the first nettle babies, already 7 or more inches tall.  The first buds on the wild elderberry bushes, the first willow buds, and now Kiva’s sighting of the first bee of the Spring, with childlike excitement on her own Sami-shaped face.  The days are appreciably longer as you hopefully all have been feeling, and even in more icy climes there must be a similar enchanted dusting of promise swirling about in the air, a sense of green energy building and readying to recover every snow or rain fed hill and yard.

The river here remains low, leading us to hope that the snows might be melting slower than these hot days would seem to indicate, slowly soaking into what has been a perennially thirsty ground.  We cannot get the Jeep all the way in, however, with the sixth of our seven crossings remaining unpassable by vehicle.  The river bottom there is a billowing pillow of sand, loose and wet down to a depth of 3 feet or more.  I sink to my thighs when walking across at that spot, not for entertainment or personal test, but to pull out a heavy winch line and attach it to well rooted willows in order to extricate what was meant to be an unstoppable School and Sanctuary vehicle.  Fortunately it is a only a short and dry walk from there, up over the ridge by the Gifting Lodge with whatever supplies we drive in that far.

The school, our blogs and websites have been as shifting as those river sands, though firming up into something ever more focused, organized and effective.  Amid all the conference work, course work and book writing, have been long conversations brainstorming ways of reaching and equipping more people with the skills most needed in these trying times.  You may be noticing a steady, subtle but instrumental developments in site and blog organization and language, as we incorporate what had been separate expressions of homesteading/conservation/rewilding on the one hand, and the self-growth/shamanic/spiritual on the other.  The next post after this will be Kiva’s detailed explanation and description of this evolution, including a change in her blog name and the unveiling of our healing arts and clinic component.  Curious yet?

For now though, I invite you to check out the announcement below, of our latest Anima course offering, and the first in what will be a long series of Nature Awareness courses.  If you have been looking for ways to connect to your home area, or to find the place that might feed your spirit and purpose best, this new course may be for you.  Next up are Kiva’s herbal course, a heightened Awareness course, and the promised course walking you through the extensive Burden Basket process.  Thank you in advance for doing what you can to share this announcement with others.

Love,

Wolf and Family

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