Completed Heartwood Doula Logo by Jesse Wolf Hardin, with color background

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Creating A Heartful Logo

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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A logo is a custom created design that symbolizes an enterprise, such as an herbalist’s clinic, consultation practice, school, farm, apothecary or bulk herb supplier, for use on website headers, display ads, letterheads, brochures, business cards, posters, FaceBook and so forth.

A logo does more than represent you and your efforts.  It functions as a visual call, and only takes the slightest glance to have it link in their minds to you and your work.  In marketing, they call this “branding,” associating an enterprise or person with a particular image or icon, making their products readily identifiable.  In psychology, it’s akin to “imprinting,” and similar to how the young of many species are imprinted by and identify with the image the first caregiver they see, usually a parent.  It is also similar to the clothes styles we choose and the jewelry we adorn ourselves with, although it is a single unchanging design rather than rotated, and it speaks not just of our daily moods and tastes but of our essential being… our focus and service, personality and purpose.

A logo is one of the first things needed from the time a person first makes the determination to start their own practice, business or nonprofit.  You can search out an artist whose work you like, preferably with an affinity for your chosen subject matter, and pay anywhere from $300 to $3,000 depending on the artist as well as the hours entailed.  Some artists like myself will even accept barter or payments over time.  Or if you feel pretty good about your artistic ability, you’d do well to try creating your own.  Detailed suggestions for logo designing and drawing can be found in the Spring issue of Plant Healer Magazine, due for release March 1st.

Shown here is my latest piece at each of the stages of production, intended to represent the deeply caring spirit of an herbalist, doula and prenatal massage therapist, Sabrina.  The figures nest within the heartwood of a still living stump, featuring a heart labyrinth bas relief carved into its bark, evoking a loving healing process.  It is my hope – as with all such logos I have ever done – that my design celebrates and furthers the person’s life work, while affirming in them their precious gifts.

To read the entire how-to article, subscribe to:
Plant Healer Magazine

To inquire about my creating a special logo for you, either email or leave a comment at the end of this blog post.

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I begin by blocking out the general design until the porportions and feel are right. Doula Logo Art by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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Step 2, is darkening the pencil lines and adding the major details. Doula Logo Art by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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Step 3, for me, involves inking the image and erasing any remnant pencil lines. Doula Logo Art by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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The final steps involve adding color to the inked art, either with water colors, felt markers, or high quality colored pencils like I use. Clean up the background and you're done, background, lettering and framing can be added later. Doula Logo Art by Jesse Wolf Hardin

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This one’s for you, Sabrina.

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It’s important that Plant Healer Magazine not have so many columnists that room runs out for contributions from others.  Last time we announced the addition of quarterly contributions from Susun Weed… and this round, we found we couldn’t resist adding just one final column:

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Mountain Medicine: Traditional Healing Folkways

by Phyllis Light

Phyllis D. Light (http://phyllisdlight.com) is one of the foremost repositories and champions of both traditional Southern Appalachian herbalism and folk herbalism in general.  We are so happy to have her insightful and personable articles every issue, covering everything from plant profiles and medicine making to childhood tales and poignant history, case studies and thoughtful ruminations, the practices that grew out of her wooded Southeastern mountains and hollers, and valuable and endangered plant-medicine traditions from all parts of this country and beyond.

What a pleasure it was for Kiva and I to meet Phyllis in person at last year’s Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference, and to look forward to having her there to teach again this September. She is discerning and opinionated while still being warm, accessible, humorous, unpretentious and seemingly free of entitlement… in every sense, what we would call “down to earth!”.  Below is an excerpt from an interview we did with her Fall of 2011, one that you’ll likely find informative and inspiring whether you happen to be an herbalist or not.  To read the entire 8,000 word conversation, including Phyllis’ detailed description of Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine blood typing, please see the Winter Issue of Plant Healer Magazine, available by going to the Plant Healer site:
PlantHealerMagazine.com

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Plant Healer Interview:

PHYLLIS LIGHT

SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN HERBALIST

In dialog with Jesse Wolf Hardin

Plant Healer Magazine: Thank you, Phyllis, for taking time for this conversation.  We honored to have this opportunity to talk more with and about you, and to hear your heart and mind on topics you might not otherwise have cause to address.  Let’s start at the beginning if you please – what do you remember as your first deep connection with the natural world?  When did you begin acknowledging nature as a teacher?

Phyllis Light: My first deep connection with plants came when I was about five or so. I was too young to help pick cotton so my mother let me run around the field and play hide and seek with the kids of the other field hands. There was a strip of grassy meadow land between the cotton field and the woods filled with sedge grass, golden rod, asters and passionflower and it was here that I hid. If you lay flat in a field of sedge grass no one can see you and there isn’t any apparent ripple in the flow of the grass to give you away. I hid very well and no one found me and the next thing I knew, the other kids had left and I was left alone. At first, I was a little scared, it was such a big cotton field and there were no adults in sight. It was a vast land of cotton rows and emptiness. I could hear the wind through the trees, the buzz of insects but nothing else. It was eerily quiet.

I didn’t know what to do, I felt very alone, very small and just a little afraid. So I just lay in the sedge grass and stared at the leaves on the trees, all moving together in the wind. I watched the clouds moving across the sky. I listened to the sound of the grasshoppers jumping among the grass stalks. I don’t know how long I lay there, not moving, just being. I wasn’t scared any longer, or upset. Just quiet and a little subdued. I had become part of the land, the cotton rows, the meadow and the woods. We were the same.

I didn’t move until Momma came looking for me and then I leaned over and pulled a ripe maypop (passionflower) and ate it as we walked back to where she had left her pick sack.

I can’t remember a time when Nature wasn’t a companion, a friend, benefactor or teacher and sometimes, an enemy. Nature can be loving and generous and it can be hard and cruel. I grew up well aware of the dual aspect of the natural world taught in early lessons of survival. If there was no rain, the crops didn’t grow and we didn’t have anything to eat. If the wind blew too hard, the corn stalks lay on the ground. If it rained too much at the wrong time of year, there would be no cotton crop. If we were in the path of a tornado, we could be homeless or dead. And then there are those wondrous days, when the sun is shining, the wind is gentle and the temperature mild. All of creation responds to those days.
We lived in flow with the seasons; the sun and the moon and the natural rhythms guided our lives. We followed the growth cycles of the plant world keeping track of the abundance or lack of wild plants for wildcrafting. Some years were ginseng years when the digging was good. Some years were pink root years when the digging was good. My grandparents chronicled their life history with stories about senging, herb digs and natural phenomenon.

When you live with the flow of seasons, Nature is a constant companion. A lover, a mistress, a child or a relative. You are not separate.  I have never considered myself separate from Nature; we are part and parcel.

Plant Healer Magazine: Was your love of nature and plants the bridge to doing healing work with herbs?  What other vision, insight or events might have led to your giving your life so fully to this work?

Light: My love of Nature wasn’t what called me to healing work. My love of Nature is a solid force, a constant influence in my life, and it would be a part of me regardless of my profession. As a child, I knew that I would help people when I grew up but I wasn’t sure how. Using herbs was just a natural extension of my early training and that belief. My grandmother taught me, my grandfather taught me, and  my father taught me. In a way, it was the family business.

Over the years, I’ve used many different tools to help people; herbs, bodywork, psychology, energy, nutrition, metaphysics, prayer, or whatever works. I will use whatever is available, on-hand, or needed to help someone.

I’ve been seeing people since I was about 19. In the beginning it was a more casual arrangement. People didn’t make an appointment, they just dropped by and Sunday afternoons after church was especially busy. At that time, being an herbalist was a lot like being a lay preacher. You didn’t get paid. It was your gift and your calling and it should be freely given. But one event sent a clear message that it was time to change the way I did practice.

I was a single parent going through a divorce. Life was tough with four kids and not much money. I had been feeling really depressed for several weeks wondering how I was going to make ends meet. One early morning I went to the grocery store dressed rather raggedly and looking a little unkempt. I was slowly pushing my cart up and down the grocery aisle wondering what to buy when I passed a woman dressed rather like the Amish, in a long dress, with long sleeves and bonnet.

I paid for my few purchases and went home. As I was unloading the car the same woman pulled into the driveway. She came to me and held out her hand. I held out my hand in return and she put a wad of money in it. “God told me that you are doing good work. And we’ve a little extra money this month.” That’s all she said and before I could even say thank you, she had turned and gone. I was totally flabbergasted; it was enough money to make it through the month. After that event, I suddenly had a full-time herbal practice. But how I came to charge people is another story.

There was a camp revival meeting in an empty field not far from my house. About mid-afternoon, three women appeared at my door looking for the herbalist’s house. When I told them they had the right house all three wanted appointments. After their appointments were finished, one of the women asked how much they owed. I told them nothing, no charge. Another of the women asked me to pray with them and they all stood up and we circled. After the prayer, the third woman said that God told her that I should charge $25.00 for each appointment and open a big office to see folks. They went back to the tent revival and told everyone about me and for the next few days, I was deluged with clients from the tent revival. When the revival was over, I drove to the closest large town, found an office and opened a practice. I was busy.

It seems I’ve always had guidance along the way.

Plant Healer Magazine: I consider strong sense of place essential for any life or purpose, committing to the land and its human and other-than-human cultures, and being accepted, informed and nourished by the land in turn.  What does it mean, to be a conscious inhabitant and member of the Southeastern mountain region?

Light: Wow… big question. Sometimes it’s really hard to maintain my equilibrium in the face of stripping mining, coal mining, clear-cutting, planes spraying cotton defoliate, polluted lakes and rivers and all the other ways that we humans have of defiling the very land that gives us life. In the South, there seems to be this love/hate relationship with the land. Folks truly, truly love their land even while they are strip mining it. They will tell you how much they love the mountain while they are clear-cutting it. I don’t understand the gestalt….. maybe it’s a cognitive disconnect, but folks here just won’t believe that what they do to the earth is reflected in their health. They also don’t believe that we can ever permanently damage the earth. And of course, there’s that whole Christian perspective of stewardship which is not defined well. For some, it gives them the right to rape and pillage the earth, for others, it is about conscious care-taking.

Sometimes, I just cry when I see what is being done to the land, the rape, the ravage, the need to squeeze every dime from every inch. I do what I can and over the years, I’ve worked with others who feel the same way.  Being conscious carries responsibility.

Plant Healer Magazine: You are known as a teacher of Appalachian Herbalism.  How would you define that term?

Light: Southern and Appalachian Herbalism, the traditional medicine of the lower Appalachian Mountains and the Lower South, developed from the folk medicines of the Native Americans, Europeans, West Africans and Celts. Its development resulted from the need of settlers to take care of themselves and their families in a new land filled with strange and wonderful plants and animals and new diseases. Southern and Appalachian Herbalism and Folk Medicine includes the use of plants, home remedies, foods, prayer, story-telling and psycho-spiritual rituals handed down by oral tradition within families and communities. Assessment techniques are based on physical observation, understanding the personality, and the Southern blood types, bitter, sweet, sour and salty. There are three main categories of illness: physical, psychological and spiritual (magical).

Plant Healer Magazine: What is the most common ailment or complaint you deal with?  Has this changed over the years?

Light: The most common ailments I’m seeing now is Chronic Fatigue due to viral overload, too much stress, gluten sensitivity, lack of rest and lack of good nutrition. It seems that chronic illnesses always come in batches. Last year it was hypothyroidism and the year before multiple sclerosis. Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Lyme disease, polycystic ovarian syndrome, mitral valve prolapse and digestive tract issues round out the problems I see most often.

Plant Healer Magazine: How much of a factor is lifestyle and environment, and to what degree can an herbalist even address these relevant or even central factors in client consultations?

Light: Lifestyle and environment are the primary factors in illness along with emotional strife and discord. My grandmother called all this “worriation” which says it all, the lack of being true to oneself. If we forget who we are, if we move away from our authentic selves, then we are more prone to illness. Herbs and other healing modalities can help us remember who we are, help us value ourselves again and restore self-esteem. Once self-esteem is restored, if our bodies have not reached the point of no return, then we can heal.

Herbs work on every level of our existence, physical, psychological and spiritual. In my tradition, for chronic illnesses, herbs were used to change attitude, restore vital energy and facilitate physical healing. When our self-esteem is low, when negative emotions are engaged, then vital energy plummets. Tommie often recommended a “swallow” of herbs in these situations; his version of drop doses. For acute illness, larger amounts of herbs are needed more often because  this could be life or death and we must respond appropriately. In Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine there was always an action on the part of the client required in addition to herbs or other recommendations. The required action, usually a penance of some sort, engaged the client in their own process of healing and kept them engaged. I still use this technique but I call it homework instead.

Chronic illness is never without lifestyle, environmental, stress, or emotional influence and I do address this in sessions. As a healer, I believe this is totally appropriate. It’s often the emotions we bury that continue to facilitate chronic disease. They may not have caused the problem, but emotions hold the problem in place and cause stagnation in body and spirit. This stagnation then leaves us more susceptible to acute illness and infection. When our spirit, our personalities are low, then our immune system is low.

Plant Healer Magazine: Describe the system of therapeutics and diagnosis that you use.  To what degree does it derive from this continent?

Light: I use observational assessment techniques and constitutional analysis based on Southern and Appalachian blood types and personality profiles, the four elements and folk astrology. This is my primary technique. But I also use Western nail and hair assessment, Ayurvedish/Western tongue assessment and biomedical knowledge of disease. All this comes together to help me find the patterns of dysfunction inherent within the constitution and personality of the client. And I also read bloodwork.

Plant Healer Magazine: On another topic, what do you think are the biggest threats to herbalism in the world today, not only from outside, but from within?

Light: The pharmaceutical/medical industrial complex is high on my lists of threats to herbalism and natural healing techniques in general. Greed and the desire to increases the bottom line is all it takes to threaten the ability of folks to take care of themselves and their families. Tighter government regulation on herbal products is also an issue that we herbalists must maintain vigilance toward.

Herbalists tend to be a house divided: Those for licensure and those against. That division fairly prohibits any type of mass political action. This is both a strength and weakness. It keeps our profession viable, active and non-exclusive. But it also limits our political power.

Licensing herbalists emerges from time to time, but licensure is a state’s issue, not a federal one. Let’s keep herbs for the populace!

Plant Healer Magazine: What kinds of regulation might prove intolerable for you?  What is the responsibility of herbalists, when it comes to helping determine the direction of this field, creating useful forms and protocols, or resisting imposition and injustice?

Light: As herbalists, many of us are already practicing under the radar. It’s a balancing act trying to grow the profession while simultaneously not wanting to call too much attention to your practice. It seems to be the really successful herbalists with lots of clients that the authorities tend to watch or bust. It’s an odd thing: The better you are at your job as an herbalist, the more popular you become, the more likely to draw the attention of the authorities.

Herbalism, in the South, is considered a tradition and I’ve seen less hassling here than in other parts of the country. Actually I’ve never seen any herbalist hassled except Tommie who blatantly put on his salve label that it cured skin cancer. It was the feds that came knocking on his door about that, not the local authorities. And I must say, the woman sent out to Tommie’s place with a cease and desist order was really nice, non-threatening and totally reasonable. Tommie change his label and that finished that business, well almost. He hand-wrote a sign on plywood that basically said his salve would do what he said it would do.

There is also the belief that God gave us herbs for our health. Here, herbalism is a religious freedom. It is ours by right and gift and the Bible speaks clearly on that point and there is protection in that belief. It’s a different situation in the South for that reason than I’ve seen in other areas of the country.

Even when I worked in a medical clinic, I never introduced myself an anything but a folk herbalists. In the South, there is acknowledge respect for the profession. However, from my experience in the medical clinic, I now believe that herbalists who work in this arena need training above folk medicine. The number of pharmaceutical drugs grows every year and clinical herbalists (my definition) must be familiar with them.

While I don’t believe in licensing herbalists, I can see where educational standards for clinical herbalists might be appropriate. But that being said, we herbalists can even agree on the definition of what a clinical herbalist does.

Herbalist are independent, ornery, and filled with opinions. It’s hard to get us to agree on anything.

If I couldn’t grow or gather herbs that would be pretty intolerable.

Plant Healer Magazine: What responses or adaptations might we see in the future, what forms might herbalism take?

Light: Too many options to make a clear statement on this. I do see a revival in folk medicine for which I am thankful. Herbs are continued to be researched and this research is influencing how people do practice so I don’t see that changing. It will be fascinating to see what happens over the next 10 years.

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Plant Healer Magazine: What most pisses you off?

Light: I get really pissed off at injustice, brutality, and the strong taking advantage of the weak. I get really, really, really pissed off when people hurt or abuse children or animals. And I don’t care too much for lying either.

Plant Healer Magazine: What tickles you more than anything?

Light: I get tickled at people watching, getting to know someone, funny British comedies, and watching butterflies and birds.

Plant Healer Magazine: If you weren’t already giving all your time to herbalism, if your future were a blank slate, what else might you do with your life, what might you give to yourself?

Light: Hmm… that’s a tough one…. rock star, famous author, actress, warrior, magician, astronaut, … All my childhood fantasies.

Plant Healer Magazine: What are the most essential tips you might give to an herbalist, to make them more effective, or to help them deal with the challenges, politics and pressures they may face?

Light: Never lose faith in who you are or what you do.  Study with as many teachers as possible. Self-study continually.  Become an engaged member of your community.  Question authority when appropriate.  Maintain a connection to Nature and the plant world.  Find a good mentor and maintain that lifelong relationship.  Stretch your herbal boundaries.  Strive for excellence.

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See the Winter 2011/12 issue of Plant Healer Magazine for the complete interview with Phyllis Light.  You’ll need to be subscribed prior to March 1st when the Spring issue replaces it.  Go to: www.PlantHealerMagazine.com

To learn about studying with Phyllis, or to read some of her work, please go to: PhyllisDLight.com

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Criticism:

Ouch and Affirmation

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by Jesse Wolf Hardin – Plant Healer Magazine

“Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.” –John Dryden

“The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.”
–Mark Twain

Criticism can hurt.  Even I, aggravatingly self assured as I might be, can feel stung by certain criticisms depending on the content and who is doing the criticizing.  And my family is even more vulnerable, being more concerned about what people think.

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It is painful when criticisms are valid, requiring revision or improvement… but they can be purely insufferable when unfounded and untrue.  A few exchanges in the social media world recently brought that fact home for us here.

“One knows one’s weak points so well, that it’s rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.” –Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

On the other hand, I confess I tend to miss criticism in its absence, worrying that I’m not having sufficient effect, not stretching my readers or challenging my students sufficiently, if we don’t at least inspire some heated dialog or angry diatribe, if we don’t say things that result in a few telltale fits of denial, unbalance some accepted notions and elicit umbrage, and garner a modicum of complaints.  And I don’t feel I’m expanding my depth and reach and unless such responses are on the increase.  I felt satisfaction in the fact that government agents once attended all my Deep Ecology Medicine Show concerts, affirming the significance of the motley civil disobedience actions that often followed my performances… and I felt less significant when they could no longer be found among the audience, apparently no longer considering my rabble rousing and healing work to be a viable threat to their paradigm of destruction.

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I remember a forest activist friend once telling me that “being criticized or attacked is often a sign you’re seen as having an impact and influence.”  I can of course cite plenty of examples of powerless and anonymous people around the globe – from South American tribespeople to European Roma and West Bank Palestinians – who are the constant subjects of derision and injustices.  It is nonetheless true that envy and spite tend to infuse and confuse, embolden and embitter criticism of any high visibility accomplishment.

With Plant Healer Magazine, we are likely extra sensitive, having gone to such efforts to make it exemplary and yet accessible to all, casting a broad and inclusive tent, giving so many of our finite mortal hours to creating it with no certainty of success or income, and thereby making it in part our gift to the world.  And yet still, we actively sought creative feedback and criticism, in order to test its effects.  For over a year we got nothing but comments that were often too darn sweetly complimentary to quote, as we continued seeking the signs of ecstasy and aggravation that might help us measure Plant Healer’s vitality and effects.

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Now at long last, we find we have earned our first criticisms, the worst being that we are the establishment media!

“Criticism is prejudice made plausible.” –H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

“The critic is not the antagonist so much as the rival of the author… How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”  –Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Plant Healer Magazine has indeed had an amazing growth spurt, as a voice and champion of the practice and culture of folk herbalism.  But we would have been happy for it to be read by only a wild fringe of outlaw herbalists and outliers, visionary scientist oddballs and spunky kitchen medicine makers, and have been surprised at the range and numbers of subscribers.  It’s true that it’s become the most talked about herbal publication, but the establishment?  With our diverse and insurgent community?

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Ouch! That one actually hurt the old revolutionary in me, no doubt about it.  And if such an absurd accusation remains the strongest criticism anyone can muster, I’d say we’re still not nearly unconventional, challenging, controversial, irreverent or outrageous enough.
-JWH

(To judge for yourself, subscribe by clicking here to go to www.PlantHealerMagazine.com)

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the [person] who points out how the strong stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the [one] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his [or her!] place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” –Theodore Roosevelt

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Gaian Voices was a digital and print magazine that got very little distribution over the years, but that was as heartful and earthy a publication as there’s ever been.  Founder and editor Susan Meeker Lowry recently released what is the final issue, as she moves on from this act of love to a beloved herbal practice.  It contains the full version of the interview with Wolf that we’ve excerpted below, and Susan has generously made the entire issue available for us to give to you.  Simply click here to download the FREE full color pdf:
Gaian Voices

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ESSENTIAL CONNECTIONS:

Interview With Jesse Wolf Hardin

In dialog with Susan Meeker Lowry
Excerpted From the Final Issue of Gaian Voices Magazine – Autumn 2011

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Jesse Wolf Hardin has taught awareness and deep ecological wisdom for nearly four decades.  He is the author of numerous books including “Gaia Eros” and an illustrated book for children “I’m A Medicine Woman Too!”.  He is the coeditor with Kiva Rose of the acclaimed “Plant Healer Magazine” journal of folk herbalism (www.PlantHealerMagazine.com), and codirector of the Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference each September (www.TraditionsInWesternHerbalism.org) in the Coconino forest of northern Arizona.  He writes and teaches at the Anima School and Sanctuary in a remote river canyon ecosystem he restored, hosting wilderness Retreats (www.AnimaCenter.org), and publishing the Anima blog (www.AnimaCenter.org/blog).

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.GV: Over the years I’ve noticed the core message of your work has stayed the same, though the way it manifests has shifted, from the early roadshow days when we first met, to your early years in the Canyon, then Loba came and your art and music seemed to blossom, then with the arrival of Kiva Rose your teachings expanded and deepened.

Wolf: The core has remained consistent, grounded in earthen purpose and informed by the lessons of nature.  And in every form, this Anima teaching has conveyed the necessity of not only increased awareness and connection, but of manifestation and action as well.  And I find it interesting that even as an activist inspiring direct action in the 1980s, I called our concerts and talks “Deep Ecology Medicine Shows” after the traveling inspirational speakers and healers of history.  My role at that point was getting hard core activists to include healing themselves, their communities and the environment as part of their activism, and lately I teach herbalists and other healers how vital it is to integrate action to heal political, social and environmental imbalance with their treating of personal and client illness.

We’ve effectively raised awareness and affected thousands of people’s lives through this 38+ years process.  Yet the work must go on, for at the same time, wild places and plant and animal diversity have continued to contract, and even the most “progressive” president presides over environmental destruction, expanding wars, decreasing liberties and rule by the elite.

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GV: I agree. Even though more people have become aware of the ecological degradation, climate change and all, things are getting worse. It’s disempowering.

Wolf: Not so much disempowering, since it is truly only we ourselves, and not authority, that can empower us.  I wish it was as simple as the system or the paradigm of the government or religious institutions taking away our power. You’d know which mouse to root for in that Redwall tale.  More problematically, the very idea of taking power in their own hands is unthinkable for most people, imagining that we can’t have an impact, or that the cost we’d pay is too high.

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Jesse Wolf Hardin lets his hair down, 2009, Anima Sanctuary, NM

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GV: People often say that the only thing we can do is take care of ourselves, that striving to change anything more is impossible. And of course that’s totally the antithesis of what I believe.

Wolf: It is, to put it bluntly, utter bullshit. We know from reading history that it only takes only from 5 to 15 percent of a population responding to a situation to initiate a change. Things don’t necessarily change for the better of course, but it only takes a small number of people to usher in major cultural and political transformation.  The few could indeed change the entire ways that we relate to each other and to the natural world, if it was our priority as well as committed goal.

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Paul Bergner & Jesse Wolf Hardin, Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference 2010

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GV: But something happened. It seemed like something shifted. People went inside. Maybe it was the economy . . .

Wolf: Definitely the economy had something to do with it, in a society where ecological health and giving time to activism are both treated as luxuries.  But people also need to rotate out of full-on activism, with others rotating in, so that we can feed our other needs and interests, explore other ways of giving to ourselves and the world.  Gardening, restoring land, home schooling our children, or even taking time to learn a musical instrument are not inward so much as grounding, providing strength for the ways we reach out including our activism.  The people we worked with decades ago are still doing the good work, though perhaps more regionally and intimately, in their communities and watersheds.
What is still needed most is the coming together, not just sharing values but sharing life, building an active, participatory community.

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GV: One of the things you said after the last Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference is that you felt it was the tribe coming together.

Wolf: Yes. And once again that will require instigating, inciting, developing the kind of tribal interactions that survive throughout the year, that aren’t just dependent on an event or personality.  Of the TWHC participants, 2/3 say they don’t go to any other conferences because they usually don’t like them, many sleep in their cars because they’re free clinic volunteers and people working for next to nothing in their communities. These are people who are in resistance to the paradigm in every way.  Herbalism is simply one important way in which this manifests. If Kiva and I can feed this so that it grows and spreads roots throughout the winters between the summer events, we’ll be satisfied that the tribe is indeed gathering and coalescing. But the next step has to be the one that most contemporary movements haven’t taken, which is to make it real and continuous in our daily lives.

GV: What do you think about all the Occupy movements that are happening around the country right now?

Wolf: There’s not going to be any real environmental or social change in this country or the world until there’s been a complete confrontation of and collapse of the economic system that rules the world.  At the same time, I wish it didn’t require financial hardship to make people aware of and responsive to a need for change.  I’m tickled that it’s happening but I wish the uniting inspiration could have been something besides the fact that folks are getting paid so much less than the bankers who are screwing them.

GV: Like coming together because we love the earth and want to live differently. For years people would ask me, “What is it going to take?” And for years I’ve been saying, “It’s going to take thousands of people in the streets, not just in one place at one time, but everywhere at once.” Like you said, we need the economic system to collapse, and the consumer system to collapse.

Wolf: Crazy, though, would be waiting to be sure we’ll succeed before initiating changes in our lives and our community, or trying to ensure our security before taking risks. The good work, and the rewards that come with it, always happen in the now. The party is now, the activism is now, the garden is now, the love is now, and the resistance, – the fight – is now. Regardless of outcome or the chances of success, in the face of almost impossible odds, it has to be done.  And this glad doing, hard as it can be, tastes ever so sweet.

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GV: Yes. I’ve tried to live my life that way, then I came here because my sister can’t live alone. It’s a beautiful here with mountain views and really old trees, but it’s not what I would have chosen. My vision was for a place much more rustic, ideally off-grid, more sustainable. I also wanted to have a small do-it-yourself kind of herb store. But this year I started Gaia’s Garden Herbals, so that’s kind of going back to those roots. And I’m going to offer some workshops, even though I’m nervous about putting myself out there as “teacher”. I feel I don’t know enough, more what I want to do is share a perspective.

Wolf: That’s what teaching is. It’s sharing tools and perspective. Both of which you present in a way that is optional. And you know the nice thing is, no matter where you are, healing is a bridge because most people, regardless of lifestyle or income, understand that our modern allopathic medical system does more damage, is unfair and unjust, is too expensive with limited access, and so on. In other words we can take a retired person out of Aspen or a cowboy out of Reverse, NM and have them immediately understand the language of empowerment when it comes to self-care.

GV: And learning what’s growing around you. Like goldenrod. Most people think of it as a weed but it’s so much more.

Wolf: If goldenrod helps what ails them, they’ll realize it’s not a “weed” to be denigrated and removed, which could open them up to other possibilities. Maybe they’ll want to know more about other uninvited plant guests growing in their yard rather than yanking them out. The next step might be for them to plant some native medicinals that used to be prolific but had become rare.  In this way, herbalism becomes a language people can hear, and perceptual as well as clinical tools for them to use. That’s why I’m so heavily into herbs now. If it were just about fixing one’s physical “owies”, I wouldn’t give myself so fully to this effort. What excites me is the way that the study and use of herbs can be a bridge to a larger concept of healing and living, to healing others, our disjointed and denatured culture, and the living land of which we are a part.

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GV: I want to talk about the Wallow Fire of 2011. In one of your updates during that time, you wrote that you always loved the wind, but the wind brought the fire closer and closer. Did it change the nature of your relationship with it?

Wolf: It was especially hard for me because I’ve always heard from everybody, from my mother to my friends, that the wind is unsettling, they just wish it would stop. But for me, it was always a way that I felt connected to everything around me, awakening a sense of air’s molecules connecting us physically to the breath and being of every living thing. Experiencing wind as a connective force uniting me physically with everything, was a spiritual sense made physical for me. And when it got too strong, I was proud that I was the one who stayed out because I liked being humbled by something I could barely walk headfirst into.

But during the Wallow Fire, every time the wind slowed we could see on the progression maps that the fire had stopped moving in our direction. And every time it picked up, we’d see it suddenly rush three or four miles in a single night in our direction, until by the time the fire finally stopped at the end of June it was in some places only seven miles from the Anima School and Botanical Sanctuary. You can drive just a short ways from here and see where the trees are burned and dead. The ponderosas will be replaced by a succession of junipers and not by old growth pines, because of the drought cycle the Southwest is in. The pain from this thought and threat was indescribable.  All the trees in the canyon, except for the ponderosas, are in a sense my babies. None were here until I mercilessly started chasing cows out when I first arrived, swinging my rusty Confederate sword, screaming at them at the top of my lungs. Until then, there were no cottonwoods, no willows, no medicinal plants growing because the cows had eaten everything. So here’s this wind that I experience as an extension of my spirit – the anima – also feeding the flames of impending forest destruction.

I’ll tell you a story.  Not so awfully long before, I’d hit a low point, mourning that no lover chose to stay and make a home in this wilderness with me, that my children were taken from me and no longer under my protection and influence, and that it seemed I needed to travel in order to properly champion these and all wild places.  At one point while on the road, a sweetheart wrote to say she didn’t want to see me because I was “too intense”, the caretaker I left tending my home bailed and the borrowed vehicle I was touring in blew up.  Hitchhiking home, I then walked straight away to the sacred cliffs below our property to do the one thing that felt most authentic for a mixed blood Cossack to do… I cried.  And in the process of crying I felt my heart saying to the cliffs, to this canyon and region, “I’m yours. I will not leave you. No matter what happens, I will not leave you. If I never have a mate, if I never have an income, if I can’t get my art and writing out to the people, it still won’t drive me away. I am here for you.”

And so, if the Wallow Fire had come through, after that force of life and death that is the wind had roared over this land, I knew I would still be here.  In case I couldn’t save the cabin where we write, I had picking the spot where I’d set up my tent in the midst of the black ash, from which I would start planting the seeds of green and home and wildness anew.
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GV: That had to be really intense.

Wolf: Yeah, and especially happening right before the conference and when our Plant Healer Magazine was due out.

GV: I know! It was unreal. I’ve never visited your home, but I feel a real connection, because of you of course, and the way you live and your commitment to the land. So the thought of that fire coming through – there wasn’t a moment in the day during that time that I wasn’t aware of it in some way. And there were many, many people who felt the same.

Part of it is the commitment you’ve all made to the place, and the relationship that’s reciprocal back and forth between you humans and the rest of life there. It’s also the writing and photography you and Kiva share. I think it helps people to become more aware of and open to their own places. The fire also got me thinking about my own fears. To acknowledge and honor that beauty that is all around me and then to have it destroyed by a fire and still remain here, to be able to see the potential of the beauty that would still be there, that would be revealed over time but in a different way.

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Wolf: There’s two things we teach in the Anima courses with regards to place. One is to feel at home everywhere you are, even on a park bench in the largest city, connecting deeply wherever we are, sending out not necessarily roots but feelers, like tendrils that sense the being and messages of where we are now.

The second thing is, in my heart of hearts I believe there’s one place in all the world for everybody that calls to them louder and more insistently than all others, a place that will support them in being their most authentic selves, and that perhaps needs us the most. Finding that one place is kind of like the child’s game where one kid tries to find a hidden treasure while blindfolded, with the only clues being the other children shouting out “warm or warmer” as they stumble closer to the prize, and “cold and colder” whenever they moved away.  When we travel even a few miles from this home, things will feel a little colder in a sense, and on the way back it will feel increasingly warmer until we’re settled into the heart and center of that place again.  It’s not just a matter of thinking “I like pine trees, so I should be in a pine forest.”  Sure, it’s a hint.  But it will be more than pines that distinguish your home, more like the qualities of a particular forest, a specific grove, a certain watershed or section of coast, a definitive square mile.  And it will be the site of greatest potential when it comes to being at home in both your self and your place.

I ask that people connect with, learn from, honor and repay any place where we might be.  But at the same time, we have a responsibility to seek the place that brings us into our power and best aids our gifting to the world… regardless of income potential, inconvenience or disruption, and even – if I may be so personal – if caring for a handicapped sister makes it more complicated and difficult.  The search for that one place to root and settle, is in itself an unsettling process, just as is following the calling of your gifts and what to do with them.  It requires discomfort and movement, with great sensitivity to the signs.

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Wolf Hardin with daughter Rhiannon in 2010, Anima Sanctuary, NM

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GV: I still have the interview you did with me so many years ago. We talked about Gaian Economics, among other things. It’s strange, but I still feel exactly the same way I did back then. All the stuff we talked about – the economic alternatives people were starting, still exist. If I were to do a Google search I’d find all kinds of cool stuff, but they seem isolated from each other, and the potential comes from connection and working consciously together. For that to happen we need more than email, we need face-to-face communication. That’s one of the things I miss so much from the days of the bioregional congresses. When we stopped getting together regularly it was like losing a part of myself. The times we’re living in need us to have that kind of connection again.

Wolf: In part, we need to break bonds, because so many of the bonds in this paradigm, in this society, are unhealthy. They’re obligations instead of responsibilities.  They’re laws that we obey instead of things that we do out of consideration and care. We need to rip ourselves asunder from our own comforts, from our imaginary limitations, and from this gawdawful system, yet at the same time we need to make and nourish existing connections.  As much enjoyment as I get from needed revolutionary acts, it seems my main job now is not to go around severing with scissors so much as casting the luminous threads of co-mingled purpose and shared values that might possibly lead to the re-creation of a living, organic, Gaian tribe.  It’s funny that the wild eyed hell-raiser that I always took pride in being, is now so dedicated to the nearly impossible work of mending existing conduits and creating new connections, pathways and circuits… for drawing us together.

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GV: A lot of people are being connected because of your work. You, Loba, and Kiva Rose have created a vehicle for people to be attracted to. You’re bringing people together and helping to make those connections.

Wolf: I’ve always been afraid of just entertaining or affirming the “choir”, as they say.  Each of us has to reach out to those who still buy into the lies of the old paradigm, who are by far the majority. To find common ground, common loves, common language with people who aren’t that much like me, to have an effect on them that they may not even be aware of until after the fact, that’s very Loki or Coyote – the Trickster, as we say in the southwest – and it’s absolutely delightful.  And we need never miss an opportunity to do this magic. So if I briefly have a local carpenter’s attention, for example, I’m going to find things to say in the metaphor of his tools and livelihood that are very much Gaian and deep ecological, very much incendiary and revolutionary and that lead him to thinking.  I council everybody to do this.  Whether you’re 18 years old or 80, whether you’re in front of a class or client, or if you temporarily have the attention of a distracted checker in a grocery store, that’s your opportunity to teach, affirm or disrupt as needed.  That’s your audience in the moment. You can rock that checker’s world!  There’s something you can give her that’s exactly what she may be least ready to hear but most in need of understanding.

It’s each and every minute that we need to do this work, every minute that we need to be resisting injustice, and every minute seeking our home, our place and purpose until we’ve found it, and it has found us.

We’re certainly not waiting for anybody’s qualification or certification.  We’re not even waiting for our own self-confidence to catch up.
As is necessary, we’re doing it now.

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(Please take time to repost and share this interview… so as many as possible can get the free, final Gaian Voices magazine)

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Intro: Truly, writing this is about the last thing I needed to be doing this morning, but something just comes over me from time to time.  It will hopefully be of some value to those who, unlike me, do not ruin the quiet of a dawn light with mind twisting news.  I confess to checking in on the BBC, CNN, Fox and NPR, as only by weighing the claims and omissions of each can any threads of truths be trusted to follow.  I include here only few of the more noteworthy stories of the year, along with the look at the bright said that contemporary events require.  The facts are real, so if you don’t like them, please do whatever it takes to alter our current reality.  And if you find yourself laughing in the face of it all, you have a healthier attitude than you think.  Regards, Wolf

2011 YEAR IN REVIEW
An Irreverent Overview and Look At The Bright Side

by Jesse Wolf Hardin  Anima Herbal and Lifeways School

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• Animal Awareness …has been in the news again this year. an increasing number of published research studies demonstrating that critters including relatively simplistic insects can think, make and use tools, and even experience complex moods.  Yes, moody wasps, self reflective primates, grieving rodents, tool creating and problem solving ravens.  Duh!  It only took them how many decades of underrating and writing off other life forms, justifying their exploitation with scientific “findings”, before starting to acknowledge what all primitive land-based peoples and most children naturally know.  Next we hope to hear wider and deeper acceptance that plants can feel.

On the bright side, there is more and more research evidence giving credence to ancient ways of perceiving the world and intuitive sense and understandings… making it at least somewhat easier to argue for a different way of humankind acting on the world.

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• The 2011 Election Season …began with a Democratic President found to be a great disappointment to the majority of his own constituency, having come in as a liberal darling but then stacking his cabinet with Bush appointees, extending the war he opposed, spending more money on weaponry than any Republican ever, unapologetically presiding over the further erosion of individual liberties, and bailing out the big banks while doing nothing to reduce bank foreclosures on regular people’s homes.

On the bright side, he’s not Bush or Gingrich.  And he looks like he really cares, deeply.  Just look at him!  And did I mention that he’s not Bush or Gingrich?

• The Republican Primary …is shaping up to be a choice between which one makes the Republican electorate gag the least.  Many of them think candidate Mitt Romney is a bit flip-floppy for running against his own health plan and consider aspects of Mormonism closer to Star Trek than the Bible, and preferred the idea of running an even blacker man in the form of a pizza magnate if only he could have kept his hands off of women besides his wife or paid to keep it quiet.  As proof of scraping the bottom of the barrel, Newt Gingrich is held today to be the frontrunner even with the Evangelical Christian block, in spite of a oddly explained jump from one religion to another, being an agent of the big banks, talking down to common folks, and cheating on his wife at the same time as he was indignantly trying to bring down then President Clinton for arranging for extramarital oral sex under the Presidential desk.

On the bright side… he’s not Sarah Palin.  That’ll have to be good enough.

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• The Iraq War Ends …sort of.  Years after President Obama’s pledge to get the troops out, the last were reported rolling out of the country.  But the war is only over if you don’t count the rapidly worsening civil war that our intervention made possible, and we can only say we’ve pulled out if we ignore the tens of thousands of military trainers, advisors and spooks left behind, and the American private security employees sent to replace the our uniformed soldiers.  One vet was heard lamenting that the best we accomplished was killing Iraqis long enough to postpone their killing of each other.

On the bright side, a lot of troops are at least re-stationed if not home.  And while we’d ignored the gassing of the Kurds we had encouraged to revolt, we did “get even” with Saddam – as President George Bush put it – for  “threatening my daddy”.

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• Senators Represent Us …or so it’s said.  But increasingly look nothing like the folks whose needs and will they are supposed to represent.  Reports in November showed Senators’ incomes recently tripling, while wages in the U.S overall increased by less than 1%.

On the bright side, they can also be shown to be spending more at area stores, in their own way boosting the economy.

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• Our Piece Of The Pie …keeps getting smaller.  The latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics seem to belie what the pro-corporate Fox commentators always tell us, that breaks for billionaires creates jobs for the little folk, and we just need to work harder to work our way up a steep but fair ladder of enrichment.  Nobody I know is working any less hard, and yet figures show that for the first time ever, the “poor” and “near poor” categories of American citizens exceeds 50% of the total population of this country, graphically leaving no more middle for the so-called “shrinking middle-class” to fit into.  The top 1/5th of U.S. citizens now make more money than all of the other 4/5th combined, and the share of the top 5% of people has increased to 69% of the wealth.

On the bright side, it can’t last.  Combined with a credit economy, it is a recipe for eventual collapse.  Start learning to think locally, barter, install solar, grow food… even if the system outlives you, it’s the right, natural and satisfying way to live.

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• Occupy Wallstreet …features a wide range of citizens “from drunks to social scientists”, as one gal wrote me, protesting the obscene bank bailouts, foreclosures, corporate hegemony and increasing disparity in wealth.  It unfortunately focuses on everyone getting a fair share of the income and benefits produced, without addressing the ecological realities of ever increasing population and decreasing arable land, or questioning the basic absurd system of credit, the assumptions that makes it possible for a privileged minority to exploit the masses, or our culture that puts more emphasis on attaining riches that nurturing the richness of our lives.  By December, many of the largest Occupy protest camps had been taken down, the movement at least temporarily slowed by a combination of a cold Winter, with police generally getting a clue that clubbing and pepper-spraying average folks in front of cameras in the daytime wasn’t near as effective at quelling things as sneaking in the middle of the night and making their evictions with restrained violence.

On the bright side, average everyday people are at least getting up off their duffs to complain, and complain loudly, taking time off of work and school, carpenter good ol’ boys next to school marms and radical youth.  They’ve hopefully learned that we have a voice even if not a say, that eventually you get let out of jail and almost always survive even the biggest doses of pepper spray… whilst the status quo, no matter what their line, will prove unsurvivable in time.

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• Air Force Drones … are reportedly loaned for the first time to local law enforcement agencies, for use surveilling U.S. Citizens on U.S. soil.  Employed prior to a raid to determine the numbers and armaments of plain-old domestic criminals, it sets the precedent for increased domestic use of military equipment and personnel in the monitoring and controlling or the American populous.

On the bright side, Game Boy experience is not wasted when it comes to comes to our land-bound drone pilots.

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• Air Force Drones …also get the go-ahead from advising government legal teams to use air-to-surface missiles to wipe out not just foreign nationals, but now U.S. citizens on foreign soils as well, and this includes any Americans deemed by intelligence agencies to pose a future terrorist threat.  This, with the targets never being officially charged with a crime nor given an opportunity to provide a defense in a court of law.

On the bright side, while you Occupy protestors won’t like having your every move monitored by multi-million dollar robotic planes, you can be thankful they aren’t (yet) greenlighted for stateside missile strikes.

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“What do you mean, no more vodka!  Tell the hetman to go f*ck himself!”

• Russian Dissent …is alive again, calling for the banishment of their once cherished strongman leader, Vladamir Putin.  Tens of thousands of everyday Russians took to the streets to protest a clearly rigged election and revolving door presidency.  Communists, shop owners and intellectuals have joined in the demonstrations, though hardly any are looking for a liberal or lenient leadership.  What they want is another swaggering, boxing, history spouting, gun shooting, song singing, blustering and bragging conservative President… just a different one than they already had, and hopefully one with just a tiny bit less corrupt a political machine.

The bright side, is that this is the way it’s supposed to be done in the old Motherland!  In Cossack and Georgian societies for example, a new leader could be elected by vocal acclaim at any time, and displaced just as quickly and summarily when they failed to represent the will of the people.  There is a Russian folk saying, that even the arrival of new thief is preferred to leaving the door open for those who have already stolen from you before.

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• TWHC Unsettles …in 2011, a gathering of diverse folk herbalists stretching the comfort zone of its presenters, challenging the treasured notions of attendees, instigating and provoking, promoting the means for wildness and sedition while providing almost none of what could be considered normal and reasonable event fare.

On the bright side? Same as above.

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• Neanderthals Among Us …and within us.  A spate of news stories have brought to the public’s attention the fact that Neanderthals – once mistakenly portrayed as unattractive, brutish and without any culture – weren’t outcompeted and killed off by our more refined human ancestors as so many experts had claimed.  Instead, these “cave people” were apparently sexy enough to encourage a significant amount of interbreeding… enough to literally screw themselves out of existence.

On the bright side, the next time anyone gives us crap again – for grunting when we make love, eating with our hands, or writing politically incorrect and potentially offensive articles like this one – you can blame it on the determinant Neanderthal genetic material still residing within us all.

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Happy New Year, Friends!  And not just happy, but meaningful, chance taking, thrilling…

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(Post and Forward Freely)

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Gifting Hummingbirds:

Anima Supporterships and Artful Thanks

by Jesse Wolf Hardin – Anima Lifeways and Herbal School

My latest drawing is of an intensely purposeful hummingbird, feasting on the sweet nectar of medicinal Stachys cooleyae blossoms from British Columbia.  I stopped writing the endless articles and emails long enough to create this image in acknowledgment for Anima Supporter and herbalist Tobi.

Tobi is one of only 3 consistent Supporters of this place and work, folks who make a commitment to send a certain amount of money each and every month not to get something, but to give.  Anima Supportership is an opportunity to be an integral part of our efforts and work, helping enable all the programs, publications and services.  And this drawing for Tobi is one way that we hope to acknowledge and honor that commitment on the part of the 3 we’ve come to count on.  Thank you again Tobi, Nick and Resolute.

For a pledge of $50 or more, others can also share in getting the Anima work out to the world.  If you happen to be interested, please fill out and then send to us the:

Anima Supporter Application

Tobi didn’t ask for this drawing of her totem animal, nor even ask for any thanks.  The best gifts – like those that she regularly sends for Anima – are gifted without expectation, with a true gladness of heart.

And glad we are, to send this feathered acknowledment to her.

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The canyon got its first snow of the season, and is falling again as we post this.  Rhiannon has a spruce bough decorated with old-timey ornaments and with a little fur hatted Russian doll at its pinnacle.  The following holiday piece is classic Wolf, and some of you may already read it when it first appeared here about a thousand blog subscribers ago.  It’s one of 180 alternately sentimental and seditious essays making up a book we plan to publish in Summer of 2012: The Straight Shot: Backwoods Wisdom and Downhome Tales For A World Gone Astray, by Jesse Wolf Hardin.  It will have something for everybody… and the author claims, “something to stir or offend people of every set persuasion.”  Enjoy, and Christmas wishes from all of us at Anima. -Kiva and Family

An impoverished, misunderstood misfit... yet happy as a lark and generous as all get-out!

KIDNAPPING SANTA BACK
Reclaiming Real Holiday Spirit

by Jesse Wolf Hardin – Anima Lifeways and Herbal School

It’s been said many times and many places, that the health of the American economy is dependent on the institution of Christmas, accounting as it does for some huge percentage of total annual retail sales.  But if you ask me, “institution” is a word better reserved for bloated government bureaucracy, oppressive psychiatric facilities, universities and prisons than what I prefer to think of as the season of good will.  And there’s something disheartening about being subjected to a barrage of tacky ads starting the day after Thanksgiving, or seeing thirty part-time Santas suiting up for a day of taking orders for high dollar toys from TV-addled tots at metropolitan shopping malls.

Not only the American economy is affected, of course, but also countries like China which make the bulk of the geegaws that fill the gift aisles of the big-box stores.  When we cut back spending due to so called economic downturns, it is Chinese and Indian laborers that are put out of work as much or more as Americans, so it seems to be in the entire world’s material interest – allies and opponents alike – that we never run out of novel new things we want to buy and try.  The Arab aristocracy pumps money into failing U.S. banks and enterprises, not so much in a take over bid, as to ensure that the dollars keep being spent, and that a percentage of those dollars end overseas.  The implication is that being frugal, saving instead of spending, is not only unfashionable but unpatriotic.  Those with savings or assets are accused of being hoarders and part of the problem.  When there’s trouble, both Republican and Democratic Presidents exhort the population, insisting that since shopping spurs growth, it’s downright un-American to limit our spending, or to stockpile food, guns or gold instead of investing in endless disposable appliances.

Truth is, it wasn’t that long ago in historical terms that frugality was considered an American value, with everyone from children to seniors encouraged to save as much money as possible for possible future hard times.  And poor Santa Claus, first drafted to be the materialist usurper of this preeminent Christian holiday, has now himself been slighted, turned by advertising executives into a shameless salesman for some entirely unnecessary and disappointing products, a red suited boulevard pimp of the most de-natured commodities, a shrill and common carney barker using sentimentality as well as sensationalism to draw in the unsuspecting fair goers and relieve them of their hard earned money.  Rather than being an active agent of material desires run amok, the original Santa archetypes include a fur-trousered Sami wildman and the not terribly material minded Odin.  St. Nicholas, “Ol’ St. Nick,” was actually a Middle-Eastern Turk who gave away his entire inheritance to benefit impoverished children.  He dressed more like a holy man, a beggar, a bearded biker or that unkempt mountain man Ben Lilly than the cash booster in the crimson pajamas appropriated from myth and history by the marketing engineers of Madison Avenue and West L.A.   He’d surely be mortified to find himself recast as a poster boy for consumer excess, his censored and polished image plastered on freeway billboards and plastic Slurpee cups.  I far prefer to imagine him as he was, wandering from town to town, freaking-out the stodgy and narrow-minded with his ragged clothes and beatific grin, intent on social justice, handing out sweet fruits and blessings to the good hearted kids he meets along the way.

This isn’t to say that owning nice things or buying nice gifts is a bad thing.  Like all warm blooded critters, it matters to us to have what we need to survive and even thrive, we appreciate artsy stuff as much as any glitter-gathering grackle or blackbird, and know just how we want to furnish or cave, den or nest.  But next year, you might want to consider doing things just a mite differently.  Instead of buying mostly imported junk from Wally-Mart etc., try buying things made from local materials with labor from the region you live in.  Pick things that are made to last, instead of those designed to entertain for a short while and then break and be replaced.  Or quickly consumed presents that are at least good for you, like natural honey from the state where you live.  Avoid anything battery operated since those are unsustainable and from overseas.  Try to avoid plastic for once, and see what else is out there made of cotton or wool, wood or steel.  Try sending honey from the state you live in, solar panels that ensure light when the grid goes down, fishing gear in case the recipients ever need to feed themselves from a river instead of a store.

Better yet, whenever you can make time, make gifts for those people in your lives that you care about.  If they really love you, they’ll appreciate the silliest hand drawn card featuring your own sentiments over any purchased one with stock saying.  And they’ll be more touched by every bite of a special treat, if they can sense the time you put into it and them instead of just ordering a fruit and jelly sampler from an online company.  Everyone has skills for making gifts that suit the needs and character of those we want to treat, and gifts that say something about who we are.  Maybe we have some experience carving, and a back room shop that seldom gets used.  A talent for sewing, and a basket of embroidery thread.  A fine stove, and an heirloom recipe for gingerbread.  The hours spent driving to a big city shopping center and milling about with the other bedraggled consumers, might be better utilized whittling an oak walking stick for a dear friend, reloading some special loads for an eagle-eyed aunt, or bagging up some special medicinal or beverage herbs for your family and adding individually personalized labels.

Not everything about the holiday season has always been easy for me, as I readily admit.  Yet no matter what your experience of the holidays – blissful, stressful or both – surely you’d agree that the best of Christmas lies not in what we’re given or what we buy, but in the love that abides.  In the gathering together of relatives that may live hundreds or even thousands of miles from one another, with Grandmas and Grandpas happily soaking up all the attention, and their wild little grandkids doing their best to get their dress clothes dirty.  In cold noses and warm slippers, hot stoves and steaming puddings.  In a common table with simple decorations, on a day when even those who usually eat out choose to share a lovingly made meal.  In the honoring of our roots, telling revealing stories about distant and not so distant ancestors, breaking out the photo albums, then breaking out in smiles.  In honoring the start of Winter but also the return to lengthening days.  In joyfully stirring a campfire of memories, whose flames might otherwise die out and shine on the planet no more.

It is a time when some of the least enchanted among us can, for awhile at least, retire the sober attitude and suspend their disbelief.  It’s the season when a larger than usual number genuinely open up to the possibility of miracles, like children keeping an eye on the sky for a glimpse of flying reindeer.  Maybe it’s time we kidnap Santa back from the hacks and return him to blissful bedraggled form, bravely odd and thread-worn.

Bring it on, holidays!  With our minds enchanted and hearts unfurled, we may yet recall we reside in a sacred and magical world.

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Each of us has a story that is our own, and it can define how we see ourselves, how we are seen, and how we act upon the world.  The following article by Jesse Wolf Hardin has been revised for a general audience, from a longer version written for herbalists and appearing in the Winter issue of the journal of folk herbalism practice and culture.  Subscriptions and the 700 page long Annual book can still be had in time for Christmas, by clicking on the: Plant Healer Magazine Website

THE POWER OF STORY
Tips For Writing Our Lives

by Jesse Wolf Hardin
Anima Lifeways and Herbal School – www.AnimaCenter.org

Part I: The Vital Narrative

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” –Muriel Rukeyser

“Storytelling is our way of making sense of our world, making order out of [imagined] chaos.  When you tell someone something as simple as what you did today, you are recounting your part of a narrative that began with the dawn of humanity.” –Doug Elliott

We tell our stories, so that we don’t forget.

We tell stories, so that those we tell will remember, but so that we remember as well.  Remember who we are, and the why’s of what we do.  What we intend, as well as what we have gone through.  Remember the natural urgings of our hearts and not just the rote recitations of the mind.  Remember what frightens and threatens, and remember to act to protect ourselves and what we love.  It is our stories that keep us from forgetting our hopes and dreams, and that help us remember to realize them, to manifest, to make real and possible.  To remember the plaintive voice of our calling, and remember that we are both worthy and able to respond.  To recount our mistakes, and thereby drive home each one’s poignant lessons.  To remember all that we have accomplished, wonderfully if imperfectly, and remember to feel satisfaction.  Remember what needs still need to be addressed, and what deeds remain to be done.

There will never be any shortage of stories in the latest “modern” age, but increasingly they’re more like vicarious stand-ins for actual experience, sensation, involvement and risk.  We mustn’t forget that story has at its best always set examples, informed, and inspired action on the part of the listener, reader or viewer.  It does not substitute for our necessary real-world quests, but incites us to ourselves live the sort of life that makes for a good, honorable and possibly exciting tale.  Instead, the trend is towards ever greater degrees of vicariousness through the medium of TV “reality shows”, and escapist literary and film tales of superhumans and comic book superheroes, stories that are less likely to empower us than to make us feel small and insubstantial, in need of the direction, control and protection of superior beings or agencies.  We’re treated to theater or television screen characters that do things we assume we could never do, go places we imagine we could never go, face and overcome or resolve challenges we figure we’d never be able to deal with.  Even great and ancient tales meant to stir a well of courage and a lust for adventure in all who hear them, tend to be reduced to externalized entertainment rather than held up as irresistible inspiration and laudable example, partially due to our failure to notice our place, and our responsibility, in the greater story of contemporary existence.

Storyteller Gemmah Hannah

“I will tell you something about stories… They aren’t just entertainment.  Don’t be fooled.  They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.”
–Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

We need to recognize, develop and exercise our stories, for without a strong sense of our own narrative and how it keys into the the bigger picture, we may well forget.  We may forget that extreme or heroic acts on behalf of others, the land or a cause, are for us to accomplish in our own time, and are not simply the province of historic figures and storybook characters.  That gardens and enchanted forests, instructive creatures and medicinal plants are not just things of the past.  That the age of miracles is now, with a individualized role for each and every one of us in nature’s miraculous healing covenant.  That the world truly is fantastic, every bit as much as any fantasy movie or novel.  And you need not concern yourself with toning down your story.  Truth is like a fish in a tank, that grows as its vessel is enlarged.  An absence of drama is not only un-compelling, but a sure sign that one’s tale about themselves is pure fiction.

“No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.”   –Robert A. Heinlein, Lazarus Long

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”     –C.S. Lewis

The problem is, that without a story to call our own, we may forget to remember.

Moreover, if we do not take responsibility for the content and telling of our individual and collective story, it will surely and ingloriously be shaped for us.  Events will mold us and the tale of our lives, without either prediction or preparation.  Authorities outside ourselves will decide our value, convention will decide our styles, and circumstances decide our roles.  If we do not actively help write and then communicate, we can easily fall into the template set out like a trap for us, a template of fear and self doubt, boring conformity and contrived normalcy, acquiescence and obedience, moderation and mediocrity.

It is for us, whoever we are, to author, embody, grow and tell our story.

Then whenever anybody tries to write you off, you just grab their attention (by the collar if necessary) and tell ‘em, “Hey, give me that pen!”

The Story of Story

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” —Harold Goddard

“If you don’t know the trees you may be lost in the forest, but if you don’t know the stories you may be lost in life.” —Siberian Elder

Story is at the very heart of human existence, defining, communicating and preserving cumulative experience, meaning and lesson.  Stories are, near as I can tell, the most effective way that we people have ever made sense of ourselves and our world.

The human mind has evolved to be naturally receptive to narratives, and to learn information best through illustrative stories.  In the spontaneous stories that children act out in their play, we witness them naturally expressing aspects of who they believe themselves to be and what they hope to become, and often within the context of a behavioral code, personalized morality, or even code of honor.  This is because story provides us a framework not only for identity but for motivation, direction and manifestation as well.

Without an interconnective storyline, life can seem like only a sequence of dimly related events and dynamics, offering the psyche no place to tether, root and grow from.  But with the development of an overall story that we’re an integral and irreplaceable part of, events past and present meld in the moment into a whole and active gestalt, a cognitive leap and unified understanding that affords clarity and stability/balance within a whirlwind of both pleasant and unpleasant experience.  In a society that feeds separativeness and disconnection – that paints us a world where all things seem isolated, temporal and amenable, discontinuous and subject to redefinition or reconfiguration – story is a way of firmly planting ourselves not only in the security of a specific physical and geographic location, but also in a bed of meaning and mission, and in sequence of events leading from and to somewhere, to one condition or outcome after another: what we could call our personal “story arc”.
Telling stories is as elemental as breathing and even more definitively human, for while breathing keeps us alive, it is the richness and significance of our story that can make our finite mortal years feel truly worth living.

And, we must add, worth sharing.

Aristotle says in “Poetics” that storytelling is what gives us a shareable world, connecting and identifying with others through an exchange of subjective tellings.  When entering a new relationship, we describe our selves and our current conditions in the light of future anticipations and valued memories, of an ontological mythos and sense of association, purpose or mission.
In many once land-based cultures, in fact, it is still not uncommon to hear someone ask “What’s your story?” upon meeting for the first time.  Questions such as “How are you?” or “What’s going on?” are naturally preceded by one’s first finding out who and what this other person is that they’ve encountered.  “What’s your name?” isn’t considered nearly as important as “What’s your game?”  The respondent’s introductory story may be long or short depending on the teller and time, but it will in most cases include the place where one calls home, what group or association they belong to or represent, and what they do.  This doing may mean their trade, such as being a woodworker or teacher, or the mission to which they’ve give themselves most passionately or immediately: “I doctor the village” or “I seek the healing yellow root”.

Everyone, from childhood on, is expected to be aware of and able to speak of their story.  It must include, like a fable in a book, an evocation of place and situation (which writers call “setting”), of self (“character”), purpose and challenge or conflict (“plot”), and projected result or resolution (“denouement”) of what’s has happened in their lives and what they are intent on doing.  Their stories describe not only where they come from but where they are going, in other words, their current position within a personal timeline of past and future, on the story arc of an already meaningful and eventful existence.

“Storytellers have as profound a purpose as any who are charged to guide and transform human lives.  I knew it as an ancient discipline and vocation to which everyone is called.”
–Nancy Mellon, The Art of Storytelling

One who proves particularly adept at telling not only her own personal tale, but also the tales of her association or tribe, are featured and feted as honored “storytellers,” the acknowledged keepers of oral history and communicators of the group’s core characteristics, values and priorities.  They are the unofficial teachers, informally appointed through popular acclamation because of the skill and wisdom they evince, and because of this, the most influential sources.  The best instructors and leaders, motivators and singer/songwriters, care givers and herbalists are often also the most effective storytellers… and are nearly always at least aware of – and fully inhabiting – their own powerful story-lines.  What’s more, they are often familiar with the stories of the people in their audience, speaking to their known individual experiences as well as collective sensibilities.  It is storytelling’s subjective and highly personalized dimension that prevents movies and books from effectively taking its place.  Folklorist and wildcrafter Doug Elliott reminds us of an anecdote, wherein someone decides to donate a TV to a so-called undeveloped African village.  For a while, the entire village gathered around the TV, but after a while their interest waned and they went back to hanging out with the village storyteller in the evenings.  One of them was asked, ‘Why did you go back to listening to the storyteller; doesn’t the TV know more stories than the storyteller?’ The reply was ‘Yes, the TV knows more stories, but the storyteller knows us.’

Those stories which retain their significance from person to person, situation to situation, generation to generation, that meet the test of time by continuing to be found both subjectively verifiable and practically employable – are what we call “folklore.”

Part II:

OUR STORIES

“The story was the bushman’s most sacred possession.  These people knew what we do not; that without a story you have not got a nation, or culture, or civilization.  Without a story of your own, you haven’t got a life of your own.” —Laurens Van der Post

It is stories that shape our existence as much as any actual condition or happening, the subjective, honest or dishonest, contextual telling and retelling that colors the perception and programs the responses of us and those we interact with or are subject to.  These tales include especially the stories told about us, those we tell to and about our selves, and those we truly represent, wholly inhabit, live and express.

The Stories Told About Us

“Stories are the single most powerful weapon in an arsenal.” —Howard Gardner, Harvard University

“People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song.”
-Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

To the direct degree that we fail to develop, brand and communicate our story and the story of our group, it will by default end up framed and determined by commentators or authorities from outside.  Being less informed about us, our motivations, intent and methods, their tales will consist almost entirely of their impressions of our appearance and assessments of any readily visible results.  Even these proclamations will be distorted by their existing stereotypes, prejudices and presumptions.  And the less intimate and involved they are with us or our group, the greater and possibly more harmful their spin on things will be.  This is what the call “hanging a jacket” on someone, on the streets.  Women were considered and treated as inferior and ill equipped, before redefining themselves and publicly pushing forth a new narrative highlighting their strengths and abilities.

“The answer is always in the entire story, not a piece of it.” —Jim Harrison

Other’s stories about us personally can be dismissive, literally “writing us off”, unrealistically praiseful or unfairly critical, but in almost all cases will be an unbalanced telling.  Even if the appraisals are not mean spirited, they do us a disservice by being so awfully incomplete, poorly focused and un-nuanced.  You are never just what is thought and said about you.  You have gifts and skills, intentions and dreams that few may recognize if you haven’t wholly and audibly expressed your self and your story.  No description of a scientist or medical doctor is accurate without mention of her feelings and concerns, insights and sensibilities, and a portrayal of even the most informal or alternative herbalist will often need to include a reference to their careful keying out of new plant discoveries, and studious attention to clinical research and its continually revised conclusions.

Government authorities, belittling fathers, bitter grade school teachers, advertising executives out to get our money, and fear mongering Fox News commentators are all examples of external voices who are very, very good at framing, spinning and delivering a convincing narrative.  It is up to you, and to us, to get out the rest of the story…
…the whole story.

The Stories We Tell Ourselves

“Those times of depression tell you that it’s either time to get out of the story you’re in and move into a new story, or that you’re in the right story but there’s some piece of it you are not living out.” — Carol S. Pearson

The stories others tell about us, can yoke us to an unjust or at least rigid characterization that affects how people view us upon first meeting.  Similarly, narrow or unjust characterizations of a group can result in reduced participation in its work and events, can make accomplishing its goals more difficult, and can even be the narrative that paves the way for the restricting or outlawing of a group or its practices.

Even more dangerous, however, are those untruths or unbalanced tellings that we spin for ourselves.

This is so whether the story is about us specifically, or about some element of our lives.  And whether we craft the tale, or merely repeat the untruths impressed upon us by our parents or peers.  In the former case, we may be unconsciously misshaping reality as part of our denial of or retreat from a traumatic experience, or we may be consciously protecting ourselves by telling a tough story when we really feel vulnerable.  In the latter, we have adopted a story refrain that was impressed or even pounded into us.  This can be as simple as a dishonest tale about a family’s race or origins, or as complex as a set of values and preconditions for relating to anyone or anything.  Or as insidious as a parent impressing with their shows of disappointment just how worthless their kid is.  Or as terrible as a sexually abusive parent, teacher or priest who instills in their victim the lifelong narrative that it was really theirs – the abused’s – fault for what happened.

Regardless of our stories’ veracity, source or source material, there are almost always deep ramifications and both predictable and unforeseen consequences to the particular narratives we construct or adopt, identify with and often attach to.
This applies not only to our narratives about our selves, but also to those that are about the people and elements around us.  For example, if we were to tell ourselves that nature is dangerous, that fitting-in is primary and intrusive government a necessary evil, we will be more likely to contribute to a reality that is wholly manmade, conformist and controlled.  We will welcome restrictions on our liberties for the promise of security, and likely be afraid to leave the security of the “shire” to chance some great adventure or quest.  We will surely be hesitant to be and express our real and whole selves, out of concern that we might be seen as different and therefore excluded from the fold.  We will probably fail to find instruction and inspiration in the natural world, while supporting endless development of wildlands, spraying toxic herbicides on tightly crew-cutted lawns, and mistrusting herbal remedies. But if we were to tell a story of rebellious heroes that buck the norm, embark on adventures and attempt the seemingly impossible, we would surely come to take risks on behalf of our passion and purpose.  If we were to tell of a nature that is inspirited and instructive, filled with sentient green beings whose medicinal properties can aid us, then we would just as assuredly find ways to actively oppose infringements on the last wild and biodiverse places, let our lawns grow or even dedicate our yards to reintroducing native species, and look to the green ones as accomplices to and agents of our healing of ourselves, other people and this planet we are integral to.  In telling ourselves a story of liberty and response-ability, individuality and community, connection and healing, empowerment and action, we begin to fashion for ourselves and all things a differently conceived world.
If the story we tell ourselves is that we’re inadequate or inconsequential, it makes it less likely that we’ll attempt the difficult tasks and changes that might be needed.  If the character that we paint of ourselves is held to be unworthy for any either real or delusional reason, we probably won’t do the things we want because we won’t think we deserve the experience, and for the same reason, we will have a harder time believing or relishing any credit, compliments, accomplishments or rewards.  But when our story focuses on our real selves and intrinsic worth,  – on our genuine character, certain gifts, proven skills, honest needs, sure potential, heartful goals and most insistent calling – the we can move forward, and manifest… just as we express.

The Story We Inhabit, Fulfill & Express

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.” –Lewis Carrol, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

No one is truly on the sidelines.  None is invisible.  There’s no one who isn’t a participant and thus co-creator of this reality and world.  It is so important, then, that we present what we want seen, tell of our selves and what needs telling, notice our effects, and act to best effect.  That we accept we have the response-ability to consciously and purposefully contribute to that co-creation through the story we truly inhabit, fulfill through the living of it, and express to all who will hear.

Our awareness of, taking responsibility for, learning from and sharing of our story can do the following:

•Honestly describe and define ourselves, for our own self perception as well as that of others
Frame, illustrate, color, represent and help to determine the course and flavor of our lives
•Contribute to the full expression of our full selves, and the most honest as well as characteristic expression of our group
•Incessantly illuminate and explore relevant ramifications and consequence, quandaries and questions
Provide us a means for a consciously and purposefully “shareable world”
•Contribute to a cultural and political narrative/mythology, independent of – or even in opposition to – the  narrative of the dominant paradigm
•Contribute to a needed mythos of personal and planetary health, of personal and earthen mission, in which we can each play a significant, exemplary or even heroic role

“Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.”
–Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot

Storyteller Clare Murphy

Our story can be communicated orally:
•In installments, beginning with the most definitive and salient parts first.
•In a single telling at special dedicated time, for the benefit of someone that clearly interested.
•Not just at first meeting someone, but at every timely opportunity as you build mutual understanding and affinity.

Oral Storytelling Tips:

•Tell what is important to you, and it will be what you most want to share.
•Don’t think you need to be a great orator to vocalize your story.
•A story is just a conversation, in which the telling is purposeful and the topics significant and relevant.
•Besides live storytelling, record your oral story on whatever medium, for your own reference as well as to share with others.
•People will hear you best, if you also demonstrate a sincere interest in their own personal stories.
•You don’t have to be the obvious subject of the story, if your approach to to the subjects that matter to you demonstrates your character, values, interests, temperament, experiences and effects, intentions or aims.
•Trust the power of your true story, rather than relying on embellishment.
•Speak conversationally in your normal voice and timbre.
•Don’t worry about dramatizing, as your voice will naturally reflect the feelings and degrees of excitement that each portion of the story bring out.
•Shorten your story and speak more concisely when those listening are in danger of distraction or disinterest.
•Extend and flesh out your tale when they are paying attention and appear to want more.
•The storyteller’s success is not a matter of how well folks are entertained, but how much they really heard and any effects it may have on them.

Our story can also be communicated through writing:

•In installments focused on various aspects, as related topics or question arise in conversation.
•In a single exposition.
In the form of:
•Detailed letters and emails.
•Letters to the editor.
•Poetry.
•Blog posts about past or ongoing parts of your life, that readers will find them engaging and useful.
•Hand written memoirs with photographs such as you might want to hand down to your children.
•A full autobiography, regardless of any possible literary merits.

Tips for Written Storytelling:

•Work on your ability to write clearly and powerfully.
•Do not wait until you are happy with your writing ability, before starting to write your story.
•An essay or article is just a story recorded in ink, don’t let writing intimidate you.
•Relax.  Spoken words may not be able to be taken back, but until you send it out, your written story can be reexamined and fact checked, adjusted and improved, expanded or erased.
•As with an oral story, written storytelling only differs from relaxed conversation in terms of its relevance, significance, focus and depth.
•Again, you don’t have to be the obvious subject of the story.  You share the story of your self when you write personally (not objectively) about any of the things in life that most matter to you.

There are elements of every person’s story in yours, which is what makes it possible for someone you don’t know to relate to it, but it is in another way your story and yours alone, exactly like no one’s story before you.  Our individual stories are like fingerprints, in that they are specifically identified with us… and because no two are ever exactly alike.

The fundamental elements of all our stories, no matter how unique, are character, intention, action/conflict, experience and effect/result.
The central character of your story is certainly you, including your characteristics… such as personality, appearance, temperament, attitude, energetics and constitution, interests, beliefs and concerns, values and priorities, propensities and passions.  This authentic, self-aware you sets intentions and goals according to your character values.  Action to actualize your intent, resolve conflicts and move towards your goals, includes personal subjective experience from which you can learn and strengthen, precipitating both intended and unintended effects and results.  In literary terms, action and conflict is the buildup leading to conclusion.  To the contrary, in our real life stories, each incidence of resolution sets the stage for the further efforts and events of a successive chapter, and our deaths are always the closest thing that we have to a final scene.

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell.  He has borrowed his authority from death.” –Walter Benjamin

Our work, then, is to recognize, develop, brand and communicate our authentic, purposeful story.  We first need to recognize what is real and definite in and about us and our narrative, and what is artifice or illusion.  We next need to develop our tale and our character, with study and application, through the clarifying of our intent and missions, and through the conflicts we face in actualizing our intentions and manifesting our successive aims and goals.  And we want to brand our story with our unique, indelible mark, with the ways we are different as well as connected and related, with the touch of our non-replicable fire and spirit.

•Don’t let others write or delimit your story,  it is for you to author… and to live.

•Don’t let others determine how your story is told to the world, preempt or counterbalance with your own
engaging exposition.

•Don’t get trapped in one mood, chapter or scene of your story.

•It is the challenges, obstacles and surprises that forge you, as the main character of your story.

•Avoid stereotypes, which are never wholly accurate and seldom compelling.

•Never let story and fiction or projection begin to take the place of actual experiencing and doing.

•Realize that your path through your story is every bit as potentially magical and revealing as any piece of fiction, and that you are as able – as any realistically portrayed character – of significant feats, quests, discoveries, assisted healings and other meaningful acts of service.  And yes, of deep rewards.

“Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all.” —Hans Christian Andersen

Tell the story of your life, remembering that every story should be made worthwhile.  Tell your story as completely as you can, while remembering that no story is ever complete.  Plant your story in the soil of truth, in the very real world.  Feed and grow it, then spread its seeds of nourishment, meaning and healing.  Tell it any damn way you want… but keep moving as you recount.

Tell your story walkin’.

“This part is my part of the movie, now let’s hear yours.” –Jack Kerouac, Tristessa

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Please post the following job description/announcement wherever it might be useful.

On-Site Helpers For N.M. Wilderness Sanctuary Sought

Position Description

Live-in laborer and project assistant with private quarters at the Anima School and Botanical Sanctuary, a stunningly beautiful and inspirited riparian wilderness inholding in the Gila of SW New Mexico, 1.5 miles from the nearest pavement.  4 hours or more of labor or other efforts per day.  Could involve kitchen help or even help with student, conference or magazine tasks… depending on the person and their desires.

Anima Botanical & Wildlife Sanctuary is an incredible, isolated wilderness inholding 7 river crossings from the nearest pavement in the mountainous Gila Forest of S.W. New Mexico, host to the projects of Anima Lifeways and Herbal School, the Traditions In Western Herbalism Conference & Plant Healer Magazine.  Anima hosts folks for wilderness retreats, students for scheduled events, and volunteers for on-site assistance.

The Sanctuary is a United Plant Savers botanical refuge and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife sanctuary, with a focus not on growing domestic crops but on conserving, reintroducing and propagating native medicinal plants, and on encouraging growth for wildlife habitat.  The landscape is alive with ponderosa pines, piñon and oak, cottonwoods and willows, diverse flora and cactus, elk, deer, waterfowl, coatamundi, javalina, black bears, bald eagles, kingfishers and so much more.  There is no cell phone reception on the property, and only solar power for lights, making visits an immersion into a timeless and natural world.

What You May Do and Learn
Volunteer, On-Site helpers are welcomed for periods of 30 days or longer, working 4 hours or more per day assisting with the work of of the refuge and school.

If requested, you may receive around 8 hours per week of mixed herbal practice (plant gathering, plant preparation, medicine making etc.) and instruction in herbalism.  Those desiring more herbal instruction can simultaneously study our Foundations In Western Herbalism home study course while here.

Sample projects include the construction of an outdoor kitchen area, composting outhouse, horno adobe Indian oven, rainwater cache and fire fighting system, solar electric improvements etc., as well as the day to day necessities of firewood gathering and chopping, food processing, seasonal wild foods and so forth.  Helpers are likely to also learn elements of wilderness or rural homesteading, whole foods cooking and ecosystem restoration, while experiencing what its like to reconnect with themselves and the land in a deep and meaningful way.  Like the ancient Mogollon peoples who treated this bend in the river canyon as their sacred ceremonial “place of power”, we benefit from the influence of the inspirited land even as we explore ways of benefitting the world.

The growing number of Anima School, TWHC & Plant Healer Magazine projects has prompted us to seek necessary assistance with work we have previously done all by ourselves, and we’re now figuring out how to best integrate allies, assistants and staff into our efforts… from outreach (calls) and proofing of writings by folks living wherever, to on-site help here at this wilderness sanctuary.

Help needed on the land here includes the construction of an outdoor kitchen area and completion of a rainwater cache and fire fighting system, but also the day to day necessities of firewood gathering and chopping, food processing, seasonal wild foods and medicinal plants gathering and more.

Compensation

Lodging and Food Provided, Course Optional

Anima provides a wonderful hand built cabin to stay in, complete with propane stove, wood stove for heat, beds and kitchen area, with windows overlooking the forest, river and abundant wildlife.  Organic, delicious and often wild foods are supplied and sometimes preprepared for Anima helpers.  Nearly all income goes to funding the ongoing land and teaching projects, but some personal expenses may be covered by us as well, depending.
In addition, those desiring, can enroll for free in an Anima Lifeways or Herbal home study course ($300 to $600 value each), to work on while here (laptop required for coursework).
Nearby places of interest include the Gila Cliff Dwellings, Silver City, the Gila Wilderness and Aldo Leopold Primitive Area, and the San Francisco, Turkey Creek and Gila hot springs.

Qualifications

Volunteers should be capable of physical, outdoors work.  Practical skills like cooking, carpentry or wood chopping are a plus, but a glad willingness to learn and apply is the main requirement.  Be prepared for time alone as well, and intent on using it for self exploration and growth.  Being a wildlife preserve, there are no pets allowed.  Children considered on a case-by-case basis.  30 days minimum commitment preferred.

We recommend you first look over the pages on the Anima Website, to get the feel for the land and our focused purpose here, and we look forward to the responses you give in the application.

Download, Fill Out and Return the Application:

On-Site Helper Application

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Tanuki Raccoons and Canyon Updates

Jesse Wolf Hardin – www.AnimaCenter.org

The monster sized Plant Healer Magazine is released as of today, conference registration is open, and we might finally have some minutes to give to student responses and overdue emails.  Tim, who answered our call for On-Site Helper applications, will be leaving soon to meet some family obligations, but in a short while he was helped secure insulation under the cabin studio to stop the wind from roaring through the cracks in the floor, buried exposed solar wiring, gathered poles for building an overhang for an open outdoor kitchen area, laid a section of drain to help protect the sheds from erosion during downpours, and split and stacked some fire wood where it should stay dry for use.  Dry hasn’t been an issue in awhile, but Friday through Monday we were the grateful recipients of the first Winter snow storms, quickly melting but providing some much needed moisture for the Ponderosa Pine forests of these arid mountains.  Thanks to the solar system modifications that Trail Boss did for us this Summer, we’re managing to have just enough battery power in the two banks to keep things rolling.

Those of you who subscribe to Plant Healer will be getting an abridged and serialized version of my unpublished historical novel “The Medicine Bear”.  With the assistance of allies Lauren and Asa, we hope to have the complete book proofed for printing in time for the September TWH Conference in the Coconinos.  While I love the novel the way it was originally written, it was potentially exhaustive in that form, and the going back and forth in time required a careful reading.  Thus, we have left out the parallel stories of oil baron Edward Doheney, the conflicted President Woodrow Wilson, Ben Lilly the bear hunter and Aldo Leopold the bear lover and conservationist, to concentrate on the chronological lives of the intense central characters: Omen, the Mexican/Apache mixed herbalist overcoming an abusive childhood in the opening years of the 20th Century, and Eland, the eclectic misfit writer who truly sees and loves her.  We may also run some excerpts from it on this blog from time to time, if there are enough requests from folks not subscribed to Plant Healer.

The canyon has been quiet, both when it comes to vehicle trespass and critters.  No more unwanted incursions, the raucous elk have moved out of the canyon bottom for the season, and there haven’t been any more of our precious cottonwoods felled by beavers since the last pod surfed down the river during high water.  Quiet, that is, except for the constantly cute and tumultuous pack rats, and these crazy-ass raccoons.

New Mexico Raccoons by Jesse Wolf Hardin

From the looks of them, we take them to be brother and sister, precocious youngsters with an attitude that belies their sweet looking features.

The little buggers have been encouraged by the food scraps tossed into the compost pile, mandating that we never leave the kitchen door open for them to get any closer to the source of such yummies.  I tried burying all the compost for years, but it was always dug back up anyway, so I switched to considering the compost a gifting to the wildlife even though it has meant working harder to make sure that kitchen windows are closed at night.

Last time I was at the dentist I saw an article in a sporting magazine touting a certain rifle as being perfect for dispatching animals like the “elusive raccoon.”  I’m afraid our fuzz-butted cousins to the bear are anything but that, and it was in fact an effort to keep them from climbing up my leg to get at the compost can I was carrying.  And I’d have to be awful hungry before I could kill something so darling, even if we do wear hats and vests made of their brethren’s hides and saved from the ingloriousness of an ebay bargain bin.

Tanuki Raccoon Begging by Jesse Wolf Hardin

Cute as these youngsters may be, it seems they weren’t born with personalities to match.  Neither can eat a bite without being attached by its screaming sibling, and you only need read the kid’s classic “Rascal” to be forewarned of how ornery even the most petted pets tend to get when they get older.  That means we won’t be feeding them from our hands, the way we can with the ever so sweetly dispositioned skunks around here, but we won’t think the less of the masked Tanukis.  We have a special place in our hearts, in fact, for those who have the hardest time getting along with others.

(re-post and forward as you like)

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