Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

I want to thank the literally hundreds of people who have written with their support and love, in emails and FaceBook comments, in what has been a grievous time for me.  I have been touched to the point of grateful tears.  Appropriately, the following is an excerpt from my novel currently being revised, “The Kokopelli Seed.”  Appropriate, because it tells in fictionalized form the story of so called “troubled youth” first laying rocks to acknowledge their long unacknowledged losses and pain… and then ends with them ready to build a second cairn representing all the things they had to be thankful for.  From personal grief to a larger grieving for the world, followed by the sweet savoring and giving that is sorrow’s balance.  So-called novel or not, it happened pretty much as it is written here.  I know, I was there.         -Love, JWH

The Grieving Cairns

By Jesse Wolf Hardin

“ You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from a master.” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)

The last kid put his personal rock with the others’, fitting it carefully into its place in the pile they called a “cairn.”  Then he stepped back to wipe the sweat off his brow.  It was important that they had each selected their own stone, and then carried it themselves the long distance uphill.  The kids’ long-haired counselor smiled at the feat, knowing how tempted they were to think him a kook and drop out of the two week program, to head back down to Taos and party until the next time they got in trouble.  And frankly, there was plenty of reason for them to bail out, from the difficult hikes to the kinds of truths they were made to face.  But then there was something cool about the crazy things their counselor had them do, about being listened to for the first time in their lives, that caused most of them to stick it out.

The counselor understood what his kids felt.  The youngsters weren’t “apathetic” – as so often portrayed by the media and officialdom — they were simply pissed-off, and paralyzed.  There was no excuse for some of the rotten things they’d been busted for, but any major changes in their lives would first require an understanding why they did what they did.  The bad drugs and wild lifestyles, all the cheap and dangerous highs were just their way of pushing to make their lives seem more real and significant, just a push to experience more, and feel more.  They saw life as a flexible membrane, and were determined to stretch it as far as it would go.

He had finally got what he wanted so bad: his own “Disenfranchised-Youth Franchise”.  He would go back to his treasured mountain cabin after each session, wondering how the kid’s were doing since he saw them last, and practicing the new dances they always insisted he learn (even if it meant breaking his glasses from doing break-dance spins on his head).  He didn’t care what the kid’s interests were, so long as they applied themselves at something, anything.   What he’d say he hoped for them was to distinguish themselves at whatever “tripped their trigger.”  He loved these unhappy crews, felt the need to protect them from their addiction to being victims.  Children and flies are some of the few creatures that will rush back to the exact spot where the swatter struck.  In a sense, these young men and women had each packed their own weighty “rock” long before working their way through the confusion of broken homes, boring schools, and finally detention.  They’d packed it all the way to the start of this oddball wilderness program, to this, their best chance to come to know and respect their selves.  And first-ever permission to grieve.  Only by opening to their pain, he knew, could they trust their bliss.  And only by honoring what had been lost, could they appreciate the advantages blessings that remained or the blessings still to come.

For the cairn exercise, the kids were instructed to focus on some wondrous element of their past: some special person, place or living thing that made their childhood meaningful —  something that had since been disgraced, defiled, stolen or destroyed.  For some this meant the family they never had.  Or some “Enchanted Forest” that may have been no bigger than a single undeveloped lot, that they watched covered over with asphalt for a new highway.  For another, it meant the tiny run-off creek with the polliwogs in it, that nonetheless appeared to the boy as big and mysterious, as complete as an entire wild river ecosystem — later channeled into culverts and sewers.  A special old  apple tree in the backyard that held not only fruit in its branching grasp, but fruitful wisdom — cut down while the children were at school because some idiot gardener told dad it had “bugs.”  One stone was placed for the crazy old lady with the twenty-seven Siamese cats, found frozen to death when the city turned off her gas over an unpaid bill.  Another stone represented a failed teen romance, and true to form, insisted on rolling to the bottom time and again.

The cairn had grown over the course of the years, and in time featured a rock for nearly every threatened paradise, every nearby rural community turned into another Aspen for the rich.  Not a few had ached for what they thought of as the “Wild West,” a place where eccentrics where valued and promises kept, a place more free than the imagination itself.  Wild mustangs and thundering bison, chased by eagle-feathered braves, cowboy’s and outlaws who stood up for what they believed in even it was wrong.  And it seemed like everybody’s kids hurt over the loss of freedom and privacy, the absence of opportunities for adventure and purpose.  The bigger the pile got, the more vanished loves and dreams, critters and playgrounds it came to stand up for.  Here was a monument to that which was no more.

The boy they called “Frog” left one for the amphibians no longer heard singing from ponds poisoned by acid rain. “Charity” came forward with a rock alarmingly shaped like the body of a baby, placing it in the conical pile for “the child I’ll never be again,”  They all looked at each other, the toughest playground bully or cafeteria arsonist swinging around to take the trail back, hurrying on rather than let their buddies see the tears welling up in their eyes.

Soon every kid but one had added his grieving stone to the rest.  Finally “Punky,” the smallest of the bunch, came huffing out of the thick brush.  In his arms, covering much of his face, was a boulder at least half his own weight.  They watched as a tiny hero, the champion of some unknown cause, completed what appeared to be the impossible.  Dropping the monster stone high upon the cairn berm, Punky fell to one knee, gasping for air.

“So whatcha’ grievin’?,” Dag asked.  But the sage counselor already knew.  He could sense the little fellow’s grief over the mother that passed away, the father who didn’t try hard enough to understand him.  And more than that, he could feel the way the kid suffered over the uniformity of shopping malls, the disappearance of cowboys and the urbanization of Indians.  Gone, the likes of Chief Joseph and Billy The Kid.  Gone, the grizzly bears and grizzly fighters, the code of the West… and all the rest.

“Everything,” Punky answered, trailing off to a whisper.  “Every-darn-thing.”

The shaggy headed counselor smiled to himself, thinking how tomorrow was as good a time as any to start up the equally important “Gratitude Cairn,” in a secret glen he knew about next to a sacred spring.  There were, after all, no shortage of rocks, as well as no shortage of hills still to climb.  And no shortage of blessings to notice and gifts to savor… people and places to thank, and awakened lives to wholly celebrate.

(post and forward freely…)

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Our book “I’m a Medicine Woman, Too!” has finally received its first Negative Review on Amazon.com.  Thank you to “H. Sanders” for the spirited rebuttal, we loved it.  I am not, however, as stung as I am dismayed.  After all, this was to the one book carrying forth with sweetness the most unequivocally positive earthen, progressive message.  As a result there was no text indicting our dominant culture for somehow communicating to 90 plus percent of children from every generation and social class that they are somehow inadequate, can’t trust their feelings, have to compromise in order to fit in and surrender their dreams just to get by.  Nor was there a paragraph – however helpful it might have been – with me explaining to Rhiannon the ways in which women and girls in particular have been and still are dismissed, held back or pigeon-holed into limiting roles.  There are, I should also point out, no illustrations showing Rhainnon’s terrible sadness over learning of the disappearing rainforests, children starving on the streets of Mexico City, or the shredding of individual liberties taking place in her time, no drawings of clearcut forests where few medicinal herbs can grow.  And none of the looks of anger that accompany her resolve to heal, better and beautify this world.  What, then?

Maybe there’s some indication of the buttons we managed to push, in the complaints of reviewer “UU Parent”:

“This book is a great concept, but the writing and illustrations never allow it to reach its full potential… writing which ranges from didactic to stilted.  The illustrations are disappointing and amateurish–hopefully a few will eventually be available for viewing before purchasing. All the women are portrayed as long-haired neo-hippies wearing flowing dresses (think Renaissance festival garb), with the exception of poor disheveled Annie Mae who is in denim overalls.  It’s a nice concept to marry an intro to botany with Girl Power, but somehow the attempt just falls flat and never reaches its full potential.”

I did not, as I have done in the past, set out to alienate or discomfort anyone.  That said, I worry about any artwork, writings or whatnot of mine that fail to stir strong feelings, raise hackles, mangle preconceptions, shred illusions, expose lies, prompt difficult changes, threaten established orders, or prompt unwanted attention from agencies of control.  While IMWT! may not be threatening enough to the dominant paradigm to deserve its its own dedicated governmental task force, it apparently isn’t without the power to offend.

-Wolf

(If you have ever bought anything on Amazon, you can leave your own review of IMWT! by Clicking Here)

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Announcing the new full color book for budding healers and daydream believers:

I’m a Medicine Woman, Too! 
Text & Art by Jesse Wolf Hardin

40 pages, 35 Full Color Illustrations

Includes the Name The Herb Game herbal medicine identification game

$18.50 + $5.90 Media Mail Shipping  (Sorry, Lulu.com’s high rate… Please email us to order multiple copies and save on shipping).

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Shipping Options

Media Mail $24.40 Priority Shipping $28.74

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“I’m a Medicine Woman, Too! is full of wisdom, beauty and encouragement not only for the young, but for all ages. The author’s exquisite illustrations quickly draw the reader in and cleverly teach about healing plants. A high recommend for empowering all medicine women!”

-Lesley Tierra, L. Ac., author Healing with the Herbs of Life and A Kid’s Herb Book

“I’m a Medicine Woman, Too! is a wonderful book to connect children with herbal traditions.  The story role-models an ethic of healing and caring for other people and honoring our elders.  The delightful illustrations touch the reader at an emotional level, compelling us to become healers too.”

-Thomas J. Elpel, author of Botany in a Day and Shanleya’s Quest

“I felt the voice of the Earth Mother Herself speak from the pages of I’m A Medicine Woman, Too! The sense of presence and higher awareness will benefit younger and those with accumulated years as well.

-Margi Flint, AHG HM, author of The Practicing Herbalist 

For children Ages 3-12, but an inspiration and pleasure for adults as well!  A colorful and soulful book of self discovery and personal empowerment for budding healers, as well as every kid heeding a calling or pursuing a dream.  The author’s delightful daughter Rhiannon is the inspiration and model for this tale of realization and growth, as she first resists believing she could ever be a Medicine Woman like the herbalists and healers she’s met… but then realizes the ways in which she is already the woman of power she hopes to be.  Included are 11 frame-worthy illustrations of various Medicine Woman archetypes including an Apache with her mano and metate grinding stones, a Hispanic curendara in her adobe Botanica herb shop, and an Anglo teacher, gardener and herb chef.  Selected excerpts follow:

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 I’m A Medicine Woman, Too!

    At eight years of age, Rhiannon’s life seemed to turn page by page like a fairy tale book, and not even she ever knew what was coming next.
Her home was a canyon with orange and purple cliffs studded with shiny bits of rock crystals. Coming there when she was four had truly been a dream come true!  She loved sleeping in her special treehouse, imagining it even larger and more amazing than it was.  It felt great waking up each morning to the sounds of elk singing and splashing in the river below.  Living miles and miles from a town, she learned to follow the tracks of the deer and rabbits in her bare feet and talk to them all like friends. Her totem was the river otter, a very furry and playful animal, and just like the otter Rhiannon was always looking for a chance to play.

Then one day she came to me looking much more thoughtful than usual… and maybe just a little bit sad.

“What’s the matter, my daughter?” I asked.

“I could never be a Medicine Woman like Mama Kiva or Mama Loba,” she answered with the cutest of pouts.

“No,” I told her, “but you could be a Medicine Woman that is the fulfillment of the real, whole you… like nobody else in the world can do.”

    “Whether you know it or not,” I told her, “you are part of a long chain of women and girls throughout history, reaching out hand to hand from mothers to daughters and teachers to students, from the most ancient human tribes right up until our modern day times.

“You can feel their hands in yours.  They whisper sweet hints in the wind in the trees, in the yard or the shadowy far ends of a neighborhood park.  They keep you company like faery friends helping you have wonderful dreams at night.  These generations of Medicine Women want to teach you what you need.  But even more importantly, they want to remind you of the strength and knowledge that you’ve already got.  You’ve helped Mama Kiva dry and weigh chamomile and package bags of calendula for selling or trading, just as the Mexican curandera Doña Rosa does, selling herbs down a certain secret alleyway in her tiny Botanica shop.  And when you dig up fresh dandelion roots for my liver infusion, remember that it’s one of the fun tasks that the wrinkled old Doña was asked to do when she was still a little girl like you.”

    “But what if I decide I don’t want to be a healer?” she asked me with a look. “What if I want to be something else, like a warrior defending the helpless, a great singer or cook?”

“You can be all that and more,” I answered.  “You have a choice in everything you do, and it is your responsibility what you yourself choose.  You might decide to plant trees and restore wild places, change the world with the power of your artwork, grow organic food… or teach eager students at a school…”

    “It’s the way of the Medicine Woman to love climbing into a mulberry tree high, gathering leaves for a lung tonic and berries for a pie.  To work hard and be proud of what you do, while playing until you’re silly, too!  Doing what you can to offer people help, but also remembering to take special care of yourself.  Collecting lots of grapes to preserve for the Winter, before the songbirds fly south… but also taking time to pop a few in your mouth!”

“The job of the Medicine Woman isn’t just to heal sickness,” I added, “but to help make everything healthier and more beautiful.  Each woman works in her own personal ways to both create and improve the world.  Each follows her heart, knows her purpose, and answers her special calling.  And each must be brave enough to live her wildest dreams, no matter how hard that ever seems.”

“In that case, it must be true…” my little girl said.

“I’m a Medicine Woman too!”

A hardcover version will be released by Hops Press for anyone who wishes to wait until March for one.

Please pay with PayPal when possible, write us if not.  Media mail orders will take up to 2 weeks to arrive, so order early.

Thank you for your interest and support, and for forwarding this post by clicking on the “Share this Post” button below.

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An interview with my partner Jesse Wolf Hardin is featured in Derrick Jensen’s new book How Shall I Live My Life?, revisioning a world more dynamic and meaningful than often destructive and repressive modern “civilization.” Recorded in person in the canyon in 2000, it focuses on what is most necessary for us as humans to find ourselves and our place in this world. Wolf’s years of teaching Anima and developing new practices, land restoration and activism, his life as poetry and profound commitment to the earth are all very evident in this moving conversation. Other featured visionaries include Vine Deloria, Thomas Berry and David Abram. The following is an excerpt focusing on Derrick and Wolf’s discussion about Home and what that really means. If you’re interested in purchasing a copy, it’s available here though the publisher.

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The Meaning & Responsibilities of Home

An Excerpt from the interview with Jesse Wolf Hardin by Derrick Jensen

How Shall I Live My Life? (PM Press)

Derrick Jensen: You’ve written: “To become native again is not to emulate Native American or other past or existing cultures, but instead to recall and relearn our own connection to, and responsibilities to the regions where we presently reside.” What does that mean?

Jesse Wolf Hardin: We’re native to the degree that we enter into reciprocal relationship with the living land we’re each an integral part of. To the degree that we are not only in love with—but loyal to—the place that supports, nourishes, sustains, informs and inspires us. And it is to give back: our full sentient presence and artful acknowledgement, our protection, and affection. Repaying the gifts of food, home and wisdom with personal activism and heartfelt prayer, with restoration and celebration. With our fullest living of life, while we’re alive … and with our bodies when we die.
Being indigenous doesn’t necessarily require we be members of some established culture, or even have a history in a place. What is essential is that we be open to the directives of the ecosystem. That we become conscious of its needs and troubles, character and flavor, integrity and health; conscious of the essence and spirit of place.

DJ: Let’s back up. It seems before we can talk about inhabiting a place, we need to talk about home. What is home?

JH: To “lose our place” is to lose our way home. Home is the heart, in deep relationship with the land. It is the place that calls us most insistently, instructs us loudest and best. The place we inevitably miss when we leave, the partner to our pain, and reason for our joy. Home is not only where you want to live, but how you want to live, and the place you want to be when death finally claims you.

Let me put it this way: the source of all psychological, social and environmental disease is our illusion of separateness. The first step in mending that artificial schism—that deep, damn wound—is to bring ourselves back to a place of engagement with our authentic beings, in the vital present moment. The opening to the experience of the universe is through intimacy with a living planet. The doorway to the experience of the land is through our sentient animal bodies, and our feeling hearts. And the journey—the work, the realization—can only happen in immediate present time. Reindigination begins with reinhabitation of our awakened bodies and roiling emotions, in the “now.” Much of the natural world, and our own wild spirits, are dying as a direct result of our alienation and abstraction, from what I call our “great distancing.”

DJ: [Regarding] the notion of reinhabiting one’s body, what are you saying?

JH: Your door to the entire world is located where your feeling body touches the giving ground. Your bare feet, your rear end, the few square inches of absolute contact is a point of connectivity between yourself and millions of years of organic process. And the way to fully experience that connection is by disengaging our mental tape loops, our voice tracks, the constant commentary that keeps us perpetually anticipating the future or criticizing our self about the past rather than tasting the muffin we’re eating right now. Then we can experience the world around us—as well as within us—like the awakened, hungering, feeling, responding, caring creatures we really are.

We can’t feel our connection to the sentient body, or participate in the processes of the natural world anywhere but “here,” and “now.” And we can’t really be either if we’re forever residing in our brains, engrossed in the movies of our minds.
Most of us have read that science fiction classic where the professor departs his basement shop astride his “time machine,” leaving nothing behind but a ring in the dust on the floor. In the same way civilized humanity is often out of touch, absent, unreachable by a world of unfolding presence. Our bodies remain in place like that impression in the dust, while our minds orbit backwards and forwards through the years, inhabiting every period of time but now, and every place but here. Too often we dwell on our desires and worries, rather than dwelling in: in the present, in place. Meanwhile things like industrial development and environmental destruction are largely accomplished out of time, by future-looking planners and bureaucrats who are oblivious to the purrs and pleas, the rewards and challenges of the beckoning present. What we need is a conscious, collective high-dive into the always decisive moment—re-immersing ourselves in the sensations and responsibilities of the real world…. now!

DJ: How does one begin to do that?

JH: Reach out to what is real—a leaf, a chair, a friend—emissaries of the present glad to reconnect us to the now. If something exists for the senses, it exists in present time. There’s so much distraction and obstruction we have to remain fiercely focused and totally insistent. Almost everything in society calls you away from yourself. The clamor and bright lights, standing in lines or working in offices, going to movies or making small talk. For the un-placated few, our society can seem like a very lonely place. The average Joe doesn’t seem to want to smell as deeply or love as much, or to risk deeply caring, because it might mean he has to act on those things he sees and feels. Becoming yourself makes you momentarily the loneliest person on earth, but as you walk through that door you realize you’re a part of everything; that in the end, it’s impossible to be alone. That’s the kind of assurance and wisdom nature affords: intimate knowledge of this moment, this tree, this place, this home.

DJ: It seems to take a long time. I’ve been living on the same land for about three years. . . .

JH: And you’re just starting to get introduced.

DJ: Yes.

JH: This courting and bonding requires not only commitment but presence and attention, day after day. If we’re only home seasonally, or if we’re gone five days out of the week, it’s not the same. Deepening relationship requires we get to see the sun come up in a slightly different place each and every day through each of the four seasons. I have friends who live in cities, who work all day indoors, and some of them don’t even know which way the sun sets. Until we’re oriented, until we know where we are, until we know what direction is East, how can we know what direction to take our lives? And it takes time to recognize the ecological cycles, as many of them are long. There are seven-year cycles for different insects, and there are different flowers that come up only every four to eight years. Patterns of rain and drought. New species moving in or disappearing. Miss a single week in this enchanted canyon, and you could miss the bulk of the wild mulberry season. No single sunset will ever be repeated again, quite the way it shined today.

DJ: Let’s talk about this place.

JH: The Anima Sanctuary is a restored riparian wilderness, an eighty acre inholding surrounded by millions of acres of Aldo Leopold’s Gila forest, in mountains that were one of the last refuges for free Apaches, including Victorio and Geronimo. This particular bend in the river is a place of power, and served the Mogollon pithouse dwellers as a site for ritual and worship for tens of thousands of years. Since the willows and cottonwood trees filled back in, we’ve seen the return of herons and ducks, owls and eagles, deer and elk, lion and bear.

When I first saw this land I fell helplessly in love with it. I sold the engine out of the school bus I lived in, in order to get the earnest money, with no idea if I could get up the rest of the down I’d offered. Apparently on some of their historic raids Vikings would find themselves outnumbered, and the chieftains would set fire to the sails knowing the men would fight harder once they saw there was no retreat. By selling the engine I’d burned my ships, and there was no going back on my oath to purchase and protect this special place.

DJ: How did you know this was the place you needed to be?

JH: Finding our home, like finding our destiny, is a matter of getting in touch with our intuition and instinct, and then learning to trust and follow it. You can’t pick a home by comparing the facts and maps in some atlas. Home, like adventure, is something that becomes possible whenever we suspend our plans and criteria and feel our way to where we most belong. It’s not only the place our souls need, but also the place that most needs us. It isn’t where you lay your head, it’s where you pledge your heart.

The events leading me to find, buy and preserve the Sanctuary have been nothing short of miraculous, convincing me without a doubt that I was meant to be here serving this place and teachings. And anyway, we can sense where we belong in the compass of our bones. Whenever we leave we’ll feel like we’re going the wrong way. And when we turn back, we know in every cell of our being that we’re headed in the direction of home.

DJ: You’ve written that we can’t own land; that land owns us. What is your contract with this canyon?

JH: How can we own that which contains, predates, and outlasts us? I didn’t contract for this place so much as with it. We enter into a relationship sealed in blood and tears, sweat and semen, an equitable giving and taking that’s clearly spelled out, and duly sworn to. The land is pledged to give wholly of its authentic self, to offer home and shelter, beautiful groves and stunning mountains, the food and water we need, inspiration and instruction. We promise gifts in return, like our attendance and presence, attention and focus. We promise to try to feel her needs, and meet them. To support her in her fullest flowering; to defend her integrity and honor from all threats, including those that come from ourselves. To appreciate, and celebrate.

It is, as much as anything else, a marriage contract, bound by love rather than law. I’ve stood before these orange and purple cliffs many times and repeated my vows: That I’ll do everything I can to restore her and make her all she can be, to never bend her to my will, to always serve her, touch her, stroke her hair of grass. To revel in the sensation of my bare feet on her naked earthen body.

DJ: One of the things I love about your work is that activists generally do restoration, some new age types sing praises, but you do both. It’s very evident how much work you’ve done here.

JH: You’re a gentleman for saying so. Restoration and resistance can be arts, just like music and poetry—if we infuse them with passion and prayer, rhythm and style, meaning and grace.

The most adamant and beautiful work seems to emanate from the reptilian cortex, from caring souls and expectant flesh, from Earth and Spirit. The rational mind really only serves this work to the degree that it functions as an honest translator: as communicants, litigants, poem creators and prayer reciters. And especially, as praise givers.

DJ: It’s like Meister Eckhart said, if the only prayer you say in your life is “thank you,” that would be sufficient.

JH: Words too easily become a substitute for emotion and experience. When it comes to language, it fills only these few redeeming roles: Giving thanks. Giving warnings. Creating odes to the beloved. Directing people’s attention back to what’s real and wordless. If I’m constantly writing, it’s only because I’m trying to pontificate people into howling, to return them to vital immediate experience. If we were all conscious and present, all fully landed, we could revert to what you’ve called “a language of bodies … of wave on stone … a language older than words.”

It’s an old metaphor, but we’re all planting seeds. And this takes us back to the question of whether we can hope for results. A person planting seeds can’t stand around and wait to see what grows in every situation. Sometimes seeds come up the first year. Others might take ten or fifteen generations, and come up when there is just enough sunshine, just enough moisture, just enough compost for the seed to sprout and bloom.

But these are just words. The essential thing is to re-become who we really are, opposing the destruction and lies, embracing the natural world, working and playing as if life itself depended on it. Once we do that, there will be no more quandaries, no more need to “process,” no confusion about wrong or right, or wondering if we’re on our path of heart. We’ll feel, we’ll care, we’ll respond. We’ll express this wholeness in acts of beauty. We’ll give everything … and that will be enough.

-Jesse Wolf Hardin – www.animacenter.org

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