Animá Lifeways & Herbal School

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

.

Creating A Heartful Logo

by Jesse Wolf Hardin

.
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.

.

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

.

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

.

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

.

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

.

This one’s for you, Sabrina.

.

(RePost and Forward Freely)

Share This

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:

.

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

.

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.

.

.

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.

.
.

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

.
.

(Please RePost and Forward)

Share This

Criticism:

Ouch and Affirmation

.
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.

.

.

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.

.

.
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.

.

.

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?

.

‘

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)

.

‘

“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

(Please Forward and RePost Freely)

Share This

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

————————-

.

.

ESSENTIAL CONNECTIONS:

Interview With Jesse Wolf Hardin

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

.

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).

.

.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.

.

.

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

.

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.

.

.

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.

.

.

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.
.

.

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.

.

.

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.

.

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

.

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.

.

.

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.

.

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

.

.

Share This