For The Wild - JESSE WOLF HARDIN on Rewilding the Self ⧸161

00:00:00.000 This episode is brought to you in part by the Calliopeia Foundation, and listeners like you.

00:00:06.720 Calliopeia supports projects interweaving spirituality, culture, and ecology.

00:00:12.220 We are grateful for their support, and the support of grassroots contributions from listeners.

00:00:18.340 To learn more about the Calliopeia Foundation, visit calliopeia.org.

00:00:22.800 To make a donation to For the Wild, visit forthewild.world slash donate, or support us through Patreon.

00:00:31.260 Welcome to For the Wild podcast, I'm Ayanna Young.

00:00:35.160 On today's episode, I'm excited to be in conversation with the acclaimed author, ecological activist, artist, musician, and historian, Jesse Wolfharden.

00:00:46.360 Wolfe has been a leading voice of and for the natural world for over four decades,

00:00:51.820 was the first to coin the term rewilding,

00:00:54.500 and has been arrested and pepper sprayed as well as applauded for his actions.

00:01:00.480 If we have, in the moment, accepted our wildness, reclaimed our wildness,

00:01:06.880 reclaimed our connection to, and empowered ourselves to act upon

00:01:12.800 the world that we know to be enlivened and sacred that's what all peoples have always known and it

00:01:19.640 is not just the way to do things but it is the reward it's a way that we can feel a passion and

00:01:26.340 that passion will drive us to make great successes wolf has been a featured presenter at hundreds of

00:01:32.120 conferences and universities and under the name lone wolf circles was the creator of cross-cultural

00:01:38.360 eco-spiritual collaborations, appropriately called medicine shows, melding his powerful

00:01:44.020 spoken word with live music, indigenous presentations, and focused activism. He is

00:01:50.880 the author of over 800 published articles in over 200 different publications, as well as over 25

00:01:58.320 books, his work earning the praises of luminaries such as Gary Snyder, Joanna Macy, Ralph Metzner,

00:02:05.740 Starhawk, and Rosemary Gladstar. Well, welcome to the show, Wolf. It's so wonderful to have you

00:02:12.500 here today with us. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to share that reading

00:02:19.800 through your beautiful writing in preparation for this interview reactivated some of my oldest and

00:02:26.680 deepest loves in herbalism and cultivating wild space and plant medicine. So I hope our listeners

00:02:33.460 have a chance to dig into your vast body of work beyond what we're able to cover today.

00:02:38.280 Wonderful.

00:02:39.400 So Wolf, a common thread that I've noticed runs through your writing is the spirited

00:02:44.520 call to re-entangle ourselves in the places we call home, to fall in love and knowledge

00:02:50.940 and relationship with the landforms and waters that flow around us.

00:02:56.080 And in your book, The Healing Terrain, you often refer to place as bioregion, where you

00:03:02.360 write, quote, terraform and life form interact to create patterns of relationship and community,

00:03:09.060 end quote. And this term gets thrown around a lot. So to ground our conversation, I'd love to begin

00:03:16.120 by orienting within and around the concept of bioregion. So if you could help animate this term

00:03:22.880 beyond the colonial boundary notion of place that we're so used to navigating, that would be

00:03:28.260 Wonderful. And maybe a second part to that question is, what comes alive when we orient

00:03:34.320 our sense of place around the dynamic worlds of living ecology?

00:03:38.920 Bioregionalism was first introduced to me by Peter Berg, who's deceased now. And it was

00:03:44.220 established as our recognition, really, that there's different parts of nature that have

00:03:48.720 different personalities, different ecological systems that express themselves as in different

00:03:54.680 voices and in different ways and we noticed that you couldn't just have one singular policy

00:04:01.800 or even one singular emotional or spiritual approach because each area varied so much

00:04:08.220 so if we think in terms of the millions of years that humans and pre-humans have existed

00:04:14.960 all those processes of evolution change growth awareness to the degree that we're aware now

00:04:20.460 it is formed by particular areas not by a general concept of the earth mother earth is a beautiful

00:04:26.960 image but it fails us in many ways we don't engage with a generic mother what we do is

00:04:33.320 recognize that we are a part of a visceral spiritual physical ecological part of nature

00:04:41.360 which is manifest in specific areas in specific ways and so yes we have a desert bioregion many

00:04:49.300 different desert bioregions. So it's not just ecotones and different ecosystems, but it's an

00:04:55.580 actual personality of place. The second recognition, for me at least, was that we are not just learning

00:05:04.920 how to relate to and how to affect the environment in the particular places we live and connect to

00:05:12.240 it deeper but rather that it is the place which sculpts us it takes us like a piece of clay and

00:05:19.660 affects how we react emotionally what our value systems are what our aesthetics are what we find

00:05:26.000 most beautiful what amazes us what befuddles us and where off the wonderment comes and that's a

00:05:32.540 very personalized process the moment that you even look out the window in the largest metropolitan

00:05:38.880 an area you suddenly see the larger picture go out to a park that's even more so drive the 40 60

00:05:46.980 100 miles whatever you have to to get to a relatively wild place and it even becomes more

00:05:52.540 evident that these are not just settings they're not stages for the human drama but rather they

00:06:00.900 are the point of interconnection in which we make an impact and it in turn makes an impact on us

00:06:06.780 Yes, I do feel that impact. I feel so deeply how the land impacts us when we begin to open up to relationship. And I feel like that has been such a part of my own journey with Cougar Mountain and the forest, just letting the land impact us.

00:06:31.860 I think as modern humans who have gotten so far from land relationship, land connection, it's almost like we've built barriers to allowing that kind of impact because this modern dominant culture is really so much about us making the impact and us having the control.

00:06:56.240 And so, yeah, I really am happy that you spoke to that.

00:07:00.040 And moving deeper into this notion of bioregionalism, I'd like to read another short passage from

00:07:05.500 The Healing Train.

00:07:07.020 Quote, each bioregion is self-satisfied, creating and sustaining the factors and conditions

00:07:13.360 for its fruition and fulfillment.

00:07:15.020 It is this we might best cleave to in these troubled times, a distinctive community of

00:07:22.080 life where little needs to be imported nothing is alien or extra and nothing is amiss end quote

00:07:28.380 and oh my goodness i just love the image of wholeness that you sculpt through your words

00:07:34.240 and it feels so healing to embody the shape of abundance and the thought that we all have

00:07:41.280 what we need in a sense and in this time of disconnection and severance how does this touch

00:07:47.580 our human soul to be called forth as active co-creators, stewards, and humble members of a

00:07:54.060 larger biotic community. What is, as you call it, the geography of belonging? I could probably best

00:08:01.780 speak to that in terms of my own experience, which always seemed like I was coming to these

00:08:06.700 realizations late, and perhaps because I was feeling it for an entire species, not just for

00:08:11.520 myself. But when I first got to where I live, which is in the Gila wilderness of southwest New

00:08:18.620 Mexico, it's not the deserts that are normally associated with the southwest. It's a fairly

00:08:25.460 rare and very high mountain range. It was the first place set aside as a protected wilderness

00:08:31.740 area, in fact. And many thanks to Aldo Leopold, who made his transition from a scientific

00:08:38.780 resource extraction approach to nature to truly embodying a deep ecological sensibility

00:08:46.440 and best expressed in his essay about the green fire dying in the wolf's eye after he killed it

00:08:54.380 for the sake of deer and that changed my life to hear that and I came there I have to say originally

00:09:02.300 And he's looking for two things, sanctuary from the madness, the superficiality, the

00:09:09.200 rancor and conflict, and basically just the buzz of technology that made me feel constantly

00:09:16.360 amiss, constantly ill at ease.

00:09:19.260 And so I found my sanctuary, and it wasn't very long before one thing after another showed

00:09:26.440 that actually perhaps I was being brought there being employed by the region in order to serve it

00:09:33.940 and to meet its needs rather than just the other way around and it began with realizing that just

00:09:40.960 by chasing off the cattle that had grazed on a San Francisco river for over 100 years

00:09:47.140 and just to chase them off the property on a daily basis created enough new growth

00:09:52.780 that they used photographs of the repaired canyon in order to win a lawsuit that guaranteed the

00:10:00.960 huge sections of San Francisco and Gila Rivers would be fenced off as corridors and protected

00:10:07.060 from grazing. Seeing that I wasn't totally and still not as educated as I like to be on all the

00:10:16.220 different varieties of plants and how they interact with each other. So I found myself

00:10:21.120 at the very beginning planting anything that i knew to be wild and in any way whatsoever

00:10:25.340 endemic to new mexico some of those didn't survive because they didn't have the right

00:10:31.740 amount of sun or they didn't have the exact ph they needed didn't have the right amount of shade

00:10:36.540 in a given day the right amount of moisture and the right amount of other species of plants that

00:10:41.960 that interact with them in various alliances and make life possible so some beautiful plants

00:10:48.400 such as whorehound quickly overproduced and we were too successful in relationship to

00:10:55.700 the very sensitive and often rare and threatened species of plants that existed there with it

00:11:01.820 so by reintroducing that I saw that I was having what even though it was well-meaning

00:11:06.900 I was having a negative impact and we had to painfully restrain that proliferation in ways

00:11:12.920 that appear to bring it back into balance in our clumsy ways so for me a geography of relationship

00:11:20.660 and it's a geography of hope in that by recognizing your place that you can have an

00:11:28.900 effective affective place within that and that we do have impacts even when we don't notice them

00:11:35.840 good and bad and that recognition became so deep it wasn't intellectual it was

00:11:41.860 at a level that people often call spiritual sometimes magical sometimes write it off as

00:11:47.920 just emotional but it was certainly more than than a cognitive understanding it was a

00:11:52.680 re-emplacement and that's i really loved the word that you used just a little while ago about

00:11:59.460 in the entanglement of the wild because it's not an easy thing it's not something that we

00:12:07.420 readily understand at this point in our life we've been separate for so long but yet it is

00:12:13.280 actually a tangled it's obstacles it's mistakes it's paying the price of being a responsible

00:12:20.400 being that's willing to give up certain personal ambitions for the land or for your life

00:12:26.460 for some vision of a greater larger benefit to the whole and so i think that transition comes with

00:12:34.820 the first opening of our eyes we see where we are which is what geography is all about

00:12:40.560 we recognize what parts of ourselves are engaged if you could hook up sensors to our entire being

00:12:47.240 the way they often hook up sensors to the brain now to read impulses under certain stimulus you

00:12:53.300 would see our entire beings being affected by, even when we don't know it, every tiny shift in

00:12:58.920 terrain, every potential threat that we see, the shapes of the clouds and what we see in them,

00:13:06.300 and the joy that that can so often bring to us. These all speak as much of place as they do a

00:13:12.620 process. Without place, none of this can happen. Without recognition of the places where we live,

00:13:19.000 we're missing out on the joy and on the ways in which we can have an impact and truly make a

00:13:25.940 difference. I appreciated hearing you running the cows off and trying to reinstate native species

00:13:37.780 to that area and knowing that it's not always going to be exactly the right thing to do at

00:13:45.420 times and i've definitely found that with my own re-entanglement into the wild that

00:13:51.240 it's really hard to learn how to be in a relationship again without making mistakes

00:13:58.360 and maybe that's not even possible and how do we find that deeper trust and faith that

00:14:04.820 we just need to keep coming back and coming back with integrity with responsibility with

00:14:11.580 accountability to the land and to that place. It's a really deep question. And I know not

00:14:18.040 everybody also has access to doing that. And so it's a even more complex question to be asking

00:14:25.400 in this time. And for those of us who do have access, then I feel like we even have a greater

00:14:30.980 responsibility to the land and to the place, to the original peoples, to the plants and so on and

00:14:37.720 so forth. And so I've been getting a lot of visuals as you're speaking about the place

00:14:42.060 that you steward. And I want to say too, that within this conversation, I'm reminded of the

00:14:48.520 importance of deconstructing the strategy of separation and the deep seated mistrust in our

00:14:55.100 ability to survive and thrive without global capitalism. And at the same time, it feels

00:15:01.180 important to voice that many ecosystems that are struggling to produce and sustain life

00:15:06.200 as communities around the globe are experiencing ecological breakdown and with it the strangling

00:15:12.960 of traditional life ways. The collapse of ancient salmon runs in Alaska comes to mind and this is

00:15:19.040 something that I'm just very deeply connected to and physically and otherwise and I'm wondering

00:15:26.260 how can we hold the assignment of bioregionalism with these communities and places in mind where

00:15:33.140 the land has been so thoroughly gutted by the ravages of industrial development or climate

00:15:37.780 chaos. So if you could speak to the value of rewilding in these times of extreme ecological

00:15:44.480 distress. Rewilding as I conceived it when I coined it and the way I still feel about it now

00:15:51.640 is a very much a two-part process. One is that we try to understand what the most vital,

00:16:00.960 healthy situation is for the natural world and in that situation it will be wild it's inevitable

00:16:08.480 there's you just can't have you can grow endangered species in a garden but that's not the same thing

00:16:14.660 as re-establishing or protecting existing wildness and wildness is a quality that tribal peoples from

00:16:22.840 all over the world not just this continent have almost inevitably held at the core of their

00:16:28.400 beliefs, their religious beliefs, and how they live. In fact, if they did not follow those

00:16:33.260 priorities and concerns, the taboos that prevented one from overfishing a spot because the tribe gets

00:16:40.160 too large, when you need to migrate because your horses or the buffalo that you're following

00:16:46.040 have knocked down an area too much and you need to move them to another area, to a fresh pasturage,

00:16:51.780 These kinds of interactions have existed forever in ways that were not just practical, but also integrated into the spirit of their beliefs and the spirit of their relationship.

00:17:06.400 So some of the first activism that I did was working with First Nations peoples at Yellow Thunder Camp and also, well, numerous places.

00:17:15.240 But I'm thinking that where I moved to, the Native peoples had already left over 900 years ago.

00:17:23.140 When I went around to try to find as much information as I could about the ruins and the sacred paintings that are on the walls and all the things that I felt were trying to inform me through humans, not just through the plants and the animals.

00:17:35.400 and very few of them could tell me anything.

00:17:38.540 I went on a long search looking for the elders that were still informed,

00:17:42.460 not just about their own traditions, but about what it was like in the area where I live now,

00:17:47.740 because I've inherited a sacred trust to protect the artwork and the artifacts

00:17:53.120 as much as the plant life and the animal life that's there.

00:17:57.780 But how to begin when there is no existing human memory of what a place was like,

00:18:04.120 So what would it look like if it was healthy and balanced again?

00:18:07.240 We don't even know that.

00:18:08.800 What prayers are most appropriate, not just to the larger mother,

00:18:14.100 but rather to the spirits of that particular area, which they're different.

00:18:19.020 It's just like going from party to party in the city.

00:18:21.720 It's different clusters of personalities and of beings,

00:18:24.980 none of whom can be approached in the same way.

00:18:27.700 The words don't mean the same thing from one person to the next.

00:18:30.860 and so we come to a place where we don't know how was it and what can it be again but what we do

00:18:39.000 have is the second aspect worked out completely and that is rewilding of the self because there's

00:18:47.280 nothing that we can do for any reason economic or cultural sensitivity or anything like that

00:18:53.780 in terms of protecting nature that can last if there's not a shift in human consciousness and

00:19:01.100 awareness, a very wild reclaiming of what it means to be a human being. For us to basically

00:19:07.580 be willing to suffer the loss of certain convenience and certain aspects of the

00:19:12.620 technological society in order to be re-engaged and re-informed. To be so open, to be so free of

00:19:21.160 our own dogma and fears that we can actually hear what the land is speaking to us, just

00:19:26.220 as it did to our ancient ancestors in North America, in the Ukraine, in Australia.

00:19:32.820 It matters not the where of it, or I should say that it's just as important everywhere,

00:19:38.480 that there be a re-emergence and a re-entanglement based on the sensibility that's more about

00:19:46.120 a passion a spiritual feeling a setting aside of our constant wordage and constantly thinking we

00:19:53.120 know what's best and a listening and then following what that says to us now if we have that even if

00:20:01.160 we are to fail in our actual environmental activism even if we can't protect a particular

00:20:08.000 forest it still gets clear cut even if there's a species and so many species are being lost now

00:20:15.680 I don't want to get off on that subject because of such great depression.

00:20:20.320 And yet, even with all these extinctions, if we have, in the moment, accepted our wildness,

00:20:28.200 reclaimed our wildness, reclaimed our connection to, and empowered ourselves to act upon the

00:20:36.100 world that we know to be enlivened and sacred, that's what all peoples have always known.

00:20:41.460 And it is not just the way to do things, but it is the reward.

00:20:46.400 It's a way that we can feel a passion, and that passion will drive us to many great successes.

00:20:52.120 Maybe not winning, per se, the environmental struggle, but saving a single plant, saving a single species, a single forest.

00:21:01.140 No, even saving a single tree or plant becomes this amazing, incredible thing.

00:21:06.220 and people do not have to imagine that they need to live in the wilderness for this to be relevant

00:21:12.240 or for them to have any positive impact on it nor do they have to just depend upon donations or

00:21:19.820 whatever in order to feel involved it can start right wherever we are when we talk about the

00:21:25.740 rewilding then that's a re-greening of the cities that's included in it when we talk about having

00:21:32.240 gardens you know growing up the sides of buildings and reclaiming the roofs as garden areas for the

00:21:38.300 people's benefit for their connection as well as for the plants and then to freshen the air but

00:21:44.380 it can start and has to start wherever we are right in that place and it may not be a wilderness

00:21:51.400 where we have to wade and waste deep river to get home after an interview it can just be the place

00:21:57.760 where your eyes were open and your heart was open and it feels so good to do anything to help that

00:22:05.160 to celebrate it to celebrate the beauty to help protect it to care about it that becomes the way

00:22:11.840 in which everything for us is full we can be content in knowing that we are we don't have

00:22:19.380 to think about it that we are a part of it we are the earth defending herself not something acting

00:22:25.880 upon it.

00:22:42.060 Hey, for the wild community, Ayana here.

00:22:44.920 As appreciative as we are of the sponsorships we receive throughout the year, we can't continue

00:22:50.720 to produce the podcast on their generosity alone.

00:22:53.540 I know I've mentioned this before, but I just want to take a moment to express how much time, effort, and care goes into the preparation and production of our episodes, from research, writing, production, outreach, and social media content.

00:23:10.420 With the format that we work in, and other forms of emerging digital media in general, it's hard to demonstrate just how much work goes into the product that listeners have come to expect.

00:23:21.520 Over the years, For the Wild has grown into a small, dedicated, and loving team of individuals

00:23:27.620 who are committed to the work that we do.

00:23:30.520 We all consider ourselves lucky to be able to do this work amongst each other and create

00:23:35.480 unique offerings each week.

00:23:37.780 However, For the Wild also wants to make sure that we're able to pay a living wage and

00:23:42.800 support individuals in living a dignified life.

00:23:45.480 as it stands right now the funds we raise through our patreon only cover the cost of one out of the

00:23:52.280 four to five episodes we produce a month if you want to see us continue or perhaps are especially

00:23:58.940 moved by the episode you are listening to today please become a monthly sustaining member through

00:24:04.660 our patreon or consider making a one-time donation directly to us through our website

00:24:10.200 You can do so at patreon.com slash for the wild, or by visiting our website at for the wild dot world slash donate.

00:24:21.240 All right, thanks so much for listening. Now let's get back to the interview.

00:24:25.320 i loved hearing you speak to the celebration of beauty and life and i've noticed in myself

00:24:39.800 the overwhelm of the anthropocene and the extinction crisis and just the challenges

00:24:45.660 of rewilding physical places and whether or not we have knowledge of what they were before

00:24:52.040 colonization, we don't really understand fully what's going to happen in the next couple hundred

00:24:58.540 years with climate change. So it's extremely difficult to know how to move forward with

00:25:03.760 restoration and rewilding in that way. But when you speak about the celebration, it brings me

00:25:09.060 back into gratitude. And that is something that I've really been working with through the overwhelm

00:25:14.600 and just the sheer paralysis I feel at times with what we're up against.

00:25:21.320 But this morning I was lying in bed before this interview

00:25:24.700 and I just was trying to be in the celebration of being and life

00:25:29.440 and that brings such a clarity to our relationships with the earth and beyond

00:25:35.960 and so I really resonated with that.

00:25:38.260 And I'd now like to transition this conversation

00:25:41.500 and discuss some of your teachings around herbalism

00:25:44.540 which, if I may quickly add,

00:25:47.300 we've so beautifully with the writings of your partner,

00:25:50.640 skilled folk herbalist and word alchemist, Kiva Rose.

00:25:54.440 You both write about working with plants as a portal into the green world

00:25:58.760 and a conduit for reconnection.

00:26:01.380 In The Enchanted Healer, Kiva writes, quote,

00:26:04.600 The plants speak to us from every direction,

00:26:07.500 through the air we breathe,

00:26:08.920 in the taste of the food we eat,

00:26:10.860 through the scent of a spring breeze,

00:26:12.600 and their wild melody is the wisdom and healing of every age and place. Whether we choose to

00:26:18.840 listen, to participate in the ancient dance, is completely up to us." So yeah, it's so beautiful,

00:26:27.280 and I'm really wanting to know, how can developing an herbal practice, or simply just working in

00:26:34.340 concert with plants, their smells, their fabulous forms, motions, textures, energies,

00:26:41.480 how can that wave us into ancient and new relationships with each other in the natural

00:26:46.440 world? And perhaps you could share an herbal ally that you've held close in your personal journey.

00:26:52.700 Well, I first got involved with herbalism, not because it was something I'd always thought I

00:26:59.740 was going to do, but just, I was at the point where I couldn't tour all year long doing medicine

00:27:07.420 shows and followed up by demonstrations and police harassment, all the other exciting things

00:27:13.500 that were a part of that, sleeping on people's couches and spending way too much time burning

00:27:18.160 fossil fuels and driving around. And I came back home with a sense that somehow we had to integrate

00:27:25.020 the healing of the personal self with the healing of the earth. And what heals the self

00:27:30.860 best, perhaps, and I'm not just talking emotional or psychology here, but in terms of our actual

00:27:35.800 bodies even what reconnects us best is the actual plants which are developed in these chemicals that

00:27:42.380 conserve almost in every situation there's hardly any condition where a plant cannot the actions of

00:27:49.300 a plant the chemistry of a plant cannot have a positive impact even if not a complete cure of

00:27:54.820 and it does so almost always or most often i should say without side effects unlike pharmaceuticals

00:28:01.900 from the technological paradigm, which so often destroys at the same time that they're

00:28:07.500 working to alleviate a particular condition. And everybody I met involved with medical

00:28:15.060 herbalism in particular, they reminded me, and this is just as true of the crazy

00:28:20.080 past botanists that I've met and stuff that are down there crawling around on their knees to

00:28:24.400 name a new plant they haven't ever seen before. The teachers that are trying to pass on to their

00:28:29.960 young students something about the joys of having a garden and eating locally grown food and healthy

00:28:36.380 food and or an artist who through the manifestation through the imagery of a plant doesn't just tell

00:28:44.760 us something about the plant but it tells us something about what it means to be fully alive

00:28:49.260 what beauty really means how things unfold one into the other and that all becomes so alive

00:28:54.660 in that moment. I, in so many ways, was brought into this movement by herbalism. Well, Occupy was

00:29:04.640 definitely the spark. It was the fire starter, so to speak. Before then, I was definitely into

00:29:13.000 radical literature here and there, but I wasn't as engaged until Occupy. But

00:29:21.800 that was more of a political intellectual connection. It wasn't an earth connection for

00:29:28.560 me. And it wasn't until I moved out to Oregon and I was dealing with some health issues and

00:29:34.960 there is the natural college of natural medicine. And there was the Portland herbal day or Portland

00:29:42.000 herbal conference. It was a one day event and Cascade Anderson Geller was speaking and she was

00:29:48.380 so full of life and she was animating these conversations with plants as she was speaking

00:29:54.520 to us. And I'd never seen anybody talk about plants like that or tell stories about how

00:30:00.560 she was speaking to plants. And she was also talking about activism at the same time and

00:30:05.300 stopping resource extraction projects in the Mountain Hood area. And it really wasn't until

00:30:12.460 that moment that I met Cascade and opened up to herbalism that an entire world, like it was a

00:30:18.200 portal opening into this way of relating to the land where instead of going on a hike, which I

00:30:26.040 think before that's what I would do, I'd probably go on a hike and I'd want to get on the trail and

00:30:30.340 get to the end of the trail. And then I'd get back in my car, go wherever I was going. Through

00:30:36.420 herbalism, it really taught me to engage with the land in such a different way, not only because I

00:30:43.480 was trying to harvest medicine, but to slow down, to stop and actually be rather than just try to

00:30:50.800 get through it for some other exterior desire or reason or motive. It wasn't about that. It was

00:30:57.640 about actually getting to know a place, getting to know the plants as people in their own right.

00:31:03.220 And that completely changed my activism. And when I took the teachings of herbalism and the mentorship of Cascade, who has since passed, and combine that with the political rigor and passion of Occupy, it was like this perfect storm for me at the beginning, well, near the beginning of my own journey.

00:31:24.620 And so I really appreciate that that's been a part of your journey as well.

00:31:28.800 And I definitely feel a certain energy coming from plant folks.

00:31:35.600 That's what's kept me doing it for so long.

00:31:37.680 I can't believe we've been doing this annual event, the Good Medicine Confluence, for 11

00:31:42.160 years now.

00:31:42.980 It was planned to be a one-time situation.

00:31:46.560 But the people that came, and they weren't just, I don't think they were typical herbalists

00:31:51.720 overall.

00:31:52.280 all they were perhaps the most impassioned most sensitive most hurt most caring most capable of

00:31:59.440 joy they were absolutely in love with the plants and that's so touching and so to hear them say

00:32:05.880 at last here's an umbrella for this fusing of my deep deep passion the sense of magic and folklore

00:32:13.540 and all the things that connect me to the plant story becomes my story and thank you so much

00:32:20.280 please don't ever stop. And that made it awfully hard because they were some of the most sensitive

00:32:24.940 people. They are some of the most sensitive and caring human beings that I interact with. And

00:32:29.580 that's after so many decades of working with so many different so-called radical groups and

00:32:36.080 different fields of science and exploration. But all scientists seem to have a sense of curiosity.

00:32:42.940 I shouldn't say all. The non-corporate scientists have a sense of curiosity that's

00:32:47.440 almost childlike. And every single person that comes to our gathering, and I imagine

00:32:52.600 all the people that read our publications, at least the majority of them, they're coming to it

00:32:58.260 as two things, as a lover, really, engaging things as you would a lover, refusing to see that lover

00:33:05.100 compromised or hurt or damaged or disrespected, and wanting to give it room to grow and blossom

00:33:11.860 and be itself without control.

00:33:14.580 And the other part is they come to it like children.

00:33:17.200 I mean, they might have practiced for 30 years

00:33:19.580 helping all kinds of people

00:33:20.960 with some really serious conditions,

00:33:22.660 but instead of ending up hardened,

00:33:24.720 they're still making little squeaking noises

00:33:26.980 when they find a certain plant that's working

00:33:28.940 to be helpful to their client.

00:33:31.400 You know, they're running around outside

00:33:34.180 either in the wild places,

00:33:35.980 wildcrafting or in their gardens.

00:33:38.280 They can't even open a bag for Mountain Rose Herbs

00:33:41.080 without being overcome with first the smell and the sight and the texture

00:33:46.200 and this physical engagement with the actual plant

00:33:50.200 that can sometimes stop them in their tracks

00:33:53.760 and it might be a long length of time before they can get back to their tasks

00:33:57.000 because indeed they're inebriated, they are enchanted

00:34:00.340 and bless them for that.

00:34:02.760 They have shown and I hope will continue to show

00:34:05.620 that herbs are not just a way of treating ourselves

00:34:09.440 outside of the harmful medical system but they are indeed a portal in an opening and kiva describes

00:34:17.300 it in her own terms of her own life as it gave her back her life it was the way that she healed

00:34:22.900 her entire being not just healed certain things certain conditions and that's i think the real

00:34:30.340 joy of this is to see not just a combining of activism love concern nature social change to

00:34:40.300 see how these all come together around a plant that to other people may seem so quiet may seem

00:34:46.540 silent or mute and they move so slow that we just think it's a piece of fixture of the scenery

00:34:53.420 rather than this active, communicating being that is indeed a relative to us, a part of us,

00:35:01.800 and can help define us. It can bring us back to who we are. That may be the most crucial thing

00:35:06.940 about herbalism of all. So beautifully said. I very personally resonate with that.

00:35:15.420 And I wanted to mention that one thing that I really appreciate in your writing is the

00:35:23.400 way you offer so much space and patience and humble reflection around what it means to be an

00:35:29.540 herbalist. And I'm sure we have a diverse audience of folks listening in today, from those well-seasoned

00:35:36.440 in the trade of botanical healing to those interested in developing deeper relationships

00:35:40.820 with plants. So with this in mind, I'm wondering if you could share more about the practice,

00:35:47.140 culture, and art of folk herbalism, and as leaders within the movement, facilitating grassroots

00:35:52.660 gathering and intellectual communing. How do you and Kiva feed the groundwater of blossoming folk

00:35:59.680 herbalism resistance or renaissance? It's both. I was just about to say that. I'm like,

00:36:05.700 actually both make sense. It is definitely just being an herbalist, just taking herbs. And I mean,

00:36:12.440 before we even get into terms like what is our role? Are we actually an herbalist or not? Just

00:36:17.140 the moment that we even recognize the value of the plants, that is already a resistance.

00:36:21.480 and if we buy from small producers that are doing high quality medicines and then we're also

00:36:29.820 taking a step further because we're resisting the commercialization and basically the appropriation

00:36:35.360 of plants for corporate greed it's kind of amazing the degree to which it really is a revolution

00:36:41.040 as well as a re-emergence into what it really means to be a human being

00:36:46.300 and folk herbalism it's important to you know folk too often has a negative connotation for

00:36:53.640 people in terms of superstition they almost equate it with superstition it's what the common people

00:36:59.160 did before there was science and they knew better but that's really not what folk herbalism is about

00:37:05.140 at all it is first and foremost a an empowerment because it says that knowledge of healing

00:37:12.560 knowledge of anything for that matter, but in this case, knowledge about what plants to use,

00:37:17.460 how to take care of ourselves, our families, our communities, the barrios, the ghettos,

00:37:23.460 the small world towns where there are no doctors. But we have that effect and that impact that's

00:37:32.020 just huge. And when considering the ancient tradition of herbalism, I think about the ways

00:37:40.860 that herbalists and medicine makers, crafts folks, and in particular, indigenous healers

00:37:46.500 have been marginalized and violently targeted throughout history. And taking us deeper into

00:37:51.840 this idea, Kiva writes, quote, to be an herbalist, especially in this era and place, is to walk the

00:37:58.560 edge. These edges are important, imperative even. As herbalists, we're pushing at the borders of

00:38:05.300 what's considered normal, sensible, and sometimes even acceptable within mainstream society, end

00:38:11.180 quote. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts about walking this edge, and more specifically,

00:38:17.680 the importance of maintaining radical creative spaces for deep liberatory work outside of the

00:38:24.040 system of licensure and paradigm of the quote expert. In the war against the wild, might

00:38:30.860 decriminalization be a better path than deregulation when it comes to herbalism?

00:38:36.820 Well, there's not a huge amount of regulation yet, but it's fast developing. And it started

00:38:42.900 by attacking people who are making medicine in small batches in their home without the kinds of

00:38:49.320 so-called approvals and verifications that they require. And it's at the behest of the

00:38:55.680 pharmaceutical industry that the FDA in particular is having an ever-escalating war against both

00:39:02.860 herbalists and naturopaths who dare, and they've used that term, who dare take their own fates

00:39:09.300 into their hands. So what has been the sidelining of indigenous healers also now includes the

00:39:17.140 sidelining of people who choose to take their own health and the health of their community,

00:39:22.640 take responsibility for that themselves. And I think that's where the edge exists. It exists

00:39:29.400 in a lot of places. It exists when we discover new information and we have to set aside what

00:39:35.260 we've learned previously from books or whatever, assumptions that we have, long-held assumptions.

00:39:41.780 That's the edge too, because we're willing to try new things. Kiva's most amazing herbalism,

00:39:47.520 to my mind, has been her discovery of uses for common plants that are not common uses,

00:39:54.080 that have perhaps never been tried before in contemporary history, at least. And it's the edge

00:40:00.520 whenever we dare to say that we're going to ensure to the degree possible the health of 0.99

00:40:06.840 our community, of our people, of those living with us, bioregional cultures, that's so important. 1.00

00:40:13.780 And the edge is also where we risk.

00:40:16.820 They might say that you're not allowed to any longer make that in your home.

00:40:20.720 And you go to your kitchen as maybe a mother of four,

00:40:25.120 and you say, nobody's going to tell me what the hell to do.

00:40:28.340 And you make to the best of your ability medicine that's of benefit to you

00:40:33.080 and the people you care about beyond your family.

00:40:36.920 And so this edge is a place of the edge of knowing or certainty.

00:40:42.220 it's the edge where we fall off of our rational platform into this you know wild place into this

00:40:50.460 brush and flowers and wild things scurrying all about and become informed by those things

00:40:57.660 we're constantly either leaping off or falling off or both from what's considered to be the

00:41:04.780 reasonable normal paradigm and as soon as we do that's where the adventure happens that's where

00:41:11.000 we see new places or see things that we've always known with new eyes once again they become

00:41:16.860 something new to us suddenly we've seen all of our life a rock a hill the sound of a child's

00:41:23.340 laughter suddenly becomes so significant again that's the edge edge of discovery the edge where

00:41:30.900 there's risk the edge where we dare to be ourselves at all costs and that's the place of discovery

00:41:36.780 It's also the place of coming home, and coming home is the only chance that humans have, not just plants and wildlife, but it's the only chance we humans have, is that we too can come home. 0.89

00:41:51.200 that will be coming home to a place that provides there were monkey herbalists that they now know 0.87

00:41:59.260 were gathering certain plants for certain specific ailments that they had and using them over and 0.76

00:42:05.700 over again so that you know it was an ape cultural understanding rather than just an individual

00:42:10.640 discovery and so the edge really is the place where we fall back into what we were always best

00:42:16.680 that, which is doing all we can with amazement, with love, with all of our efforts, with no

00:42:23.700 certainty of success, and with every hope for an outcome.

00:42:29.140 I really love thinking about this edge work, and I do think that the edge is where we will

00:42:38.200 probably be most fruitful and diverse and pushing the boundaries even thinking about ecotones

00:42:47.700 and how the edges say between a forest and a meadow is where you're going to you know see the

00:42:57.180 most diversity in plants. And when I think about the regulation or, yeah, potential

00:43:07.900 legal frameworks around herbalism, it really worries me. And I know this has been a big

00:43:13.540 conversation, the herbal community for a while. And every time I've seen the government come in

00:43:20.620 to quote unquote regulate something. What I usually see is a type of money grab. It's a way

00:43:27.580 for big corporations to really deregulate what they want to deregulate. And then the small time

00:43:35.380 mom and pop shops or small family operations will go out of business because potentially they can't

00:43:43.600 pay for the type of standards that these regulatory agencies are placing on them.

00:43:49.420 And it's a way to kick out the people on the edge. It's a way to imprison the edge itself. And it's a way to stop those discoveries from happening or spreading. And I know it's a heated debate at times, but even looking at what has happened to the cannabis, I don't even want to call it industry, but it certainly is now.

00:44:10.840 in California, so many people had thought that, especially the folks in cities, had thought that

00:44:16.720 legalizing cannabis would be really good. It would help people stay out of jail. It would help the

00:44:23.760 farmers. When I thought, gosh, let's just decriminalize it. But once we created this

00:44:30.660 type of industry, I saw so many folks up in my neck of the woods really suffer from the strict

00:44:38.380 regulatory agencies that came down on their farms. And so I just think about that in herbalism and

00:44:43.900 it would be really, I would think, crushing to see the wildness and the magic of herbalism being

00:44:51.680 put into some type of stranglehold that some government agency is going to be the overlords

00:45:01.420 of. So I know it's been something that's, every time I go to an herbal conference, it's definitely

00:45:07.400 something that's been brought up. And I know that there's good opinions for the other side of it as

00:45:12.260 well. But yeah, that's just what I've been feeling into. Well, the edge, working with the government

00:45:18.100 is not where the edge is, I guess we could put it mildly. There's so many unforeseen negative

00:45:23.520 effects, regardless of even when they have the best of intentions. And of course, I think most

00:45:28.200 of the time they do not. Most of the time they're serving their corporate masters. But where I find

00:45:34.120 it empowering not just empowering but encouraging is knowing that they simply cannot crush it there

00:45:41.060 certain aspects of human spirit a wild spirit in every species that is not crushable you can

00:45:47.660 extinct a species but you cannot take away its spirit its insistence upon being itself

00:45:54.300 in the face of all kinds of adversity you put it in a zoo you can dress it up in a halloween costume

00:46:00.000 for your selfies at halloween time but you cannot take away the actual elements of what it means

00:46:06.680 for it to be a real wild creature herbalism is like that wild creature it is like a wild species

00:46:12.780 it is the only way it's possible to be destroyed would be for us to have put an end to humanity

00:46:19.020 itself for as long as there are people there will be some who care so much about plants and so much

00:46:25.280 about helping people that they will and i say once again in our clumsy ways because you know

00:46:31.560 cultural sensitivity ecological understanding all those things are just now being developed by us

00:46:37.180 but we don't wait to act we act on what our heart tells us matters the most and what could matter

00:46:43.640 most than that when we did our first good medicine confluence we were told that there wasn't enough

00:46:51.260 herbal gatherings number one and there wasn't there's probably 30 40 times more now than what

00:46:56.340 there was 11 years ago but they also said to focus on the kinds of skills that would make a person

00:47:04.380 more accredited in the eyes of the dominant paradigm and the normies of the government

00:47:10.100 whatever and that isn't where the edge is either so even though plants and herbalism in and of

00:47:17.800 themselves are intrinsically revolutionary and reconnective and spiritual. And yet the gatherings

00:47:26.000 were, if anything, trying to give people more of a sense in the same way that there are certain

00:47:31.640 groups that put out a letter, they hand out letters, you know, like any corporate business

00:47:35.920 or corporate field to supposedly guarantee the quality of the herbalism of the practitioner.

00:47:41.540 It doesn't guarantee the quality, of course. It only guarantees that they met requirements.

00:47:47.800 Not that they have intuition or an emotional or spiritual involvement.

00:47:53.400 It only guarantees that they could pass the test at a particular time to do a certain amount of hours or something.

00:48:00.460 So this idea of accreditation seemed to us to be somewhat antithetical to and making it harder for the kinds of revolutions that we're talking about, this reconnection that we're talking about.

00:48:13.260 And at that time, there was no audible, no visible melding of social justice and environmental justice as insane as that sounds to me now.

00:48:25.000 It was herbs where we fix our owies, and then there was a revolution happening in society in terms of politics, how we treat each other.

00:48:36.580 But those things are connected.

00:48:40.040 They cannot be disconnected.

00:48:41.260 We cannot wonder or worry about and help just other human beings, no matter how much they deserve it, no matter how long they've been in a particular place.

00:48:50.920 That's part of it. That's an integral piece of it.

00:48:54.380 Just as integral is that the air that they need to breathe, that the air that we need to breathe, that the soil, that the kinds of foods and plants that we're eating are not so genetically manipulated and poisoned that they're harming the various species.

00:49:08.260 and so we tried to create a gathering that was where all of the herbalists and these are focal

00:49:16.180 herbalists all the people who feel their connection is personal that the credit that

00:49:22.100 they need is based on their experience and the results that they get helping people

00:49:27.340 an umbrella a tent a place a gathering a fair a place of celebration a place of exchanging ideas

00:49:35.900 and forming alliances and businesses and campaigns to change things.

00:49:41.440 A place where that could come alive, where the consideration wasn't,

00:49:46.160 do I have letters after my name?

00:49:48.180 How much college have I done on this subject?

00:49:51.120 What official organization has approved of me?

00:49:54.280 But rather, how can I do anything but this?

00:49:57.900 How could I not load plants this much?

00:50:00.200 How could I not care this much for these communities and do this work?

00:50:04.180 and that's the kind of people we've attracted over and over again i've heard from them that

00:50:09.480 i didn't feel i had a place that in herbalism i wasn't sure i was even an herbalist

00:50:16.200 and that i deserved the term herbalist that i didn't know enough about enough plants

00:50:22.720 but then you helped me see that just knowing three or four plants really well and not just

00:50:29.340 superficially and paying really close attention to the effect it has on people of different

00:50:35.180 constitutions in different situations, that that is my work, that that cannot be taken from me,

00:50:41.700 that I will do that regardless of accreditation, regardless of approval, even if the income is way

00:50:48.200 lower than what I would have made doing anything else. This is what I have to do. And more

00:50:53.360 importantly, this is what I have to be.

00:50:59.340 Morning light

00:51:06.340 Dancing on the sheets

00:51:20.340 Breathing light

00:51:27.340 I can smell where I'm

00:51:39.140 Thoughts are drifting

00:51:56.780 I am thinking back to the beginning of our conversation and even reading your bio and

00:52:22.160 that you have for a long time been pushing up against the machine of capitalism and resource

00:52:32.060 extraction and this type of, yeah, just what we know is dominant culture. And I know you were

00:52:42.360 involved in direct action type of experiences. And I'm really interested to hear what your

00:52:51.180 thoughts are at this point seeing how the movements have shifted and grown and where we're at now

00:53:00.360 ecologically politically socially do you think that non-violent direct action is still a powerful

00:53:08.760 way to make change and if so I'm just interested to hear what you envision if you could imagine

00:53:17.520 audience members really wanting to step up their game, so to speak, and really start to

00:53:25.220 get brave and courageous. Yeah, I would just like to hear your analysis from

00:53:30.980 the time before and the time now and where you've seen things going and what you think is

00:53:36.940 still potent at this point.

00:53:39.680 My sense of that is constantly shifting and culture is shifting so fast now that certainly

00:53:46.340 my opinions have had to change accordingly. I began as a teenager, really, getting beat up

00:53:53.420 in Griffith Park over an anti-war rally against the Vietnam War. It did seem to me that direct

00:54:01.580 action, not just by the people that cared most, but direct action by people who would normally

00:54:05.940 not be associated with anything radical, was probably an important signifier and factor

00:54:12.840 in the ending of that war. A large part of it, of course, I know now from having read a lot of

00:54:18.380 history, a lot of that was political and economic and was not directly related to actions. Does

00:54:24.820 that mean that we shouldn't have put our bodies on the line to try to stop the, really, the 1.00

00:54:31.020 attempted destruction of the Vietnamese people and their culture, to try to stop seeing our 0.98

00:54:36.080 friends coming back, fellow 18-year-olds coming back in body bags again and again until they

00:54:41.400 had to pass a special law that you can't take pictures of the coffins, right, as they land

00:54:46.280 back in the States. But does that mean we shouldn't have acted? Of course not. We should act

00:54:52.100 regardless of the effects while looking for that which is most effectual that we can possibly do

00:55:00.160 for that purpose, for those aims. I really like the story of, whether it's apocryphal or not,

00:55:06.480 of Crazy Horse, the warrior, and how at one point him and some friends were riding upon a scene

00:55:13.700 of some other people from their tribe being surrounded by and attacked by a large group

00:55:20.020 of militiamen, I believe it was, rather than regular cavalry. And the point came up raised

00:55:26.720 by one of the other warriors of, I don't think we have a chance, you know, they can't pull this off.

00:55:30.980 And basically, what has chance got to do with it? It's like, you act because it's the right

00:55:36.000 thing to do and in that moment it felt like the right thing to do to ride in there grossly

00:55:41.400 outnumbered and to see what you can what can happen as a result that could have ended up in

00:55:47.000 complete failure in his own death instead they scattered much larger forces with their yelling

00:55:53.080 and shooting and just really the vigor of the passion of what they were standing for and

00:56:00.040 And that's important. It's crucial. If we are to have what will be a miracle of returning to a society which is the least bit equitable in terms of how it treats other human beings, let alone treats Earth with enough value in our climate as having enough value to where it's not all about just one species.

00:56:20.000 If that's to happen, then we have to do it in spite of the odds, not because of them.

00:56:25.040 We have to do it whether we are aware of how powerful that particular action will be or not.

00:56:29.720 I was listening to Mitt Romney today about being the one Republican who wasn't voting for impeachment.

00:56:35.940 I thought, well, regardless of what my politics would ever be, I would have to respect that he did it not thinking that it was going to make the difference in terms of the vote on impeachment.

00:56:47.400 He did it because it was the right thing to do.

00:56:50.000 I may not agree with what's the right thing, but what else can we act upon and how can we ever be content and satisfied with ourselves without that, that there will ever be more suicides, more quiet desperation, as Floyd Westerman used to sing, if we don't just act upon what we know to be important, what we know to be true, regardless of results and sometimes even if it's not the best way to act. 0.97

00:57:16.720 Now, since the Vietnam War, there was a huge revival, beginning with Earth Day in 1970,

00:57:23.060 which first involved me with environmentalism, that the environment is something which all

00:57:28.420 human beings and all of life requires, a healthy ecology, a healthy interaction of nutrients

00:57:34.060 and spirits and life forms, a diversity in human and non-human species, how crucial that

00:57:41.280 is. And at that time, it appeared to me that it was going to be integrated as a important part of

00:57:49.380 a well-to-do society, that if we were going to be financially in terms of lifestyle and a standard

00:57:55.960 of living, if that was to be increased, it was to also include not just us, but to include other

00:58:01.300 things which we have an impact on and can help. Since then, I've seen a lot of setbacks. The

00:58:09.100 radical environmental movement, which I was involved with, really became scapegoated by

00:58:13.760 the government. It was massive arrests, huge amounts of internecine conflict, that is internal

00:58:18.940 conflict between people that are allies, which is one of the most destructive factors, far more

00:58:24.640 destructive throughout history than anything that the rulers could do, is what we do to ourselves.

00:58:31.400 And I've seen wilderness being sidelined as something that's elite in simply the construction

00:58:37.660 of rich white folks who are able to enjoy it.

00:58:41.660 I've seen the whole idea of ecology as being something which,

00:58:45.720 if you gave it too much attention now,

00:58:47.760 that you weren't giving enough of your energy and support

00:58:50.880 to either the reclamation or extraction of resources

00:58:56.760 to make human lives better,

00:58:58.160 or you're somehow failing the disenfranchised people

00:59:02.380 by considering the environment that they too will need in order to live.

00:59:06.300 that's a very sad thing for me you know we have technology involved that makes extreme direct

00:59:13.380 action very risky physically can easily result we're in a kind of a surveillance state that

00:59:19.080 makes that kind of activism very very difficult and so what i recommend to people now when people

00:59:26.160 ask me is not which strategy do we do but first of all make sure that you've connected with your

00:59:33.180 heart and with the earth in a way that, and the other peoples on the earth, in a way that

00:59:38.120 informs your decision about what matters most. Then to find out what your skills and abilities

00:59:44.720 are, your true deepest abilities, whether it's empathy, writing, whether it's organizing direct

00:59:52.240 actions, whatever it is, making phone calls, teaching kids, it just doesn't really matter

00:59:56.880 what it is, but that it be your personal gift, your personal ability and skill. That you apply

01:00:01.940 that with all your heart once again regardless of what the results are so that kind of advice

01:00:07.500 means not you should be doing direct action or you should skip that now and move on to something else

01:00:12.700 but rather that we need to do all of it whatever our heart is saying but we need to do something

01:00:19.220 and we need to do it now if everybody acts on not just beliefs but on their fervent connection and

01:00:28.120 their fervent feelings then we're going to see the results we're going to see the evidence of

01:00:32.740 what works and what doesn't we're going to hopefully make the adjustments necessary

01:00:36.180 but even if not by not just staying home and internalizing feeling guilty feeling like you're

01:00:43.880 not doing enough for the environment feeling like you're enjoying yourself you don't have any right

01:00:48.920 to because there are other groups that aren't enjoying themselves it's endless how bad we can

01:00:53.680 feel about ourselves, when what we really need to be doing is feeling good about who 0.77

01:00:58.500 we are, good about what we're capable of doing, and good that we're getting up off our asses 0.90

01:01:04.000 and doing it.

01:01:05.720 Yes, well, yes, it just brings me back to that gratitude that I think can really fuel

01:01:16.100 us when we can feel grateful, when we can feel good about our relationship and how we

01:01:22.640 show up to this time, we're going to be able to really make such a bigger impact than if we feel

01:01:29.780 terrible all the time. And not to say that we shouldn't let the grief in, but I really appreciate

01:01:37.140 that positive power that you're speaking to because I definitely could use some of that

01:01:43.480 right now, just feeling good and feeling good. And like that goodness can give us that empowerment

01:01:51.460 that we so desperately need to actually make change and to get off of our asses and to 0.54

01:01:55.980 engage and embrace this time and embrace who we can be within this movement. And so I really am

01:02:03.880 taking that personally to my heart. And to wrap this conversation up as it's coming to a close,

01:02:09.880 it's been so wonderful to connect with you. I've been thinking about this quote, this kind of

01:02:17.000 phrase that I've read in your work that you've called an ecology of healing and it's naming the

01:02:22.580 importance of viewing health beyond the absence of illness or disturbance and instead orienting

01:02:28.540 around quote a state of dynamic wholeness and active balance the reclamation and reintegration

01:02:35.200 of its native aspects and parts end quote and so I'm really wondering if you could share an

01:02:41.640 illustration of what this looks like at anima sanctuaries botanical and wildlife refuge and

01:02:48.980 how does our participation whether through restoration or stewardship or active engagement

01:02:54.760 fit into this vision of elemental balance and the restoration of an ancient code of reciprocity

01:03:01.700 balance is absolutely dependent upon reciprocity it's not static and too often we think of it as

01:03:09.680 a balanced point where things stay the same. There's an equilibrium. There really is no

01:03:14.600 equilibrium in the natural world. What there is is a constant flux that it's like a scale

01:03:21.760 moving one way, and then when it goes too far, it leans back the other direction.

01:03:26.700 So it's constantly in change. It's constantly evolving in its larger purpose, but certainly

01:03:32.220 in the moment, it's reacting to what's going on around it. It's acting according to its own nature

01:03:37.700 into the way it's been informed by the place where it lives and so it seems like to me that

01:03:44.320 that is perhaps next to awakeness and awareness i would say that an active dynamic devotion to

01:03:54.380 balance is essential right now it's probably the most important that we can do

01:04:00.140 it's balance i'm seeking when i'm trying to find a community a neighborhood of species that will

01:04:08.080 best bring back the vitality to that gorgeous riparian canyon that we live in that's what i'm

01:04:14.440 looking for in humankind and my fellow people when i look i look to see a glimmer of that a glimmer of

01:04:23.140 balance a glimmer of recognition time to mourn time to celebrate time to give all we have and

01:04:30.620 a time to watch it grow and bloom i mean that's a bit of a paraphrase of a biblical term and yet

01:04:36.620 it's probably like i say next to being aware and awake and conscious it's probably the next

01:04:42.040 important thing is that we're actually moving towards balance in our lives and we remember

01:04:48.420 balance for the earth for the nature whether it's that wilderness preserve i live on whether it's

01:04:54.700 your garden whether it's your neighborhood your park the areas undeveloped areas nearest to you

01:04:59.900 that's what it most all requires is balance and requires us recognize that we're a part of that

01:05:06.280 the which way we lean helps move that one direction or the other the constantly leaning towards the

01:05:12.880 good, the whole, and the beautiful. That's the place that's most rewarding. It's not just the

01:05:19.280 right thing to do. It's where we're going to feel mighty damn good. Well, that was a wonderful place

01:05:26.960 to close this conversation. So, Wolf, thank you for your commitment to this earth and to

01:05:36.520 really being awake and for guiding so many folks towards reconnection. It's necessary and it's

01:05:49.200 beautiful work. And I hope one day to meet in real life somewhere out in the wild, whether that's

01:05:57.740 in the forest or in the desert, I feel like it's coming.

01:06:01.260 Well, you're welcome to visit us in May in Durango when we do the confluence. I would be very glad to host you. And any time that you're willing to chance waiting in wasted water, I'd like you not just see, but to feel what the spirits of that place are saying and to sense then in your heart, you know, that the work that you're doing to reach out at great risk to yourself with no certainty, but with absolute commitment is the most wondrous and wonderful thing that a human being can do.

01:06:30.760 especially today. I thank you.

01:06:36.600 Thanks for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.

01:06:43.100 This is production team member Carter Lou McElroy,

01:06:45.900 and the music you heard today was from Wildlife Freeway.

01:06:49.160 I'd like to thank our hosts and founder Ayanna Young,

01:06:52.440 as well as the rest of our podcast production team,

01:06:54.860 Aidan McRae, Andrew Storrs, Erica Ekrem, Aaron Wise,

01:07:01.420 Francesca Glaspell, Hannah Wilton, and Melanie Younger.

For The Wild - March 04, 2020

JESSE WOLF HARDIN on Rewilding the Self ⧸161

Episode Stats

Transcript