Living Earth Herbs
Paid a visit to Living Earth Herbs today.
They just moved up from Eugene.
I now have an Alfalfa infusion brewing on the stove.
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Edible and Medicinal Plants
I’ve signed up for Wilderness Awareness School‘s Edible and Medicinal Plants course. It’s taught by John Gallagher, of Learning Herbs.
Have you ever wanted to know the plants that grow all around you? Would you like to learn how wild plants, even in cities, can both feed you and take care of your health? This informative and hands on weekend experience introduces participants to the most common and useful plants of our area through direct experiences of touching, eating, cooking, and making meals and medicines. The nature of this weekend offers a new relationship with plants--whether found in urban yards or vast wilderness--that intimately connects us to their lives while enhancing the nourishment, nutrition, and health of our own. Skills include:We will weave all these skills into a way for you to bring wild herbs into your life to enhance your health. What is seen by many as an overwhelming subject will be presented in a simple way, so you can easily access herbal wisdom on your own. There will be a good balance between class time and herbal activities. Students will go home with herbal remedies for their home first aid kits. Students will also go home with a free copy of Wild Foods for Every Table, an amazing 100 page wild foods books with delicious recipes such as sorrel soup, creamy nettle soup and spiced wildberry jelly.
- Plant identification to confidence and safety
- Herbal oils and salves for most minor first aid situations
- Tincture making with wild plants for cold & flus
- Herbal teas and infusions
- Herbal nourishment for better daily health
- Mineral vinegars: the ULTIMATE "vitamin"
- Making a wild foods meal that is nutritious AND delicious
- Poisonous plant identification
- Herbal first aid so you can treat yourself naturally
- AND lots of other fun herbal surprises
For signing up early, John sent me the Herbal Remedy and Vitamin/Mineral wall charts. I recommend the Herbal Remedy chart – it’s been useful to me already.
Poets on the Peaks
John Suiter’s Poets on the Peaks: Gary Snyder, Phillip Whalen & Jack Kerouac in the North Cascades is a biographical account of these Beat Bards, with emphasis placed on their wilderness outings and spiritual explorations, painting them as 20th century Thoreaus.
This book – the images, the text, the characters – are beautiful. It renews the magic of this place.
A portrait of mountains and rivers and Buddha and zen and trees and poetry. America.
Backcountry Boo-Boos
Abby, one of my WFR classmates, has had a short article on the class published on page 13 of the latest issue of Cascadia Weekly.
That Ain't No Marching Band
Last night somebody setup a keyboard on the street corner and serenaded me to sleep. It didn’t sound like the guy had ever taken a piano lesson in his life, but I respect him for performing a random creative act.
A Challenge
The next time you find yourself in the forest, lay down on your belly and take a look around. Then roll onto your back and gaze at the canopy and sky.
Changing your perspective shows you a whole new collection of life.
Musings on Aid
Have you ever noticed that, with the majority of aid organizations, when you visit their website and head to their ‘Get Involved’ or ‘Help Out’ sections, they only ask for money? Or poster-ing? Perhaps, at best, they’ll give you some office work. They never actually ask for people to go overseas. Never ask for people to help distribute the supposed aid. It doesn’t quite help support the notion that these organizations are actually doing anything. They’ve got nobody in the field!
Musings on Aid, Part Two
Isn’t it strange how people get degrees in fields related to NGO work?
It reflects the attitude that aid is an industry – something permanent, instead of a sad necessity that must be temporarily pursued until governmental disputes can be settled or unfortunate weather events overcome.
The other day I met someone who was pursuing a degree in refugee assimilation. It doesn’t make sense! She will be solving no problems – only propagating old ones. (Though she will be guaranteed a steady stream of subjects.) Why not get a degree in “nonviolent conflict resolution” or, if that doesn’t pack enough umph for you, “tactical warlord disposal” or “guerrilla warfare education for refugees”. Something to cut the problem off at its source.