Seasonal Herbalism Wants You to Be Where You Are
As beginners embark on the study of herbalism, the amount of plants to learn can be overwhelming. But as I share below in Seasonal Herbalism - start where you are. Look beneath your feet. When you orient your studies to exactly where you are - Belonging and membership within the web of life will return to you along the way.
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“We are all children of this Earth. We all belong here. And for many of us, the journeys of our ancestors carried them across the globe, leaving within our DNA the inheritance of a global history of movement and conquest. The downstream effect of this has led to a widespread sense of displacement and a feeling of un-belonging among many of us alive today as we are the recipients and bearers of these legacies. To halt the never-ending cycle of conquest, these times are asking us to be re-membered into belonging upon the land where we currently reside. The Earth is asking us to stop this unending movement and stay put, look at the land beneath our feet, and meet the beings who greet us right outside our front doors. These beings are none other than the wise green growing ones, our plant relatives. It is only after first arriving and inhabiting the place where we are that we can remember how we got here and decide who and how we’d like to be moving forward.
Life often requires us to move, to shift homes and change cities, and this movement is a natural part of the flow of life. If when we move we can be present where we are and make relations with the land and the plants there, we can begin to put a halt to the spread of the cultural pandemic of un-belonging. It’s by keeping our feet close to the Earth where we are that our membership within the web of life can be re-membered. Fully being where we are is a powerful and, in these times, revolutionary act of putting a halt to the more more more, move move move, next next next consciousness that has wreaked havoc on the Earth and all her children, including us.
What this means for herbalists is a focus on building relationships with the plants that grow where we grow. Not where we will be next year when we just get there get there get there or even where we were before, but exactly where we are right now in this current moment.
There are many reasons for this suggestion. One very practical reason is that local herbal medicine acts powerfully on the bodies of local people. The plants we share a sliver of Mother Earth with are under the same influences elementally, ecologically, and climatically as we are. They are made from the same stuff and substrate as us. This makes their bodies just the right agents of healing to help our bodies attune to the influences of our unique shared bioregion. The bodies of local plants often manufacture perfectly crafted cocktails of biochemical constituents to help our bodies weather the storms of the stressors that life in our shared bioregion offers. For example, in the Pacific Northwest, ingesting the bodies of red cedar leaves and Oregon grape roots often has just the right mix of antimicrobial, decongestant, and immune-boosting molecules that help the lungs and immune systems of the people facing the damp, congesting conditions of our shared climate.
Another reason for working with local plants is accessibility. If we know how to work with the plants that grow where we grow, then we are not asking the energy of fossil fuels and other agents of global commerce to provide our medicine, lightening the load on the web of life. Sustainability naturally arises from focusing our herbalism on the plants who are our neighbors.
More subtle yet just as powerful is that getting to know the plants who grow where we grow nurtures our relationship with the land beneath our feet. This reweaving into the ground that holds us restores our sense of belonging and reawakens an embodied knowing of our kinship with all of life. When this kinship is directly experienced, it awakens an authentic desire to serve, protect, and steward the land that we share. The plants reweave us into the local web of life, pulling us deeper into a conscious embodiment of this truth.
