Hippie Survivalist

I did not begin studying herbs in earnest straightaway.  As a little girl, I listened to stories about my grandmother's granny knowing how to cure this or that with herbs.  I loved hearing about my grandmother's childhood  and strolling around her gardens as a child, watching her work tirelessly, seeing her can and preserve. I watched her save everything, recycle before it was popular, and "make do."  I watched my grandfather repair everything, and build things.  I saw him return from his hunts. I saw them work together to manage everything. Beneath all of this was an undercurrent of vigilance and self-reliance.  I respected it while I saw others around me dismiss it as silly and old fashioned.  They grew up during the Great Depression, and I listened to their stories and those of my great uncles and great aunts.

Jude leaning into the corn

When I was older, I studied history, anthropology, and then humanities.  I learned how recently war has affected us, how recently people have been under siege or faced with starvation or plagued with disease.  I worked in museums. I joined the military and saw things that shattered my ideas of security.

We tend to like to believe that we are immune to great strife, that our government is looking out for us,the police and fire department are a phone call away, and that food is just a grocery trip away. Medicine is readily available, and if we lock our doors and windows everything will be just fine.

I am a veteran now and I often run across other veterans who take one look at me and ask: "You're one of those hippies, aren't you?"  And I look at them a little sideways, and try to decide whether I am offended or not.  I don't take the time to explain how I traveled down the path I am on.

I learned to homestead and work with herbal medicine not because I grew up on a hippie commune, but because I saw what our world can do.  I know that war, starvation, or any other unplanned event is not unheard of or even that distant in our history.  Knowing how to grow our own food, hunt, fish, raise our own livestock, grow our own medicine, and defend ourselves - all this seems like basic survival to me.  But they don't ask me any questions about whether I can hunt or what firearm I prefer, or the last time I updated my hand to hand training certification, or what sort of bow I like to use.  They made an assumption based on a particular slant of their observation.

Drying German chamomile on one of our screens

Yes, I can make you some tea.  I can make you a flower essence.  I can tell you what crystal has what properties, and with what magickal properties oak is attributed.  I can do yoga with you and meditate with you, and do Reiki and help align your chakras.  I can also grow you some crops and teach you to can and preserve them, treat your bug bites, make you a salve, a tincture, help  treat a case of worms or athlete's foot, sooth your upset stomach and sundry issues. I can help you build a shelter in the woods and build a fire. I can identify tracks and tell you which snakes are venomous, and set up a rabbit snare.  I can raise, kill, process and cook you a nice chicken dinner or go catch you some nice fish for supper and fix 'em up with some mixed greens.

Loves, we are an army of survivors and warriors of our own making.   Let us endure and rekindle these fires of vigilance and self-reliance and yet through this we can have a sense of community.  We can learn from one another.

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Classes Begin March 11. Beginning Medicinal Herbs & Herbs in Magick. Message for more info. Registration Deadline March 1.