Walk With Us: Memoirs & Meanderings

Reflections on a remarkable day, the goodness of people, and the beginning of something much greater.

It's difficult to put into words what happened on October 3, 2026. For months, we had been imagining, planning, building, inviting, teaching, and believing...

In just a few days, after more than a year of imagining, planning, asking questions, making phone calls, walking the grounds, finding teachers, solving problems, changing plans, and watching an idea become something far larger than...

There are books we decide to write because we have something to say, and there are others that seem to begin much earlier, quietly gathering themselves from the experiences we would never have chosen. Wild Sleep...

Herbalism was never meant to make us competitors; it was meant to teach us how deeply we belong to one another. If we are truly listening to the plants, we cannot miss the lesson woven through every forest...

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that has become increasingly familiar in modern life, one that does not resemble the satisfying tiredness that follows a day spent in the garden, walking through the woods, working with tools, cooking for people we love, or making something useful with our hands. It is a more elusive fatigue...

There comes a moment in the life of a healer, if they stay with the work long enough, when the path begins to widen beneath their feet. What once may have started as a humble calling, a few jars on a shelf, a remedy shared with a friend, a plant walk with neighbors, a class taught to a small circle of curious people, slowly becomes something with more reach. A name is remembered. A medicine is trusted. A student repeats a teaching...

Every so often, someone walks into my world with that look in their eyes. Not the curious look, not the hungry-for-learning look, but the wary one. The “I’m just browsing” look, paired with a half-smile that says, I can’t believe people actually buy this stuff. Sometimes it comes out as a joke. Sometimes it comes out as a warning...

When the deepest heat of summer settles over the land, the whole living world seems to understand that the day must be approached differently. Leaves turn their softer undersides toward the sky, birds retreat beneath the shelter of the trees, animals conserve their movement, and the busiest hours of afternoon become strangely quiet beneath the weight...

There is a kind of disappointment I have seen settle over people when natural medicine does not perform on command. It usually arrives quietly at first, with a shrug, a half-laugh, a little embarrassment for having hoped in the first place. “I tried herbs,” they say, as if they once visited...

I’m truly honored that my article, “The Way You Make It Matters: Intention, Craft, and the Heart of Herbalism,” was chosen for the Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation by United Plant Savers for 2026. This piece means a great deal to me. At its heart, it’s about remembering that herbalism is...

There are moments when a book does not feel invented so much as gathered. It arrives slowly, from years of conversations, questions, remedies, gardens, field notes, tired faces, late-night thoughts, and the quiet pressure of something that keeps asking to be said. Herbal Wisdom for a Toxic Age grew that way for me. It did not begin as a clever lead magnet or a quick...

If you’ve ever stood in front of an herb shelf and thought, “Okay, why are there twelve ways to take a plant?” you’re not alone. I mean, really. There’s tea, tincture, salve, liniment, poultice, compress, spagyria, oxymel, glycerite, pastille, aromatherapy, flower essence, powder, capsule, oil, syrup, honey, vinegar, and then there’s...