Category: Nourishment
A Recipe for Late Summer Nourishment
Here in the mountains, the waning afternoon light has taken on an earth-warmed hue, like bronze poured over low banked coals. Already a few trees are beginning to fade to the color of ancient paper and there is an overwhelming sense that, even though the snapdragons continue to bloom, things are incrementally beginning to…
Pine + The Dreamtime
Every year is a cycle of living and dying, and every transition is medicine. In winter we approach that beauty of endings. As the cold pushes life back to the roots, the land enters a kind of dreamscape. A stretch of consciousness that carries us into death, and then beyond. (And could this year’s winter…
Tending the Embers: Chaga + The Creative Spark
In winter we stir the embers. A motion of both caretaking and stoking, a gentle coaxing and potent remembering of that which lights our fire. Every winter, as color fades from the outer world, we are invited to journey into the vibrant tableau of our deepest self. To rekindle our inner colors with a…
Cycles of Healing
Healing is about communing with the cycles. Like the circles of sun and tide and horizon, our lives are intimately guided, nudged and nurtured by cycles. Winter, spring, summer and fall. The dry season, the monsoon. The cycle of seed, flower, fruit. The wheel of constellations through the night sky. Maiden, mother, crone. In…
Adaptogenic Snickerdoodles
The frost is simply dazzling these days. Stretched out across the yard and far hills of moss like a sparkling net of stars. Lately, I’ve been mulling deeply into this time of cold winds and warm cheerful stoves. I recently moved into a new home far out in the hills and hollers of Appalachia…
Courting Mystery: Tulsi + The Technicolor Moonrise
The medicine of my world is fed by many streams— plants, flowers, stones, spirit and dreams. The most profound healing in my life has arisen from the ocean-like concurrence of all these streams. This piece is an homage to the whirlpool that it, itself, the healing. This time last year I was officially diagnosed…
Summer Cocktails: Herbal Syrups, Bitters + Recipes
Fresh herbs, warm breezes and evenings that come to life. Summer is one of my favorite seasons for luxury and languor. When the days are hot and the hours long I usually find myself gravitating toward nighttime kitchen crafting and, of course, cocktails. I am a night owl by nature. I thrive like a…
Harvesting Wild Rice: The Poetry + The Process
The Initial Daydream This August I fulfilled a long haunting dream of mine – to harvest rice in the wild beds of Minnesota. The idea began as a simple seed in my early twenties. I was idealistic, entranced with the world and still exploring the ideas of living close to the land, harvesting the natural nourishment…
