From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is EagleSong Evans Gardener. EagleSong is an American herbalist, lifelong gardener, teacher, and visionary who hails from the great Pacific Northwest.
For over two decades, she has directed RavenCroft Garden where she specializes in herbal classes and apprenticeships, including my own sixteen years ago as well as Kimberly's. She has been the director of natural beauty at the world famous Willow's Lodge in Woodinville, Washington where she designs sustainable landscape management systems. Her latest endeavor is the brand new Pacific Women's Herbal Conference, and you can learn about this amazing event at pacific women's herbal conference dot com, which we'll talk about later. But for now, EagleSong, welcome back to Herb Mentor Radio.
Hey. It's great to be here, John.
You know, you were one of my very first guests on this for obvious reasons. I've been learning from you since the beginning.
And, actually, it's even before my son, Rowan, was born, which was like we were just saying, like, seventeen years ago, I think I started learning and and and and training. And I think most of the, I I always think of that a lot of that learning where those things really kicked in, those kinda big broad concepts, those foundational concepts of herbalism and how it relates to everything kinda happened as I was, you know, helping you, slop manure in the goat area in the farm as you would just, you know, just go into all of espouse into all of the intricacies and spirals and dances and seasons and cycles of life.
And it really it really just kind of really gave me a great foundation in in herbalism. And I always think of those times as kind of, like, the thing that that grounded me. And I was thinking, Eaglesong, that, isn't it I think it's just really important for anyone who wants to learn about herbs to have it fit into their lives, to have some kind of foundation. Otherwise, there's kind of like a void there, you know.
Right? What do you think about all that?
Well, I think you're right, John. And actually, as a wise woman herbalist, I I really appreciate the void, that place of emptiness Mhmm. And the place of spaciousness.
A lot of ideas and a lot of grounding actually comes through that almost holy place that we that we often neglect and don't give much time for in our lives. But really grounding, you know, getting our feet on the ground with a a way of approaching the herbs is incredibly important so that, so that we feel centered in what we're doing with the work with the plants, how they affect us, how we affect them. It's a a definitely a back and forth kind of a dance. As you say, cycles and patterns and spirals are all part of it. And so, yeah, you came at a great time when you came for your apprenticeship.
And that's great. That well, remember the great cottonwood tree behind us that you came when they were cutting it down?
And just having that sense of grounding that that tree brought to us. Right. And having it stand behind us now, it's an amazing home for all kinds of mushrooms.
More medicine for us in in a whole new way.
Well, the program, when I was apprenticing then was, I don't know what you're calling it now, but at the time it's called healing from the ground up.
So it really was that. And it was much more than just learning about herbs. Like, in fact, like, I don't remember too many classes at least in the first year and a half where we actually taught much about plants.
Exactly. We were just getting ready to talk about plants.
And why did you structure it that way?
Well, you know, it's it's mostly because I guess I'd have to say that's the way they made me.
Elaborate.
It was an emanation of the way that I came to understand plants, and I was sharing with people that very same, you know I could show you how I learned but I couldn't tell you what I learned.
It leaves a lot of room for people to find out how they and the plants themselves will do the interplay. It's different for everybody.
Right. Right. Because it's not just like, here's a textbook. Now we're gonna learn about this plant, and now we're gonna do this thing, and then it has these constituents and all stuff that's gonna come in your head and out one ear and out the other. Whereas, like, when you're embodying the experiences, you kinda find your own way on your own journey.
That's right. And I think that's the the key word right there, John, is embodiment.
We I wanted a program that really allowed people to feel the herbs at work in their bodies and that they could do everything themselves so that they really came to understand the plants in many layers and levels in their reality.
That then that's it. Like, we would take one, right like a year and and and each of us would focus on a particular plant for like a year.
Yeah everybody in the apprenticeship has one plant that they focus on. And then remember once a month we do a plant and we use it as a healing herbal infusion.
And so at the end of the nine month program, which is still called Healing from the Ground Up by the way, and it is open for men and women, because so many men came through that that really were inspired and went on in their own lives like you Mhmm.
And carried the work forward in your own way.
We, called our group Walking Seeds.
The Walking Seeds.
Took that I took that a little too literally. I went out there and ever since.
Really like a good weed, you proliferated. You've been spreading seeds around for a long time, John, and that's really been a great joy for me, I want you to know.
Well, that's why we put dandelion in the logo.
There you go. I totally love it.
So yeah. So essentially, it's really getting to know the plants in an intimate way and and really working with this deeper understanding of how we are in relationship with Earth.
So, you know, we we, were talk I mentioned a little earlier that about the new Pacific Women's Herbal Conference, and we'll be talking about that a little later, which I'm looking forward to because it's like a really exciting new thing that you're that you're doing, which, we'll get into that story later.
But when I was talking with you, earlier, we were saying, Leo, let's a great title for our our conversation today is rekindle the heart of health.
And so we'll we'll get we'll get herbal a little later here, but, but then but that title begs a question really Eaglesong. Like, what is health?
Yeah. That was one of my big questions, John. If I was gonna be an herbalist, I I really wanted to understand what is health. And I think Susan Weed's work has helped me probably better than anybody to to put a container around that word that worked for me.
And health, the root of the word is the same root as whole and holy.
They come from the same root. And then I started to understand health was really about having a perspective of the world I live in that's holy and whole.
When I could see the world through the eyes you know, when my eyes could see the world as a whole and holy place, then I I really believed I could understand how I could engage health and cultivate health.
It wasn't elusive. It was something that we could actually tend and nurture and cultivate in our daily life.
Is it something we can measure?
You know, I don't know. I suppose you could take measurements. I actually have just been reading a book called The Discoverers.
And and interestingly enough, it goes through this period of time where everything went from qualitative to quantitative.
And in that shift, we sort of lost touch with touch with our senses. We wanted everything to be reduced to numbers.
So can we measure it? I think we can feel it.
It doesn't actually I've met people who were in the conventional sense of health, not healthy, but they were actually more vital and alive than people I knew who were considered very healthy and who just died for no reason at all because they actually didn't have that sense of wholeness in their life.
So, yeah, I don't know that you can necessarily measure it. I think it's more something you feel when you're in the presence of it.
So it's it's wholeness. Like, is that is it something that you're conscious of in your life if you're when you start feeling like something's not quite right or you're feeling a little sick or feeling depressed or something like that? What do you do you go do you go back to that? Do you say, oh, where where is the wholeness here? Or or how do you bring yourself back to health?
Yes.
Actually, those feelings that you're describing are definitely kind of monitors that help us. My my, I have a odd way of looking at the world.
Gale, please go on. Tell us.
Indeed. So I've come to appreciate that if we think we're right, it's very hard to change our minds.
So I've adopted this new way of being in the world where no matter what I'm doing, I just assume it's not right. Mhmm. And then I adjust, I monitor and adjust.
That way, it's like sailing a sailboat.
You're always adjusting the sail to catch the wind the way that it's gonna make you get towards the goal that you're you're headed towards. And you can tack, you can turn the other way and catch the wind if you wanna go somewhere else. And so it's this interplay. In a sailboat, it would be between the wind and the keel. There's energy that's pushing, and you can use that energy to guide your life. And so rather than saying what's wrong with me, I've really cultivated a practice of saying what's right about this.
Mhmm.
So saying what's right about something helps me to steer the the sailboat in the direction that might actually take me where I'm hoping to go rather than getting distracted by something that I think is wrong and then trying to fix or cure it.
I'm so glad Kimberly is really in a sailing now because I could because it's true. You got the wind at your back, and a lot of times people say, oh, may the wind be at your back, and you feel like, you know, yeah, that's when everything's just kinda grooving all on its own. But you know what?
A lot of times the wind's blowing right in your face, but you still gotta get to that shore that's ahead of you.
And how do you get there?
That is right. And and and, you know, sometimes, and I've experienced this in my life, sometimes the sail is ripped to shred You're gonna have to find something else that you can, that you can find what I would call allies. And the deep keel in the the way I practice herbalism, my allies are plants around me, but they're also rooted in the earth and in the ancestors. Mhmm. Like really learning to tap into the depth of wisdom that's come before us in our lives is an important part of finding out what's right about something because we learn to look from a much broader perspective, not too fine, you know, detailed or narrowed. We open up our field of vision so it's much broader.
It's really about perspective, and about how to dance with the energy of life.
Right. He used to, teach us about that, about it being, like, more about dancing and equilibrium than it was about finding a balance?
Oh, balancing is really hard work, and it's so exhausting. I mean, if you are trying to stay in balance, it's just it takes all your energy away.
So really learning the fine art of equilibrium and dynamic flux that life is always moving.
And learning a language that actually allows that movement to be a part of our living our daily living, has been a big part of the challenge of communicating the kind of herbalism I like to practice, the relationship or the interplay between the plant and the person, finding the words to express it, the language to express this ongoing unfolding, just like a plant or a tree growing, it keeps changing. How do we change to meet the needs as we move through life in our in our daily lives?
A lot of times we don't know, you know, like, are aware of that disease, you know, because so many people aren't really sensitive to what's even going on in them. How do you connect that to how that makes us sick? Like, how when we're in bad health, like, how does just that going against the wind or whatever it is there make us feel not great or end up hurting ourselves because we get some chronic illness because we haven't resolved something?
Yeah.
If our life is a journey and not something that we're here to fix and cure, but we really recognize that it's a journey.
Every good journey, like every good adventure, is going to take you to places that are really challenging.
They they're places that call to us to go as deep as we can.
And to have, support group around us when we are entering to those places was really the main purpose of creating a herbal apprenticeship program.
You know, my my alternative reason was to have people who actually had this perspective and develop into a community of people who hold and share that perspective of life as movement.
So that we could, support one another when we when we meet those challenging places in our lives.
Mhmm.
And that really is an ever growing thing. Like, I there are times when, you know, when you move on or time goes on and it seems like like, say, that group we all it was a long while ago.
And even though we have each other and we can call on each other still, I mean, day to day, it's like almost you have to be aware of who are people that I can talk to or work work with or healers or what is, you know, what works for me.
That's right. And and that comes from being aware of who we are and recognizing the the patterns in our own lives so that we can actually reach out for the support we need in a way that makes sense or not. I mean, we learn no matter what.
Mhmm.
Whatever we do is gonna bring us information, and that information is going to help us monitor and adjust.
But for myself personally, I found that the the most difficult places in my life were the places where I actually grew the most. Mhmm. And the places where I I became connected with people at such a deep level, whether it was for ten seconds or forever, that that each one of those, people or plants or animals brought to me something that supported my journey, although sometimes I didn't realize it for many years.
You said that, you've kind of thought originally or at one point that, wow, I think I have adrenal fatigue, and then you later saw that as a spirit journey. So that's that's a great way of looking at it. You could you elaborate on that?
Yeah. I'd like to, actually, because I wanted to reframe the experience I had, and and because you're actually versed as an acupuncturist Mhmm.
And and studied in the style of acupuncture that still let the elements be a big part of your work That's right.
Then what I realized is that I had all the symptoms or the presenting signs of liver energy rising in my body when it should have been going down, it was going up.
Mhmm.
And so I had, a whole month about with vertigo.
And when I started my menopausal years, I actually started bleeding heavily. I had just taken a new job in my life. There were just a lot of things going on and all the symptoms, all the presenting signs were there, but there was no one in my field of experience who could actually recognize them for what they were and offer some kind of grounding support to bring that energy back down into my body.
And so, it was a it was a really, it was a long journey and it was an interesting journey.
And I actually was able to meet the ancestors because when the kidney chi got so depleted, the who kicked in for me were my ancestors. They started talking to me in a big way.
In fact, even encouraged me to go to England twice.
Mhmm.
And and so the journey was still underway.
And I was learning to drive this new vehicle that my body was becoming because I was going through one of the most vital changes in a woman's life, going from a bleeding woman and a, fertile woman to a woman who holds her wise blood inside.
So I didn't want to, I didn't want to use a language that didn't fully embrace the uniqueness and the, as oddest as my word might sound, the splendor of the experience I was having because it took me to so many different places through time and history and the world that I I basically learned more than I could have ever learned in any university or anywhere.
Just because of the journey that I was led on, because of the distress I felt in my life.
So what was right about it?
I had the most amazing opportunity to actually become an herbalist because I could finally understand how the plants and my body were in relationship.
And it was the herbs I used and the tai chi and really learning the history that brought my health back. It was really never gone, But it was diminished in a sense that it has had gone way deep inside, and I had to find something in life that was so so alluring that it would pull me back out.
Right, so your spirit could connect to that and want to go in that direction.
Exactly. Essentially, it's wanting to live. Mhmm. Even when you understand the somewhat cataclysmic state our world is in.
You know, I, it it's it's kind of one of those things maybe a lot of people listening to this can relate that, but we all go when people say, oh, like, oh, here our spirit and our emotional health, how it connects to how it's so like, it's the root of all our physical problems. And when you listen to you and you listen to people talk, you go, yeah. Yeah. But something in the back of your mind, a lot of people's minds probably going, yeah. Well, probably, but probably not really.
And, and, you know, not till I and I think I was one of those people who because when I learned from you and heard all this from you originally, I mean, I was in my late twenties, early thirties, and I didn't have a lot of for that?
I didn't have a lot of life experience and with with I didn't have kids yet. So, you know, to bring me through a lot and start to age and everything. But when I became a practitioner and the seven years I had my practice, I can't speak of a single person who came in with a physical problem that wasn't absolutely rooted to a spirit and emotional situation. And I saw it in a clinical setting, and I helped him, you know, with the healing process. The person with their own healing process assisted them in that.
And and now I'm like, I can't believe I ever thought that that wasn't the case. You know?
It's true. It is true. And the other part why I love being an herbalist, and I can actually say that now, you know, for years I didn't call myself an herbalist. Other people called me herbalist.
But now I can actually say I love saying that I'm an herbalist because I can feel it. I I was able to go to the allies in the way in the form and shape of plants, And it broke open for me an entirely new understanding of how plants, and people the interplay between people and plants.
And if I might just go a bit farther on that, John. Please do.
I I I like to be the the the idea of being a shamanic herbal practitioner because we use our senses. So in a, a word that people love, organoleptic, we use our senses to explore the world of plants and health, wholeness, and holiness.
So we taste, touch, see, smell, and listen to the world around us. And then there's the sixth sense that many people have forgotten.
And it's that one that's called common sense.
Yes.
You know, if we just took a moment to take a deep breath and think about well, what makes sense here in this situation?
And set aside a lot of our learnings and and the teachings we've thought we knew.
And we just think about, well, what in the simplest way would make sense in this situation?
I think that has been a great help to me.
But I also realized that by using the healing, herbal infusions and doing them simply Mhmm.
Where I took one herb and made the the infusion with one ounce of herb and one quart of boiling water and let it steep overnight or four to eight hours and then drink the resulting liquid beverage.
I've been doing that for about twenty five years.
And so I really started having a sense of there was some kind of a communication going on between the plants and my body.
Really?
Yeah. And all the word I'm gonna use is resonance. Mhmm. That there's a resonance between, say, nettle and energy.
And nettle was the the one herb that really kicked in when my kidneys were were saying, hey, we're gonna go visit the ancestors because we don't have any energy and we need to get some perspective here.
And using the nettle really helped to nourish that depletion in a way that was profound and the energy started to come back.
And oatstraw, that one resonates with the nervous system.
Then I started realizing, as we try to cure and fix things, what we forget is how do we actually cultivate health in the physical body By using physical substances, food and plants.
Right.
You know, exercise, really engaging the physicality of who we are.
So then it just kept going.
Hawthorne was the heart.
And and Hawthorne actually well, we'll talk about Hawthorne in a minute. Comfrey was another one. There's been this whole debate going on about comfrey when really all comfrey is to me is the the plant that really holds the body together.
I've used it in so many ways topically, internally, all different ways for all kinds of of rips and tears and and separations of the sinews, the sinews in the body, the very things that hold us together. And, Comfrey, there is nothing like it for helping restore the vitality and flexibility in our sinews. And it also does amazing thing for the mind in that that when we're separated from ourself, which is the feeling of, you know, you've heard this being beside yourself, you just don't feel like yourself, Comfrey actually works amazingly well to bring the, the mental process back into wholeness.
Mhmm.
So so I just have now, I think of the organs of the body, and this is a lot along the lines probably of Chinese herbalism, but I have different words for it. I imagine the organs in the body as intelligences.
They're beyond their physical substance or the process or the function that they do.
And that there are plants that resonate with those intelligences in our body because they too have that same quality.
Yes.
So so that got pretty exciting. And then then it really is the dance.
Once you've used plants as as allies where you actually use them in an everyday way, you're not waiting till you're sick to do something, but you're actually engaging the energy of these plants on a daily basis over an extended period of time and I mean years and decades, then this whole new way of seeing the world starts to just happen.
Remember when I used to say, don't eat wild food because there's one caveat?
What's that?
Eating wild food produces wild thoughts. And if you're not ready for that, don't do it.
That's exactly right. That's what happened to Kimberly and I.
Exactly. It's totally true. And then, so you see, then you get the courage and the strength to actually step out of the box and start creating a world that works for you.
And in your doing that, look how much of the world has responded and changed in a way that is enriching and deepening your lives and the lives of everybody your mentor touches.
It's true. That's true. I it because I I it really is a strange phenomenon because I I just do we just do what we think we should do. And then every so often, we'll go to this conference and we'll meet people who who are in person, who are listening here or or on the site, and they go into a whole of the changes that have happened since they've been part of the learning here at South. I'm just like, wow. You know, it's probably similar, you know, and and more on the local level with you with all the people you've mentored over the last twenty five, thirty years.
Uh-huh.
You know? And and you and there's been a lot of people.
A lot of people. It's really true. And people I don't even know, you know, exactly Mhmm. But they come up to me and they say, oh, I recognize your voice.
I've had tapes of you before, and it's like, oh, right. And then we get to know each other in person. And I quite frankly, that's what I like the best. I like the handshake. I like the in person.
I'm adapting to the digital world because, you know, my travels to Europe have, brought me new a whole new sets of friends and I wanna stay in touch with those people. So I'm actually enjoying this global local relationship I'm able to have with my very, very local world that I love the plants that grow here and the really global world that I'm a part of as well.
Because so much of what you would share with us and teach us that we learned is the, importance that we learned about that slowness, the slow cooking, the local flavor of things, and how culture, what culture is and how culture develops, how I never had thought about that when before, you know, working with you that, we use that word culture, but it's it really truly originates in our food, in our and the fermentation of our local foods. So so, yeah, it was so that's that that's something that's just amazing to me.
You know? Right. And so that brings me to one of my, of course, deep loves is the the culture of food.
Mhmm.
And and I'm actually sitting here drinking Kvass while we're speaking because I just really got turned on to beets and fizzy beet juice is pretty good. And the idea of culture, I've always been fascinated by people. What herbs did for me was it unlocked doorways through time because I kept asking, well, how did people live then? You know, what was their daily life life like?
What did they eat? How did they put clothes on their back? What did they build their houses out of? What did they do when their kids fell down and broke their legs and arms?
You know, it's like those were my questions.
And by following the track the herbs left often through the folk tales and the lore that was associated with herbs that kinda got poo pooed and and pushed away.
But by following that track, I came to actually appreciate and understand people through time in all cultures around the world.
Because basically, we all want the same things and we try to figure out how to achieve that.
The the ability to live on the planet in a way that makes sense and leave something here for the children and grandchildren that we might bear. And I have three granddaughters now, so I'm really keen on leaving something behind. And not in the sense of how big my bank account is, but how much planet will be left for my children and their children to enjoy, to to to pleasure in, to just really get intimate with just like I have.
That's that's kind of where I'm at at this point in time. And as a grandmother, all the other things that you have to worry about in life are kinda over.
So, well, that's not true at all actually. They just change. They're still there. But there's a whole new deep nuance about how we engage them.
Right. Right.
So, yeah. So so the culturing is this summer. I've had a really fun summer because I've really started to to go into the wild. How do I court the wild cultures? And and truthfully, if you came to Ravencroft now, you would see a very relaxed garden.
And we have aged very nicely, like a good wine or a good friend, good cheese, all those things that take time to really, marry the flavors and to really enrich and deepen the experience.
So so we're very relaxed at the moment, and yet there's a so so there's blooming grasses and there's herbs. The herbs are now intimately integrated in the landscape. They're no longer stuck in gardens.
So every day I walk out, there's something new to to play with.
And and so when the grasses bloom, you get a whole new set of wild cultures.
And it's been fun. So we've got plum wine bubbling right now. In fact, this week, I've been laughing saying, oh my gosh, I'm going plum crazy. And it's really true. I've got plum chutney, plum jam, plum ginger sauce, plum wine, two different flavors, one made with yeast, one made with the wild culture on the on the plums themselves.
And everywhere I go, plum trees almost push themselves in my face. It's like, I can't believe it. Soon as there's a plant in my world that becomes the plant, it is everywhere. Have you ever found that to be true, John?
Yes, yes, I have.
It's true. I used to not wanna know a new herb because, like, when I met St. John's wort or St. Joan's wort, which I call her, I started smashing fingers and stubbing toes and doing all the things I needed to apply that herb to so that I could actually learn about her.
And so some days I say, I don't want to learn anything anymore. I'm happy with what I have.
Oh, yeah. That's what my kids were for. Early early learning herbs. I was more like I remember in the we'd be writing articles, and I was so excited when a kid had an earache or broke something or whatever. I was like, alright. Isn't it truth? Newsletter material.
You became this yes. That's right. You became the parent who said, oh, good.
He broke his arm now, but Where's the concrete?
And see, But that's the difference. That's that's when you're actually engaging in the life force that these plants bring to us because you're not afraid of what might happen. You're able to engage all the possibilities, even the ones that seem a little bit awkward or uncomfortable.
Right. Rather than trying to protect yourself from any possible damage that might occur if you did this, that, or the other thing. I mean, I wanna be well used while I'm here. I want my body to actually engage every which way it can. And so so being a sensual person, it's a a great way to learn herbs.
Yeah. And I just love hearing this from you about, like, because when I was working with when when I was apprenticing with you decade and a half ago around that zone, you were always out there making bubbling things in the kitchen and experimenting and learning new things just about everything. And here you are, and you've still at it, and you're just like it just drives you. You know that question like that, what if? What would happen if I just tried this out? Or did that?
And you the best part, the other day, I was doing a plum wine that I was gonna let go with wild fermentation with the wild yeast. And I said, I have finally achieved a certain sense of success because now I don't care if it works. I'm even eager for the failures.
Mhmm. Because it will help me understand the wild yeast better.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. I think herbalism is what taught me about there is no failure.
Right.
I actually would relish in the failure.
I would hope sometimes things just wouldn't work.
See, that's a healthy attitude to me. That I mean, how many times did Einstein or whoever it was know Edison have to create a light bulb till he found one that worked.
It's when we don't have that resilience, that it's when we don't have that resilience, that capacity to go again and again and again at the same thing, trying to understand it more deeply, that we end up kind of blocking ourselves into small and and not very exciting lives, and I don't think they have to be that way. I mean, you don't even have to go anywhere and have an you could have an exciting life.
You know, I don't have very many animals anymore. I used to have I tended goats, and I've had draft horses and a lot of different creatures in my life. And I realized my kitchen is filled with billions billions of of life forms.
And then I thought, I could never be alone in this world. And then this is my son actually said this is probably a TED Talk, mom. But I was telling him and his wife and his daughter had come, and I said, you know, Lee, the plants that change the fastest on the earth are the weeds, the pioneer plants that go in and get the earth ready for the next succession.
They make babies, they they make thousands of seeds, they they proliferate, they're kind of rowdy, people hate them, but those are the ones that are the fast adapters. The more we eat those plants, the the better our body will be at adapting.
And then I thought and and talking about our bodies, remember when they used to say we were related to apes and everybody got upset by that? Well, now they're saying that what what are we, seventy five to eighty percent microorganisms?
Right.
All kinda hooked together in some kind of stringy web?
And so then I thought, well, gosh, they only live like twenty minutes sometimes.
Oh, I get it.
All this cultured food, John, is about the organisms wanting to be fed.
So we're just doing their bidding.
That's exactly right. And they are the super fast adapters. They can actually create themselves to to outwit whatever new antibiotic is being created in the laboratory because they die every twenty seconds or twenty minutes or even, you know, whatever it is. There's different rates for everybody. But but that's fast adaptation.
So my theory at this point in time is I'm going with the earth and I'm going with the plants that vastly adapt. And I'm also going with the mushrooms because they actually know how to digest the lignaceous things in life, the things that are so undigestible, you don't want to do it. But those great mushrooms out there are excelling at helping us to transform what is no longer, useful into earth that we can grow a new world in.
Mhmm.
So, you know, I don't know where all these things come from, but I do know that eating plants for a goodly part of my life that are wild and and suspect, if you will, has really helped give me wild thoughts. And I actually am entertained quite nicely by him.
So we've we've, talked we definitely have gotten the point across here in that in that, in this whole discussion that the the whole idea of this herb is good for that thinking is just not not the way we go about it here.
And, Well, it took me five years, John.
Because one time I said to someone when they said, well, what's it good for? And I was spent. I had no patience left at that moment. And I said, I don't know. What are you good for?
And then I said, Eaglesong, you have to go home, you can't do that.
So I spent five years figuring out, okay, what am I good for?
Well, then if we were to look at an herb or two, because we're talking about rekindling the heart of health Yes. And, we were gonna talk about Hawthorne. So if we're looking at Hawthorne, beyond the what are you good for, Hawthorne Uh-huh. How do you approach Hawthorne? What's Hawthorne about?
Well Hawthorne, and you know what I've actually come to appreciate John is there's several levels of approach and and what's it good for is actually a door opener.
Mhmm.
It it helps people to be able to relate on a certain level. What was awful for me, awful if that's a word, but what troubled me was when people would then go, I would tell them about what I love the most and then they would go to nature and they would just get things.
So I wanted something different. But really, Hawthorne with the regular use can lower a person's blood pressure.
It increases the effectiveness of our heart's pumping action. It makes the heart pump stronger but not faster.
It actually is tonifying and strengthens the heart muscle.
It slows down the heartbeat and it dilates the coronary arteries.
Well, my dad had three open heart surgeries, so I'm kind of keen on taking care of my heart and I was complaining and whining about having a broken heart and a friend of mine said, You know Eagle Song, your heart can't break. I said, Look, I'm telling you my heart is broken.
This went on back and forth for a while and finally she said, Okay, so your heart's broken, but you need to know it can only break open.
And so having Hawthorne as an ally that I used three quarts of it a week for over five years supported the immune system.
I really believe that that herb started to to create tonification in all of my veins and arteries in my body.
That the flaccidity that I was experiencing in the kind of exhausted state that I had the journey through started to come into tone with the regular use of Hawthorn.
So it's a plant that only works over time. If you took it once nothing would happen.
Well I being a person who likes to go out into nature have several hawthorns up and down the Snoqualmie Valley where I live that I go to visit on a regular basis and this has been for over fifteen years. And then I found these one hedge that are magnificent. They're like a blend or a cross between the wild Crataegus, douglasii and Crataegus monogona.
Except they have really a lot of flesh and juice. So So you can actually make hot butter and, really tasty things. So I thought I had found the best hawthorn in the world. And then the other hawthorns just started wailing at me. They said, What do you mean the best hawthorn? Well look at us. Then I found a Chinese hawthorn.
I was at the the Mexican Tienda and they actually make this punch in the middle of winter and the Mexican Hawthorn is the main ingredient in that punch. So I started making this amazing ponche using a blend of all the hawthorns I found up and down the valley and then I added in Devil's Club root and a bunch of dried fruit.
So I have this new winter punch that I use which is deeply based on Hawthorne.
And so then it it just keeps going like there's no end to it.
And so the, the healing infusion over a period of five years not only healed my, what I thought was a broken heart, but it actually increased the vigor and stamina that I have in my life now. And I get to go courting at least twice a year when I pick the flowers and leaves and the and the, berries in the fall. There are I'm harvesting six different kinds of Hawthorn. I'm finding them all over and I haven't even started looking at the ones that are domesticated down in Seattle. Right.
I missed, I missed bird sanctuary incarnation on the Snoqualmie River Road.
There is this bird sanctuary.
You can pull over the side of the road and go into the field, and there's it's giant in the it's like a it's like a weeping willow type of hawthorn, and you get you get underneath the branches when it's flowering, when you pick the flowers and That's with the when the bees are out and then it's just you're in a hive.
It's like you're in a hive.
That's exactly right. The whole tree is humming, and and I've had them say to me, lay down. I said, what do you mean? The tree says, lay down. I said, oh, alright. And I lay down, and I look up through the limbs and watch all those birds and bees buzzing and see the clouds moving through the air and and shaping and forming. And it's like that space I talked about earlier, all of a sudden that space enters my life.
And I would have never been able to have found that without Hawthorne.
So And that is medicinal herbalism right there.
That is it. And then that wasn't enough. She dragged me to Europe three times.
She said, we wanna show you what human scaled agriculture looks like.
Mhmm.
Did you know there's three hundred and fifty thousand miles of hedgerows in England alone?
England's a tiny country and they have three hundred and fifty thousand miles of hedge. The main plant in the hedgerows is white thorn or hawthorn.
And now it's against the law to cut hedges down in England because they've learned that all these hedges are actually ribbons of life stitching the countryside together with birds and bees and bugs and all the furry creatures. They're highways of life that that have retreated into the hedge and continue to carry on their daily living because there's a way for them to move through the green around the fields, the agriculture fields.
And so so now they're doing citizen science and they're actually doing studies and really starting to appreciate.
There are hedges in England a thousand years old. Can you imagine what the soil is like in a hedge that hasn't been disturbed for a thousand years?
What mystery lurks there?
My imagination is running wild here.
There's all kinds of things we can do with this.
Yes. Exactly. And that's one of the fun parts of really engaging the plants on a different layer, a level that asks us to get bigger and deeper and and not be kind of tricked into just looking at the tiny details. And yet at the same time, we can look at those details and find out how these plants can help us with even that.
Right. Right. What about how about, another wonderful tree that you introduced me to years ago was, linden.
Oh, the linden. Yes. Actually, the lindens, they're just as bad as the Hawthorns.
In what sense?
In, I never really appreciated a Linden until I went to Europe.
And, you know, learning through history that there was a point in time in France where the whole country shut down when linden bloomed. Mind you, you only get three days of bloom time when the plants can actually be harvested when they're at their peak of flavor.
And so the linden is so beloved in France that that everything, store, shops, everybody stopped, whatever they were doing, and they would go to the Linden's. To me, that is an amazing, act of celebration.
That a tree would be so important that everybody would stop what they're doing so that they could go and and gather this flower that would be used through the year in their household as teas.
So the linden is cooling, amazingly cooling to the body and it's got a very viscous quality about it when you brew it up as a healing herbal infusion.
And this one's only a half ounce to a quart of boiling water and you do it twice.
So the second time, it's brewed starting with cold water and and then those two infusions are mixed together and you get this viscous liquid that is amazingly cooling to the body and what they're finding out now is inflammation is one of the main causes of all disorders and diseases.
And so, if we have an ally that we use two or three times a week as a, as a way of engaging the inflammation that's just a normal part of life, then we have a way that we're actually monitoring and adjusting through on a daily and regular basis.
You know, I I, kind of fig fig figured that out when I was when I was practicing, that it seems like the inflammation's kinda inflammation is that that middle place, the gray area between stress and emotional distress and the world, the weight of the world, and these things happening on a molecular level. Like, you know, like, it's like, okay. This happens. Our bodies have heat that creates a heat type of situation.
Inflammation happens, and then when inflammation's there, then how your body responds to that is just up to you as an individual. It could be anything.
It could be. And because of of, as you know from Chinese herbalism that bodies have different natures.
Mhmm.
They're gonna express the distress differently, which is why we use different herbs for different people even if we're treating the same presenting symptoms.
So the linden here is and and and and being conscious about the inflammation and using a plant like this is can help quite a lot.
Really a lot. And and even in a topical application of making linden teas, like brewing up a strong, decoction of the linden and adding it to a bath water and actually using it as an herbal bath, especially when somebody, and this would be for a baby or a child is in distress and you just can't quite put your finger on it that you could create this bath and then put the child in it because this sense of cooling is also a feeling of being embraced.
So we have this sense of the body is being relieved of the resistance and heat that's happening.
And then there's this amazingly soft big arms of the linden, which is a huge tree. Lindens in Europe are so beloved. There's a garden in Paris called the Jardine de Luxembourg and there are alleles of linden, rows of linden, and they're all pollarded. Some of those trees are two hundred years old.
And they're in the city, and they're they're, you know, it's the most used park I think I've ever been in. There were so many people in that park having such good times. But the Lindens are all over France and England both.
I saw one Linden that was it was an alley leading up to a church front door and there was a tombstone so it was only about fifteen feet tall. And then it was early spring, so it didn't hadn't leafed out yet. But I walked behind the tree and it was totally hollow, John.
Wow.
The only thing that was there was the outside, skin of the tree, the bark, and and it was what, three hundred, four hundred years old.
Wow. So so that's why this this, what I call the hedge witch, she grabbed me and took me. She wanted me to see a bigger world. She wanted me to see time in a really expanded way so that I could appreciate that what we're we're dealing with right now, either in our own bodies or in our culture, that we're we're at a place where we're in between two things.
Mhmm.
And the plants will really guide us if we want to listen to them and if we bring them into our lives.
And, you know, there's just so many more ways that people are engaging conversations on how plants have enriched their lives and nourished them.
You know, I started teaching herbs forty years ago because there was nobody to talk with.
Right, right.
And now there's little conferences everywhere.
If that isn't a testament to the ability of these plants to bring us together and to wake us up Right.
I don't know what is.
Like, you're you're a very different herbalist than I knew than I learned from sixteen years ago.
You've gone through a lot, and you have traveled, and you have you've gone around the spiral a few more times and and have a much, like, deeper relation with with plants and with with health and and, it's just And with myself, John, that's the important thing.
And and so what I I see you now, because it it was like you needed to retreat a bit and and and and go on your your trips to Europe and and and, you know, as as you were going along there. And and now you're you're you're putting together this women's conference.
And and what it like, what is that about for you? Like, in this stage of of your you as in the role of teacher and learner?
Well, the women's conference is about bringing women together so that we can remember our native and inherent relationship with health.
You know, there's a lot of talk about sustainable gardens and the words just never quite satisfy me. And so, one day I realized generative garden is what I do.
I want a generative garden. And it's the female or the feminine, and even these words are not big enough to hold what I'm trying to say, but that's the generative principle.
And, our world is is transitioning toward a generative culture, if you will. And it's not that it's a struggle, but it's like spring doesn't come in one day. It gets warm, then it cools off, then it gets warm again, then it cools off, you know, and eventually one day you say, Oh wow, it's summer.
We've made the transition.
I think that where we're faced right now is that we are in transition and that when women come together and really look at how healing and nature works for them in their lives, that new conversations open up. And then also, I've had a, an ongoing conversation with the word rights, r I t e s, and rights, r I g h t s. And that really, if life is a journey, we're just passing through different rights of passage when we move from maidenhood to motherhood to cronehood.
And there's that really sweet time in between the mother and the crone where you get to be the queen if you're lucky enough. And so, some people become the queen, and I think other people actually go into a depth of discovery to to make that passage. It's it's a dark passage for some of us and not for others, but it's a still the passage that brings you into the place of carrying your wise blood inside.
And so, these are things that basically only are women's work and supporting one another in that rite of passage through our lifetime by having intergenerational communities of women that gather and share with one another what it's been like for them on their journey is to me, an important part of of cultivating a generative culture.
Right.
So in a certain sense, John, I'm actually inviting the wildness to come together and bubble and spark, and let's see where we go.
Wow. I can see. I I and when I had spoken on an interview with, Rosemary Gladstone recently, when she was talking about the Northeast Women's Conference and talking hearing you about what you say about this and what she said about the Northeast. It seems like women's herbal conferences are really necessary. I mean, this is very different than other herbal conferences. And, at SeaWorld, if I was a woman, I would go.
And you know what, John? If you were a woman, we would love to have you.
Because this is how cool. Like, and you have some great presenters. Like, I'm looking in down the list here on the website, and there's people that I haven't met, but there's there's a lot of people that I do know that have been important in our lives. Like, Judith Laxer is there, and she's been an important mentor to Kimberly.
Uh-huh.
Cathy Akabatsu was local for us in Carnation for a while and, of course, a mentor of mine, probably one of the most amazing ethnobotanists to ever walk the planet, Heidi Bowen.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And Carol Tresato, who's our keynote speaker.
Got our local herbalist, Denise Choi, here from Port Townsend.
And so you got a great line of oh, Lindsay, who used to, work with her at, Wilderness Awareness School.
Exactly.
So I'm telling you, if you are I you should fly out for this, everybody.
But, if you are a Northwesterner or Californian fly, it's not very expensive to fly up to Seattle.
Monroe, Washington is a short jaunt from the Seattle airport.
And it's September twenty fifth to twenty eighth twenty fifteen if you're listening to this in the future.
So and and and the, it's late what's the Lake Hammond, is it?
Is that Lake Hanon.
Hanon, Hanon.
It's at Camp Hamilton.
Camp Hamilton. And there's that's where you stay there and everything. Right?
I mean Right.
The conference is at a five hundred and eighty acre camp with a swimmable lake and a beautiful lodge, and there's camping and also bunkhouse accommodations for people who want them.
And and it's just it's set up like little villages around a lake. The cabins are set up in groupings around one central meeting hall. So the central meeting halls become the workshop spaces and then there's a big lodge that we have for the dining room. So it's really like, we get to, for one weekend, create a village beside a lake to look at where we live, look at each other, get to know one another, and think about what we would desire most of all in our lives as women who live around the Salish Sea.
Wow. So I just and so pacific women's herbal conference dot com.
Got a I I love that we logged on in here, and then Hawthorne was the first plant to greet me on this That's the Chinese Hawthorne.
Chinese Hawthorne. And then there's information on the schedule. There's intensives and, all the information you need about the camp to register. Nice website.
So, I highly recommend this event of anyone listening to take those few days out at the end of your September. Transformational for sure.
Really? Give yourself the space and time to come and gather with your sisters.
So that sounds great. And then so are is it your intention to make this an annual event?
Well, you know, I was gonna make it an annual event, but then I decided I'm going for a perennial event.
Being a gardener, you know, we have to do the Meaning, yes. It's a it's a ongoing event.
It's an ongoing event.
Yes. And and so, yes, we do see this as an ongoing event, and we will join the rest of our sisters in the regions around the United States because the northwest hasn't got a women's herb conference. We started in the late nineteen nineties. We did three, and now we're ready to resume that, direction and and get it firmly planted and and see which way it grows.
Always, it was amazing to me how just how many herbal schools and herbalists and programs that there are in the state of Oregon as compared to Washington, which we've got lots of plants here too and lots of people interested.
And, it's just great to see, your conference. I know, there's, another conference that's starting up too, northwest, up in the Washington area. So that's great. It's great to see just more folks, coming out and and celebrating the plants and learning together again because herbal conference is how I first started learning. When I, wanted to learn about herbs, I signed up for back for the Northwest Herb Fair. Used to be, up in Bellingham, and Kimberly and I went and I found the mentor that would eventually lead me to studying with you. And also, the idea for the herbal kit came from there, which started learning herbs, and it was, you know, it's it's all part of the story.
So herbal content is really vital and really important for that dialogue, for learning, for community.
So how are you?
One of the never ending stories that I really love.
So I am very excited that you're doing this Eaglesong. So good good hopefully, that all works out.
Thanks, John. I appreciate that.
For everybody. So pacific women's herbal conference dot com. And, you know, I just wanna say to everyone listening that I think it's been, like, I went, like, eight years straight not missing a month doing one of these podcasts. And, took a little break because I was working on a bunch of other stuff, and it's really great to be back on the air here and doing this. And I will slowly get into my regular rhythm again, and thanks, for allowing me to take a little break, everyone. And it's only fitting that when I get back to doing it that that you join the Eaglesong because it's been real honor to have you here, and it just feel like I'm grounding myself here and doing this again to have you by my side as I continue on.
Yeah. Well, I hope this is the first of many, John.
Exactly. And if people want to learn about Ravencroft Garden, where would they go?
They would go to ravencroft garden dot blogspot dot com.
Great. That's great. So EagleSong Evans Gardener, thank you so much for joining us again on Herb Mentor Radio.
You're welcome, John. It's been a true pleasure.
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