What if instead of being brutally confronted by the specter of our dying planet, overwhelmed by pain and anesthetizing with drugs, food, work, sex, or a host of other self-medications, we discovered what is right about our world? Instead of reducing our capacity to create and appreciate beauty, what if we actively witness beauty? That is the message EagleSong Gardener, who challenges us to focus on chronic health not chronic disease, brought me earlier this month as we rambled up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings.
When I first moved to Silver City, New Mexico, I received a lovely card from EagleSong, who lives near Seattle, WA, welcoming Chuck and me to our new home. True to her nature as a gardener, herbalist, and grandmother, she stuffed the card with dried flower petals and tiny leaves, which now sit on my altar. I, too, save colorful flowers and aromatic leaves because I never know when I might need them for a blessing, ceremony, wedding, or funeral. EagleSong is a woman after my own true heart. And when I called to thank her, I mentioned that I had a vision of gathering women in the Southwest to share the culture and landscape I had come to know and love: the food, music, herbal medicines, magical rocks, hiking trails, canyons, and hotsprings. EagleSong thought this was a grand idea; after all, she had gathered the women in the Pacific Northwest as the organizer of the Pacific NW Women’s Herbal Conference, where I had the honor of teaching and how we met.
EagleSong Gardener and her companion, Sally King, are crofters at RavenCroft Gardens. She explained that a croft (a traditional Scottish term for a small plot of ground adjacent to a house) is larger than a garden and smaller than a farm. I was privileged to stay at RavenCroft in 2019, an emerald jewel amid a dynamically changing city, suburban, and rural landscape. It wasn’t the first time I had visited such a garden, having lived in Victoria, BC, at The Farm on Mason Street. So when EagleSong called a few months ago to announce that she wanted to visit me in Silver City, Chuck and I welcomed her to our home.
EagleSong, like myself, was raised by a gardening mother and worked with several shamanic guides from diverse backgrounds. I warned her that she would be visiting in the dead of winter with the garden fast asleep, but that didn’t deter her. A garden is still a garden – awake or asleep. EagleSong is a spirited woman whose mission is to connect people, plants & the earth. An adventurer like myself – she boarded what we call the “puddle jumper” from Albuquerque to Silver City to embark on her latest pilgrimage to discover Hawthornes in the Southwest. EagleSong is also known as the Hawthorn Whisperer, and you can learn more about her work with the heart medicine of Hawthorn on her RavenCroft Garden: Changing the Meaning of Medicine website.
Please join EagleSong and me in this live video presentation as we share Elder Wisdom and Good Medicine on our ramble up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings and then down to the Gila River for a soak in the Hot Springs. If ever there was an elder plan for practicing chronic health - this is the one!
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