The
little valley where we live and work has so much to do with how we came
to live and do what we do. I grew up in the '60s outside of St. Louis
in a new subdivision set among the last remnants of fields and farms.
The little patches of woods and creeks were my refuge and solace.
Growing up and watching these disappear made me seek out the wild places
even more. Soon after I got my driver's license I drove as far back
into the Ozark Hills, where I'd often gone canoing and camping, as I
could go, and sat terrified all night in a pup tent as the worst
lightning storm I've yet seen raged on and on.
But in a moment of blessed sleep I dreamed that a fine-dressed Indian
man told me that I would give my bones up in a place like this and I
felt my bones sink into the Earth, and there felt embraced and
protected. I have been tied to the Earth ever since.
I soon left to live in the deserts and mountains of the Southwest. My
neighbors (when I didn't live in the wilderness) were the
Spanish-Americans and Indians. I learned from them that even in the most
barren-looking deserts there were plants to use for food and medicine.
In the Rio Grande valley I met my wife of 23 years, Jan. A lovely
woman, a rock who keeps it all going, from a family to an herb business,
and can even fix all kinds of things that I'm ready to throw across the
room. We were pregnant with our first child and I felt drawn back to
the green hills of Missouri. My love for gardening was difficult at best
in the desert. The government owned the water, and everyone else had to
fight over it. I wanted to go back to where some rain fell from the
sky. On the other hand, we just went through our worst drought in 50 or
more years here in the Ozarks; but it was in the Southwest that I truly
learned to appreciate water.
We then lived in several places in the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks
where we got re-acquainted with the trees and ticks and poison ivy,
along with the most incredible variety of plant, animal and bug life
outside of the rain forest. Fortunately some of the more pestilent life
forms around here keep out the masses who won't know of the secret
places back in the beautiful rock-carved hollows where the purest, cold
waters splash over little waterfalls and greet the wanderer through the
jungle on a hot humid summer day.
We were looking for a little place with some live water and stopped
in an aged real estate office on the little town square in Ava. The lady
wasn't all that helpful. I happened to glance at a Polaroid on the wall
of a little waterfall flowing over carved rocks. She indicated that the
place was way out in the sticks. There was a light rain outside. She
had on high heels. Great, we said; we wanted to see it. Off we went.
Wound up on a gawd-awful road. A large tree blocked the road. We made
the poor woman climb over the tree and go on. Then we entered the little
valley at the very bottom of an Ozark canyon. A small meadow beside a
rock-lined miniature canyon where crystal-clear water flowed.
The old cabin wasn't much. In fact, we couldn't see it standing a
hundred feet across the spring branch from where we stood. The jungle
had swallowed it! The inside was primitive to say the least. The pack
rats had piled leaves and debris four feet high on the floors. I could
feel my wife was not impressed. I was sure this was the place.
So over the years we hacked back the jungle, re- claimed the gardens,
and fixed up the old house which Uncle John Graham built in 1906, and
where he raised three daughters, not an easy life for a hill man back
then in this remote place.
I began camped in a tent in the meadow, working on the old cabin while
my family rented an old farm house. I immediately began to notice an
amazing variety of plant life, many things I saw growing nowhere else in
the area. Suddenly, all around my tent a carpet of calamint, a dainty
purple-flowered relative of penny royal, sprang up and everywhere I
walked or a breeze would blow, there was the purest wafts of sharp,
mind-bracing mint. The plants were calling to me.
Our land is surrounded by several thousand acres of privately-owned
wilderness, much of it owned by a monastery of Trappist monks. Within
this mini-wilderness our land, as I have since found, is a unique little
niche for rare plants and an abundance of varieties. In the swampy
meadow grow rare ice-age plants, found only in cool, dark hollows. They
are remnants of the last ice age, hundreds of miles south of their
normal range. They have been here for 20,000 years or more! There are
plants of the woods, water, desert, garden, and prairie; for this land
has a great variety of environments in a small area. The Ozarks in
general, some of the oldest hills in the world, also are on of the most
botanically diverse regions in the world.
I began to study the plants more closely. I learned a few of their
uses; both from old hill people and from books. We began to eat the wild
greens that folks gathered around here to supplement their diets. We
discovered that these weren't eaten because they were starvation foods,
but because they were good and full of nutrition, many times what our
garden varieties have.
Before Echinacea became popular, I knew it was a plant that the
Indians valued highly. It called to me. I dug a root when I was ill and
chewed the root and I was healed! Comfrey for injuries, Chickweed for
skin, Plantain for poisonous bites. My family all became guinea pigs. I
soon discovered that the results of the fresh herbs I gathered were far
beyond what I had seen from the low-quality herbs that were mostly
available on the market. Not to mention the relationship I was beginning
to have with the plants.
I began to make tinctures of the fresh plants and found it was an
ideal way to preserve the potency of the fresh herbs, and obtain the
results I was seeing. I studied the literature of the Eclectics (M.D. s
who used plant-based remedies), the uses of plants by the Indians, and
folk medicine, including that which can still be found in the Ozarks.
Soon neighbors were wanting the herbs. I began to distribute my
extracts to the little towns around. Soon I quit my job milking cows (no
loss, I like plants much better than cows), and have devoted all my
time to studying the plants, growing herbs, consulting and formulating. I
wouldn't do any of it if I couldn't be out with the plants and get my
hands in the dirt. My wish is to bring some of the relationship I have
with the plants to others, so they too may experience the wonderful
healing energy of the green world.
We do not claim to be the source of any of it. Whenever we gather herbs,
we leave an offering for the Creator and the Mother Earth. And when I
look back on how things came about, I know that I had no choice in the
matter but was propelled down this path of living with and by and for my
green relations.