Trinity
Herb: How
did you first connect with the world
of plants?
Rosemary
Gladstar:
I grew up as a farm girl in the
beautiful foothills of Sonoma county
and all around me was the beauty of
the plants. From the time I was very
young, my earliest dreams were full
of plants. I was also greatly
influenced by my grandmother. She
was a powerful, strong Armenian
woman who had a great knowledge of
plants. She had come here having a
very profound respect and love of
the plants. My grandmother felt it
was one of her important tasks to
teach her children and grandchildren
about plants. She had been in the
Armenian death march, and credited
her ability to survive based on her
knowledge of the wild plants and her
belief in God. So it was a survival
things as well as respect and love.
From her, I developed a need to
learn about wild plants because our
lives depend on them. That was my
influence growing up -- that early
love -- even my school projects were
of the plants in our county and
their many uses. And that connection
just continued to grow as I grew
older. It has always stayed a major
focus in my life.
TH:
Who were some of your early
teachers?
RG:
In the 60's and 70's there was this
huge back to the land movement
sweeping the country. For me,
growing up in a country place, far
from cities or large towns, the
effect was to send me into the
wilderness. I headed up north to the
great Pacific Northwest. I spent a
number of years backpacking and
living very simply. My early
teachers at that time were a lot of
the elders that I met in the
backwoods. There were some
incredible old hippies and beatniks
living out there. One woman,
Dorothy, a librarian, had moved to
the wilderness, she was extremely
knowledgeable -- nobody will ever
know of her -- or read her books,
but she had a great influence on me.
I still stay in touch with her,
she's quite elderly now.
Also
around this time, I came across a
book by Juliette de Bairacli Levy.
It wasn't even one of her herb
books, it was a book called "Look!
The Wild Swans". I fell madly in
love with this woman, and I wrote to
her, never expecting to hear from
her. But a few months later I did
get a letter back. In the meantime,
I had found all her herb books and a
series of beautiful novels that were
all connected with the plants and
plant people. We corresponded on a
regular basis. Eventually I did go
to where she was living on a little
island in Greece in a very primitive
home. I apprenticed with her in an
informal way. I have always credited
Juliette and my grandmother as being
my early teachers. Juliette is
staying with me right now by the way
-- I feel it's an honor to be with
her in her very elder
years.
TH:
What
was the first plant that spoke to
you?
RG:
This
answer has many layers to it because
it starts back in my childhood. I
was six years old when I had a dream
in which I was going back home and
the path I was on was full of
Violets. So I always relate very
clearly to Violets as being a guide
back to the "home."
When
I was 8 or 9 years old my very
earliest vision was of living in our
farmhouse outside of Sebastopol,
where my parents still live, in fact
my mother's lived on that farm for
57 years. I envisioned I was out
visiting this giant old Oak tree and
I saw an old man, he was very skinny
and had long hair and a long white
beard. All these people were coming
to see him to be healed. And I
realized that he was the spirit of
the tree -- the old Oak tree. My
brothers and sisters and myself had
each claimed a tree on our farm, and
that Oak tree was my tree. The Oak
has always been a favorite tree of
mine and Oak medicine is a wonderful
medicine for me.
I
think that as far as herbs that I
use medicinally a lot, Nettle has
been a very compelling special plant
of mine. I love the Nettle
completely. My early relationship
with Nettle as a farm child was that
this was a plant to avoid because I
would run through the fields and get
stung by it all the time. As a child
I learned great respect for this
plant and avoided it like crazy. But
as I grew older and enjoyed camping
and backpacking and living off the
wild, that plant became a special
ally to me because I found it in a
lot of places I would hike to. Its
medicine was superior. I would say
of all the plants I am most allied
to it is the Nettle plant and
Prunella vulgaris -- the little Self
Heal. It's also a very special plant
to me. Mostly because its been in my
life in major crisis times. Where
I've been in bad times that plant
has come. Once I was run over by a
motorcycle and fractured my legs. It
was quite serious. It was Self Heal
that pulled me off that split second
to look at the Self Heal. So I
really credit it with saving my
life.
TH:
How
would you suggest someone new to
herbs start using herbs?
RG:
I think that the most ideal way is
to start growing them and to go into
the woods, to the fields, before
even reading books or hearing herb
teachers. It's better to go to
the plants themselves than the
teachers. To really feel your
connection so you don't become
confused with information from
people. That information is
there to guide us and supplement the
direct information of the plants,
not to become a barrier to our
ability to connect directly to the
plants.
The
plants have different ways to
connect and work through us, not
just through our sensory experiences
of them. For myself the way I help
my students is to direct them to the
plants. We speak a lot today about
talking with the plant spirit, but
for some that's intimidating. Its
really just appreciating the beauty
of the plants. Your connections can
simply be that they are so amazingly
gorgeous, just there, out your front
door. Or they look beautiful on a
hillside. I think that is the
primary thing, make your connection
to the plants, they we'll do the
research and the studies and we'll
look at what the scientists have to
say, what the herbalists have to
say, we'll look at what the body's
own reactions to the plants have to
say.
TH:
You have been very instrumental in
the founding of United Plant Savers.
What compelled you to do this
work?
RG:
I
feel the plants compelled me. I'd
been working with plants for many
years when I first noticed in Sonoma
county that the plant populations
were decreasing. There are a wealth
of plant lovers there, herbalists,
florists, gardeners, and we have
used up plants at a tremendous rate.
Of course, the number one cause for
loss of plants is habitat
destruction through population and
agricultural growth, but people who
love plants use them a lot too. It
was a subtle awareness. I noticed
that when I would go back to places
where I had picked Red Clover,
Chickweed, Miner's Lettuce, common
plants back in my twenties, that I
just didn't find them in abundance
anymore.
Then
I moved to Vermont. When I moved
here I was very excited to get the
chance to see some of the world's
most healing plants which are from
the Northeastern and Southeastern
parts of the United States. I had
only seen Goldenseal and American
Ginseng in books, and the Cohoshes
in botanical gardens. I had never
seen them growing in the wild. So I
moved to a very beautiful wilderness
area, 500 acres surrounded by 26,000
acres of National Forest land. It's
the kind of habitat that these
plants thrive in, and in my first 3
to 4 years of living here, I hiked
almost every day during the summer
months and I didn't find many of
these plants. I found some Black
Cohosh, but not in the amount that
the early books had indicated that I
should find there. So little alarm
bells started to go off.
I
travel a lot in other parts of the
world where the herbal tradition is
very rich. We always lament that
our herbal tradition was broken in
the 1940's, but in other countries
those traditions are still very
connected. I started to realize as I
traveled, that the tradition was
still alive, but the plants that the
tradition was based on weren't
growing in anywhere near the
abundance that they were even fifty
or a hundred years ago. In fact in
many places you didn't find them at
all. What you found were plants that
were in cultivation, in substitution
for what had been there.
It
was about that time that I started
feeling a major concern. Having
worked in the herbal industry and
knowing the amount of plants being
used, and having worked in herbal
education and seeing the numbers of
people interested in herbs increase
each year, I was excited and
enthused. But, I realized we had
created a very unique set of
problems. Where were all these
plants going to come from to satisfy
this demand? I was in my woods one
day, sadly thinking how beautiful
these woodlands were and wondering
where were the plants that used to
grow here in such abundance. And I
heard this cry come from the earth
"why don't you start planting us
back?" It was so very simple, and I
thought that it was a very good
idea. I'll put these plants back
here so I can help them and so I can
show my students -- here is Ginseng,
here is Goldenseal. Immediately that
fall, I started to get those plants
that used to grow here and planted
them.
And
I made a lot of mistakes in the
early plantings. I didn't know what
I was doing. That is usually my
process. I jump right into things
not thinking about the consequences.
But its okay -- I think that's a
good way to do things -- you just
start. Otherwise, if you just sit
around talking abut things, nothing
gets done. As usually happens, you
find out you're not the only one
thinking these things. You find out
that everybody is thinking these
things, but we haven't talked about
it, we haven't come together. So I
started to talk with other
herbalists and yes they were
concerned too. That's how we formed
United Plant Savers. It was out of
our concern and our love and our
commitment. Unbeknownst to
ourselves, we were creating problems
in rediscovering the plant world and
we didn't want to be the problem
makers. We wanted to be solution
makers.
TH:
What do you see as the future for
the plants in the wild
now?
RG:
The primary problem is that of
habitat destruction. Our focus needs
to be on protecting our wilderness
-- protecting whatever wildness we
have left. Otherwise our land will
look like western Europe. Europe is
beautiful, but there is no wildness,
it's all managed. That's one of the
great things about North and South
America -- there's still wildness.
It's up to our generation and our
children to take a huge stand. I
feel that that is the honor of
living on this planet right now --
the ability to make a difference.
Our lives and the planet depend on
it.
TH:
Thank you Rosemary for sharing your
passion and story with
us.
RG:
Thank
you, and I especially want to thank
Trinity Herb and Jeff Kaus for the
very important part they have played
in my life as an herbalist. When I
opened my herb store in Sonoma
county, Jeff was the first person in
the herb business I felt connected
to. I remember that Jeff would
actually come to the store and look
at what herbs I was low in and fill
the jars himself. It was
great!
Rosemary
Gladstar is
one of our country's foremost
authorities on herbs. She has spent
the past twenty six years in the
herbal community as a healer,
teacher, visionary, and organizer of
herbal events, in addition to being
the founder of United Plant Savers.
Currently she runs Sage Mountain in
East Barre, Vermont, where she
teaches and sponsors workshops and
sells herbal preparations. Rosemary
and United Plant Saver can be
reached at 802-479-9825.
Reprinted
with permission from Herbal
Voices, 2nd issue, 1999,
published by Trinity Herb, P.O. Box
1001, Graton, CA 95444. Please visit
their website at: http://www.trinityherb.com
