Nature Evolutionaries

Rosemary Gladstar shares stories about how to create a retreat center that is also a sanctuary for plants, animals, and people. What are the key ingredients that go into making a place such as Sage Mountain a true sanctuary – a place of safety and sacredness?

Rosemary Gladstar's Sage Mountain Retreat Center & Native Plant Preserve is one of New England’s foremost learning centers for herbs and earth awareness. Located on 500 wilderness acres in central Vermont, this beautiful piece of Earth Mother is a natural sanctuary and teaching site. There is an incredible assortment of wild herbs and flowers growing in habitats that vary from meadows, forest to swamp. Our wild neighbors include deer, bear, moose, beavers, bobcat, otters, fox, and a wonderful variety of feathered folk that honor us with their presence. 

Rosemary Gladstar is, literally, a star figure in the field of modern herbalism, internationally renowned for her technical knowledge and stewardship in the global herbalist community. She has been learning, teaching, and writing about herbs for over 40 years and is the author of eleven books. Her work includes Medicinal Herbs, a Beginners Guide, Herbal Healing for Women, Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health, and The Science and Art of Herbalism, an extensive in-depth home study course. She lives and works from her home, Sage Mountain Herbal Retreat Center and Botanical Sanctuary — a 500-acre botanical preserve she founded in Central Vermont. She is also the Founding President of United Plant Savers, director of The New England Women’s Herbal Conference and founder and past director of the International Herb Symposium.

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Deb Soule's biodynamic approach at Avena Botanical gardens helps create a sacred environment for all beings that enter the gardens. As humans, let's be respectful and welcoming to the seen and unseen ones whose presence in our gardens and woodlands brings harmony, balance, and joy.  

Herbal gardens offer sanctuary for pollinators, people, and elemental beings. Flowering plants and trees, hedgerows and pathways, arbors and benches, altars, and bells add magical dimensions into a healing garden. A diversity of plants, blooming throughout the gardening season encourages a diversity of pollinators and birds. Hedgerows and bells are friends to Elemental beings. 

Deb Soule practices as an herbalist, educator, and biodynamic gardener and is the author of  The Woman’s Handbook of Healing Herbs and How To Move Like A Gardener: Planting and Preparing Medicines from Plants. Raised in a small town in western Maine, Deb began organic gardening and studying the medicinal uses of herbs at age 16. Her faith in the healing qualities of plants and her love of gardening led Deb to found Avena Botanicals Herbal Apothecary in 1985. Five years earlier, Deb lived in Nepal near three Tibetan monasteries and was deeply moved by the Tibetan people’s commitment to ease physical ailments and mental and emotional upsets through the use of plants, prayer, and other spiritual practices. Deb received a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic in 1981. Since then she has devoted her life to working with and understanding the healing gifts medicinal plants and pollinators offer individuals, families, and landscapes. She focuses on using nourishing herbs, flower remedies, whole foods, and meditation as part of her consulting practice. Avena Botanicals’ three-acre medicinal gardens are open to the public year-round, Monday-Friday. Avena is the first Demeter certified biodynamic farm in Maine.

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Designing a beautiful kitchen garden is one of the best ways to incorporate the sacred into your garden and ultimately your kitchen. In this episode, Ellen Odgen speaks about the power of creating garden sanctuaries that allow the healing power of plants to be received. 

Beautiful kitchen gardens ultimately bring more joy and connection through nature and the healthy food that is grown and eaten. In this teleseminar, you will learn a basic foundation of simple steps to successful kitchen garden design, that will feed your spirit and soul in new ways. Create a sanctuary to grow food, in order to open your senses to a bigger world that turns work into play and allows plants to nourish and bring peace to our lives.

Ellen Ecker Ogden is the author of The Complete Kitchen Garden and other books on food and garden design. She teaches and lectures on kitchen garden designs, creating small, intimate gardens to nourish the body, mind, and spirit. She was the co-founder of The Cooks Garden seed catalog, specializing in hard to find salad greens and herbs for cooks who love to garden.
 
For more information about Ellen Ogden or her work please visit her website.

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Join Kathleen Maier for an in-depth discussion of United Plant Savers’ Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary which includes a living seed repository.  The United Plant Savers 360-acre Botanical Sanctuary sits in the Appalachian Foothills of Southeastern Ohio. Thanks to optimal soil conditions and unique topography, the Sanctuary is a refuge for wild medicinal plants that occur in abundance throughout the property. Historically known as “Paynes Woods”, what is today the Goldenseal Botanical Sanctuary has had the reputation for being the best place to collect medicinal plants since the 1900's. The Sanctuary also offers several acres of restored prairie, reclaimed strip-mine land, ponds and fields to provide visitors the opportunity to see several ecosystems and a wide-ranging variety of herbs and trees. Over 5 miles of foot trails allow visitors access to learn about and see firsthand these herbs and trees flourishing in their natural environment.  Visit the new Goldenseal Sanctuary website at: www.goldensealsanctuary.org

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Jennifer Radtke shares about how our gardens, however elaborate or simple, offer sanctuary to pollinators.  There are many practical reasons to keep bees, like honey and pollination, but she encounters more and more people keeping Bees for the Bees--their presence and magic. She invites us to step more consciously into this partnership, providing a wealth of information and offers a meditation to help us connect more deeply with Bees.

Jennifer has been keeping bees in her backyard in Oakland, California for 13 years. She currently has 4 hives spread between Oakland, Piedmont, & Orinda, but grandmothers many hives across the area owned by her apprentices and students. She is former Vice-President of the Alameda Beekeeping Association. She is co-founder of the BioFuel Oasis in Berkeley, which sells beekeeping supplies & bees, and has a whole beekeeping education program for backyard beekeepers. She believes in putting the bees and their health first and listening to the bees rather than a top-down management approach. She mostly enjoys sitting with her hives in her garden and just being with them.  Her hives are dedicated, like her, to teaching people about beekeeping, partnering with bees, and connecting with nature. Jennifer is also a founding member of the Organization of Nature Evolutionaries.

For more information on Jennifer's classes please visit her here.  Look at her instagram for bee video and photos (https://www.instagram.com/jenniferradtke/).

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This episode addresses the degradation of our oceans from the perspective of scientist and sailor, Carol Pease, after just returning from 3 months at sea.  She was recently traveling on an ocean voyage in a 400 foot boat beginning in Finland, then on to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, then sailing from Lisbon to Barbados. 

Carol Pease is a retired and widely peer published oceanographer and meteorologist who lives in the "beautiful Pacific Northwest" in Seattle. Carol calls herself a high latitude traveler, being Norwegian, and is a daughter of Norway.

Carol studied at the University of Michigan, University of Miami and the University of Washington where she achieved Masters Degrees in both Oceanography and Atmospheric Science and ultimately a PhD in Atmospheric Science. 

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In this episode Susan Draffan offers a brief overview of Sea Turtle evolution and mythology and shares her understanding of their esoteric purpose and requests for humanity in the context of the transformational shift of the ages that is currently unfolding. Together Susan and her Sea Turtle guide lead us on an inner plane journey to remember our true selves and birth our soul’s gift to our beloved planet.

Sea Turtles are one of the most ancient, widespread, fascinating, mysterious species on Grandmother Earth. They occupy all our planet’s oceans except the polar regions, and are both fundamental to and indicators for the health of marine ecosystems. All 7 extant sea turtle species are currently endangered or threatened. Turtles embody central roles of honor in the cosmological and creation stories of many world cultures, and sea turtles in particular act as gatekeepers for liminal portals – the “thin” places between sea and land, unseen dimensions, and levels of consciousness.

Susan is a vibrational essence co-creator and practitioner, plant spirit healer, animal communicator, and seer. Her background includes a former career in clinical medicine and research, spiritual studies in the Western Mystery Tradition, and a lifelong connection to the animal, nature, and fairy realms. She lives and dreams in a sacred valley rimmed by mountains near the sea, where she is presently developing a line of essences with native plants and places while holding a vision of the New Earth.  To contact Susan, please email [email protected] or visit her website www.shiningspirits.net.

Listen to Susan's talk below

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In this episode, Rachel recounts some of her experiences communicating with the whales, shares her observations and concerns about the booming new “whale-watching” tourism, and offers guidance on how to reach out to these beings without disturbing their lives. She leads us in a meditation practice to make contact with the whales, receive their wisdom, and share our love.


Rachel Baird is an artist, peace activist and writer (best known as a poet). Her books in print include Uplands and Valentines and Other Tragedies.  Baird's conceptual art, including video, installations, and peace centered work can be viewed at  http://rachelbairdart.com.  Currently, she is working on a series of "Peace Wells"- kinetic sculptural installations aligned to the Earth's lay lines, these wells provide visual cellular memory points for the frequency of peace and also create a collaborative energetic grid that will help generate and sustain the frequency of peace across the planet.  The Embrace Project is another of Baird's peace focused creations- utilizing our common human ability and need to be held, this project gathers groups of people in a series of mindful embodied connections to invoke personal and global transformation.   

Since childhood,  Rachel has been aware of communicating with beings of the natural world, particularly the whales. She facilitates voyages to commune with whales and leads guided meditations to “help us reconnect with our water ancestors, meeting them where we are and creating a future together – helping hold the common dream to restore an ocean of peace.” 

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Larch Hanson is a seaweed harvester on the North Eastern coast, running a family business out of his home in Steuben, Maine. Along with seaweed harvesting, Larch is a structural body worker, a carpenter, a cook, a gardener, just to name a few of his many talents. 

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Storyteller April Thanhauser recounts traditional tales of the sea and guides us in a meditation journey of remembrance of our ancient and intimate soul connection with Ocean.

April is an educator, healer, and story-teller whose spiritual path has brought her to love a kind of meditation that is based in communion with Nature.  She draws upon her life-long devotion to folk and fairy tales,  and to the ocean,  to share magical stories of ocean spirits interacting with humans.

Mermaids and silkies, nereids and sea gods, are very much alive in our collective imaginations and our mythology.  No matter where we live now, there’s a good chance our near or distant ancestors lived in close relation with the sea. Traditional folk and fairy tales are carriers of our ancestral wisdom, speaking to us down through the generations of things that are important for us to remember. They may instruct us, caution us, make us laugh or shiver or simply entertain us. Many, many of these stories, though, are meant to illuminate aspects of our soul’s journey and remind us of our connection to spirit.

Since the Ocean is indeed our Mother, having birthed the first life on earth so long ago, and since, therefore, her creatures are our relatives, it makes sense that the story of our soul’s journey is filled with ocean connections. The water in our bodies was likely once flowing in an ocean current, and the tides of our emotions are subject to the same cosmic forces which orchestrate the seas. At some deep level, we recognize our kinship with whales, dolphins, and seals. 

And so, there are powerful stories, from many cultural streams, in which the Ocean beings are central. They remind us of the Ocean in us all.

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