Plants and Healers

February 15, 2006
Dear Family and Friends,

I write to you from Cape Town, South Africa where it is now high summer with lots of sun and some really windy times. I had an eventful month traveling with a group of six others on an 8000 km loop about southern Africa. I now have some solo time here in Africa for a couple of weeks. This is giving me a wonderful opportunity to work on my Africa book and to get present and vision ahead some.
Along those lines I hope we can have some time together this spring. In March I am attending Schumacher College in England taking a class called "Food, Health and Society". Then back to the US. I am intending to participate in a plant weekend welcoming spring in California before coming to the east. Then I will be assisting Doug Elliott in Hot Springs, NC (May 5-7). On May 12-14 I plan to attend the Leaf Festival and hope to see you there. Later in the year I will be at the Colorado Rainbow then teaching in the NW with Sandor Katz. There are a lot of happenings planned around NC/TN in late July/August, but more on that later.
We can meet in many worlds and get to know the plants. One world is this virtual one. Here on the computer we can talk about plants so that our appreciation of them grows for them while we are apart and be so much more when we are together. Along those lines I will be facilitating another journey through the book, "Botany in a Day" by Thomas Elpel. For more information and to join our discussion group starting in May, please email planttalk2006@yahoo.com.
Below you will find a write up of my recent journey to Africa. My hope is that through these words we can sha re this memorable trip together. Google a map and new subjects to you. Share what you learn. One World.
Hope to see you this spring!

Peace to you,

Frank

Journey through Southern Africa
Winter 2006

I had traveled through Southern Africa three years earlier for five months and was excited to return and grow forth the seeds that had bee n planted before. On this month long journey I was accompanied by six other intrepid travelers.
Near the turn of the year I arrived in London hoping to visit Kew and Chelsea Botanical Gardens. I had the honor of visiting Kew Botanical Gardens twice and was blown out by its huge conservatories of plants from all over the world including a big collection from Africa. I had been to Kew a number of times but each visit takes my breath away.
Finally I was able to spend a day at the Chelsea Physic Gardens (est. 1671). I was overcome by emotion when I sat in these gardens dedicated to the medicine plants of Europe and the world. A must visit for plant people. Both these places humbled me and blew my mind on so many levels. I look forward to my next chance to visit them.
Early in the new year I flew through the night to Cape Town and met up with two of my travel companion s, Julie and Morgaine. We had a few days before the next of our crew arrived and planned to use that time well. The next day we walked for seven hours over Table Mountain with a view of the Cape of Good Hope. We walked along the (table)top of the mountain which is all fynbos ecosystem then down into Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens—one of the finest plant collections in the world. That walk really grounded me. I had done the walk a couple of times before and it brought me a lot of joy to relive the experience. I was excited to find again two insectivorous plant species along the top.
My brother Ken arrived the next day and we four had some quality time with my American/South African family, the Volkwijns. In addition to Kay-Robert and Desire, we were blessed to be joined by their daughter, Lynne-Corinne, an old friend of mine. We shared teas, meals, stories and ideas on several occasions that will be remembered fondly. Kay-Robert guided us through a couple of the townships; a somber look at life in the slums.
In our white, rented KAI van named Moby, the four of us visited Cape Point and on the way back we communed with the jackass penguins, mischievous baboons, and those strange flightless birds, ostriches. Cape point fills me with energy coming from being that base of the continent with two huge bodies of water coming together. We ate a sandy lunch on a windy beach near by. The ocean revealed some of the most intense shades of blue I have ever seen. We harvested a trip's worth of nori seaweed from the seaside. We also had a couple of hours interviewing a white sangoma named Naill whom I had first met in Botswana three years before. It was good to hear his views on the sangoma practices as well as watch how each in the group asked questions. I was glad to hear that his school is doing well and that h e had traveled to Colombia since our last meeting.
On the eleventh we picked up Chris from the airport and swooped him off to visit the oldest vineyard in the cape, Groot Constantia—for tastings then an evening picnic on the beautiful grounds. Later that night we picked up Mycol at the airport and headed off to Namibia.
We drove through the night and arrived late the next morning at the Ai-Ais hot springs on the southern end of the Fish River Canyon. We were blessed with a big hot spring fed pool, date-laden palms and a comfortable campsite for our first circle as a group. We went for an early evening walk along the Fish River taking in a nice variety of plants at its heavily silted edges.
The next day we drove a hundred km to the north end of the canyon and were treated to the African equivalent of the Grand Canyon—one of the biggest canyons in the world. Then o n we drove to the famous kokerboom(quivertree) forest—tree-size Aloes with a golden shimmering bark. These trees live to be several hundred years old and we played a couple of hours in the largest known grove of them. We were even treated to a long lasting rainbow!
Our group was quickly learning how to be a tribe together. Music was a big part of most people's realities. Fortunately both Chris and Julie brought music devices we could play through the stereo. Morgaine brought a guitar and we all had voices. Music expressed itself in many ways along the journey. We hoped to catch Namibia's #1 attraction, the Sossusvlei Sand Dunes, at sunrise. This required us driving off into the middle of nowhere through the night. On the drive we had all sorts of encounters with animals and humans. None-the-less we appeared at the gates before two am and managed a few hours of sleep before they opened at sunrise.
Once day began we got ourselves unstuck from the sand and drove an hour into the park to reach the dunes. The early morning light casts amazing shadows and a wide range of pink to orange colors. We quickly dispersed into the dunes for several hours of other worldliness. Everyone returned slowly for a tasty lunch and then a day drive to Swakopmund. On the way we stopped for a bit for petrol in the town of Solitaire with some amazing succulents planted and a nice bookshop.
We arrived at Swakopmund not long before sunset after a day of traveling through otherworldly landscapes. Fortunately we found some camping spots at the Desert Sky Lodge and also ran into a friend of a friend named Mike. He joined us the next day on our excursion to see the Welwitschia.
I felt blessed to once again meet with the Welwitschia, amazing elders of the plant kingdom. I go t as much joy watching the others in my company get acquainted with them as with my own delight. We eventually came to the end of a road in the middle of nowhere and before us was one of the elders in a big fenced in area (for his protection or ours?). We all had some intimate time with a cluster of them off a ways in the desert. Then our group dispersed for personal experiences with the beings. I climbed a hill finding beautiful offerings every few feet. I was delighted to see some bushman's candle (a plant that burns like wax) still standing. The gravel floodplains provided home to many plants and other creatures. I was tricked seeing the remains of old Welwitschias resembling crusty polypores. These beings are with me wherever I go.
On the way to the Welwitchia we had some good moments with lichens of which there are many here and with all the rock formations. There was a nice collection of plant s in the Swakop arroyo (Where you can camp). But of course the wondrous Welwitchia stole the show.
As a group we had gotten to a good place in communication and making decisions. One important group decision was hearing from Mike that he wanted to join on to the trip for a while. We all discussed it and decided it was a good idea. Our meals became rich and nutritious as we got into a groove. Meals were made on a two burner stove. Everyone contributed to the meals along the way. We shared at least one communal meal a day with very good use of leftovers. We had fruit each morning and someone often made a porridge. For most of the trip we had kimchi or sauerkraut going. We harvested acorns in Cape Town and processed them along the way (The San loved them.) Sprouts happened several times. Tea happened more often when our RSA, Mike showed up. I believe afternoon tea is a wonderful ritual. After a while we even made the dates we picked into a nice wine.
We took off for Etosha Game Reserve driving all day through a cloudy northern Namibia our circle having grown to seven. We arrived at the main gate half an hour before closing. We raced on to the camp (which they close at sunset) stopping a moment to take up the spender of a few giraffes. That night we received a huge rainstorm but the earth absorbed it quickly. Early the next morning we headed out to a day filled with exciting moments spotting many animals (and some plants too!) doing their thing.
We saw countless springbok bouncing about. There were herds of zebra and by the end we had had our fill of giraffes. One big moment was having some time to really watch three hyenas circling our van looking for prey. I will not soon forget their white-less black eyes. I am so awe-struck when I see the f orward look of the Oryx of whom we saw many.
We drove out into the seemingly endless salt zone of the Etosha Pan in the middle of a storm. The weather added to the sense of isolation I felt out there in a world of white (in our white van!). We soon headed back to the lush savanna. Once the sun came out so did a pride of lions who checked us out as much as we did them. These mammals stand out to me amongst a diverse array of fauna (including reptiles and birds) who presented themselves to us that day.
We drove from the park in the late afternoon for supplies in Tsumeb, then on toward the San (bushmen). Providence took us to Roy's Rest Camp conveniently located near the turn to the San. This lush oasis greeted us with kindness through the hands of the caretakers there. They set us up well with all of our needs being met and topped it off with a nature trail tree map around their place. One of our crew was down sick and he along with everyone seemed to benefit with slowing down a bit here. The next afternoon we visited the San village of Grasshoek. These people were out six miles from the main road on 4wd sand. Our van seemed up for it and generally we did well only getting stuck twice. This village of about 200 greeted us warmly and after some negotiations agreed to spend time with us over the next day. We set up camp with rain all around. Once the storms passed somewhat, a number of the villagers appeared in traditional dress with their crafts and voices. I enjoyed their singing around the fire. The medicine men, and hunters and gatherers gathered about dancing and sharing. We shared foods with them and absorbed what we could of their culture. That night the rains really came down. About half of us slept in the van. I was taken back to my youth bu ilding trenches in the sand to keep us from getting flooded out.
The next day was clear and bright. We were in a savanna with African teak (Pterocarpus) and manketti (Schinziophyton) all about. Manketti is certainly one of my botanical wows for this trip. You can eat the seed of this euphorb as well as extract cooking oil from it. Its wood is prized and its bark is used to make soap only names a few of its benefits to us.
The San appeared early the next morning and we gathered with them to share some of their skills and crafts including fire making, ostrich shell bead making, fiber processing and tool making. We shared smokes and soon headed off to explore the bush. Four guides accompanied us--two sister with their babies and three brothers. They showed us a couple of dozen plants in a real—dig them up and taste them—way. The sisters also shared their kno wledge of plants. This was refreshing to see as the San women are often more aloof. At one point an elder woman was called in for clarity on the name of a plant. Our guide, Mathew, explained that the adults had to be re-taught the plants and were still learning.
After a couple of hours we made our way back to the traditional camp. We shared more of our food. They offered to give us a tour of their current village. We accepted and spent a couple of hours meeting their elders and fellow villagers. We listened to two kinds of instruments made by local craftsmen and we illustrated for them some yoga asanas. Several from our group were ready to move in. We were blessed to meet a healthy village of modern San. I look forward to returning sometime.
We drove back that night for another round of Roy's Camp before heading out the next morning for Zambia. We traveled the C aprivi Strip seeing elephants in the latter part of the day. During that drive we held two of our eight affinity circles. It was suggested that we try to have affinity circles while driving and that ended up working out well. In addition to daily check in circles, every few days someone from our circle would facilitate a topic. The topics were of all sorts from suggestions of the group. I would say the most impacting circle was each of us sharing two significant experiences from our lives. The most energized circle was around intimate relationships. There were circles on plant knowledge, and world history and personality tests, etc. There were a lot more ideas than time for circles. But it seemed everyone got a lot out of those eight we were able to have. We ended up camping that night at the border where I had camped three years earlier. It felt wonderful to be in the tropical zone.
Up with the sun, we crossed first into Botswana seeing baobabs and more elephants. Then traveling over to the ferry to cross the Zambezi River into Zambia. We were fortunate to find a place to park our van near the ferry. (We could not bring the van into Zambia due to rental car policies.) We hitched a ride in the back of a big truck into Livingstone. It was great for our group to leave the security of the van for a few days.
We checked in at the Jollyboy Backpackers and got straightened away for a pick up out to Bovu Island the next afternoon. We checked out the market scene around town finding wild mushrooms (termite mushrooms, chanterelles and waxy caps –Yum) for sale and ate them that night for dinner. We also shopped for a couple of day's worth of food for the island. That night we finally got around to sharing what medicines each of us had brought to stay healthy. We were quite the mobile apothecary.
I will be forever grateful for any opportunity to visit Victoria Falls. Truly these falls must have inspired baptisms. Each visitor is drenched in spray leaving with smiles covering their faces. On sunny days there are rainbows everywhere! Imagine that….
On this visit I was amazed by the diversity of life out on the rims of the canyon. I especially noted a lot of vines and other green lush beings clinging to the rim. I recorded as many as I could on wet paper and camera. Some of us walked the back of the rim for different vantage points. I was delighted to watch two from our group prance about taking pictures of so many butterflies. We also encountered troops of baboons. One mother made a grab for my bag but did not get it.
Unfortunately we lost one from our crew for a couple of hours. I t took some time and energy to reconnect but thankfully they were fine. That afternoon we headed out to Bovu Island. This small island only a couple of kms long and less wide is in the middle of the Zambezi River 30 km east of Livingstone and then south on 4wd roads for 11 km. We arrived via canoe to the island landing at the (sand)bar for our free beer. Night was soon coming so we received a quick introduction then were whooshed off to find a camp spot and have dinner. I had a chance to catch up with the local plant expert, Evelyn. We had met on my last visit and I had looked forward to some additional time together with the plants.
The next morning we went with Evelyn for a walk on the mainland with the local healer, Dr. John. Our interpreter was one of Bovu Is's right hand men, Godfrey. We saw many important medicine trees and gathered enough greens for a tasty dish for lunch. I was glad people got a look at the marula, mopane, and African mangosteen trees among others. Some of the key plants from that region let us see them that day. Dr. John is truly a treasure to his community. He said he had learned from his elders. I was glad to see Godfrey learning from his elder as we all were. Afterwards we traveled back to the island for lunch, a short break and an affinity circle on the 10 most common tree families in s. Africa. Evelyn attended and added a lot through familiarity with the trees around. She promised to show us many of the trees the next day. That afternoon the island was treated to an African drum workshop and then most went off for a sunset canoe trip while dinner was being prepared.
The next morning we met early to avoid being out in the heat of the day—Jan 20th is high summer here. Evelyn led us to the bottom of the island showing us a diverse forest ove r less than a kilometer of land including an old baobab. Many small mushrooms were popping up all over catching our interests. We saw many of the tree families we had talked about the day before. Before lunch we sat at Evelyn's and held a plant research circle going through her references. We ate up most of our stores at our noonday meal and headed back to Botswana across the ferry and reuniting with Moby.
The sick one in our crew showed a good recovery in tropical Zambia. We drove south that evening stopping soon after dark at a rest camp. We had been advised not to drive at night in Botswana due to the presence of many elephants and mules and other beings wandering about. The next day we headed out early for our long journey to Gaborone. After many whimsical twists of fate we made it to my friend Charles's house, a fabulous prankster. He looked after us while we were in the area and showed us a fabulous time with his friend Phillip.
We had formed a loving family circle by two weeks into our trip and it was hard to already say aloha to our RSA friend, Mike. But he needed to catch up with his duty on one of the Greenpeace ships. (At the end of the trip we got to reunite with Mike in Cape Town and receive a wonderful tour of his ship the Esperanza. I felt I was with the kind rebel forces in Star Wars!) So off he flew. In Gaborone we spent the day with a couple of sangomas (native healers)—Seipone and Ismael. Several in our circle had bones thrown for them. They gave us a nice overview of what it is like to be a sangoma in the modern world.
The next day we zoomed into RSA visiting another capitol, Pretoria, to check out their botanical gardens. Here we hooked up with our host, Paul. We did a nice tour of the gardens, enjoyed a picnic and took shelter in the medicine huts d uring the afternoon downpour. We then headed to Johannesburg for a night landing at a young permaculture outpost. We spent the next day helping to host a permaculture circle with 22 of us attending. We toured the gardens opening up to the weeds and medicine beings. Then we sat and shared knowledge on wild foods, fermentation, tincture making and mushroom identification, et cetera. Everyone seemed to get what they came for. I enjoyed feeling the experience as a reminder that revolutions are happening all over Gaia and that the time is now.
That evening we drove about four hours out from the big city into the province called The Free State with lots of open land and big sky. Our destination was Rustlers Valley. A friend from my first trip, Eidin and her son Juno, accompanied us sharing stories and memories. My previous trips to this valley had left a memorable impact on my life walk. I was excited to share this vortex with the circle. For us everything flowed smoothly. We were lucky to have Dale Millard as our host. He shared ongoing lessons on ethnobotany, entheogens, insects, snakes, phytochemistry and a whole lot more. I asked him lots of plant questions. We ate fresh fruit, wild plants and mushrooms galore from the abundant gardens. Though we only had a couple of days, they were rich with a day of hikes and time in the garden. On the walk to the sangoma's eye I was amazed by the flora of disputably the birthplace of Homo sapiens. The land felt old and scoured over.
We found a memorable Clematis whose crushed inhalation radically opens the upper sinuses. Most of the circle tried it. We also came across some Withania. I love this plant who is also known as ashwaganda of Ayurvedic fame. I know I still have so much to learn about this being. &nb sp; We came back along the ridge after sitting a while in the eye-shaped outcropping. There were wonderful views each way. From the ridge we could see far and wide. Then we came down again near the encampment and went on to make dinner.
The next day we traveled to Sangoma Mountain to learn through Dale's eyes the wonder and the plight if this holy mountain of the sangoma. This place is not a relic but a living community of sangomas from all over RSA teaching and healing together. I enjoyed returning to this sacred place where people are living fully into one of the oldest healing systems on the planet. Everyone seemed greatly moved by our time there.
It was hard to leave Rustlers Valley. On top of that we were also saying namaste to Chris. He wanted more of that scene before heading north to a permaculture internship in Zimbabwe. We traveled into town for supplies then on the way to th e third capitol of RSA, Bloomfontein, we began to have overheating problems. We fortunately found an angel mechanic who knew these vans. There was a cloud with that lining in that there was a hot steam accident that burned him and Michael. He recovered and cleaned all the mud that had accumulated up in the radiator. This helped things immensely and soon we were back on the road heading south through the Karoo Desert at night.
By mid-morning we were back in Cape Town. The van left us quickly and easily. We had some time on Table Mt as a group and a memorable dinner at Mama Africa restaurant. Over the next week everyone flew off. Michael flew on toward Ghana. The rest back to NC and MD.

P.S.- I am now hard at work revising my first draft of the Africa book with the addition of this recent experience. I hope to have some copies available this summer. Please reply to this write up with your thoughts of what areas from this narrative that you would like to know more about. This will influence my revisions. Thanks. FC

A Day of my Life in Cusco, Peru

September 8, 2006

I awaken at first light to someone shouting out a mantra in Spanish welcoming back the sun. He is undoubtedly coming home from the ceremony for the full moon from the night before up the hill at the Temple de Luna.
The streets below our room (10/s per night) come alive early this Saturday morning and soon I am up to pray and practice my morning routine. I spend an hour writing my account of our group experience over the last two weeks and work on a plant inventory of the retreat center we stayed at in the sacred valley. I eat bananas and raisins from my previous day at the market.
By mid-morning I head out to the Centro Mercado for fresh juice from one of the 12o ladies there who makes juice for a living. I have two glasses of carrot, beet, fresh alfalfa, and maca (2/s) and then move about the market buying fruit and bread. I feel right at home though still amazed after countless visits at the vibrancy and life of this market that meets most of the needs and wants of the people.
I walk down the Rio del Sol to the Centro Artisan Mercado and find a friendly clothes maker and design with him a bag to hold my flute. He is happy to apply his skills to my wishes and comes up the next day with a fine result. (15/s) Heading back to the hostel I check on my flight in a few days. At the room I take a quick power nap as I am still acclimating to this 10,000 ft high, polluted city. Then I work on my projects some more, filter some water and bid farewell to two from our circle flying off to Lake Titicaca. I check in with my assistant Christina who is just getting over a digestive ailment.
In the afternoon I head out for a journey to some pre-Incan ruins. On the way I stop at a vegetarian restaurant, Nuevo Mundo, for their set lunch: veggie sopa, pan integral, papas fritas con verdas, fava frios, and ensalada followed by arroz and veggie fritas con jugos y mate. All this for 3/s—clearly labors of love. Then off to my bus which climbs up the ridge away from Cusco some kilometers past Chinchero (3/s).
I catch a group taxi to a small town called Maras (1/s). There everyone gets out and the cab driver explains to me through informal international hand signs, head gestures and everything else my situation. There are apparently no public transports to the ruins or to the other place of my desire—a natural salt extraction center named Salinas Maras. For 50/s he is happy to take me to both places and back to the bus to Cusco. Yowch. We negotiate down to 30/s and agree that we will part at the salt pools and I will make my way to the road 4 km down the mountain.
So off we went cruising through the back roads 10 km out into the country to a huge amphitheater-like place nestled in the Andean mountains. I spend an hour there walking down into its center down rock steps. From there I felt called to prayer and oration. It was apparently used to grow crops and acclimate them up and down the mountains and in this way increase the distribution of both high mountain cultivars as well as jungle crops. It is windy and dry but I enjoy the visit and slow down with some of the native plants around the rim.
Then off we drive to Salinas Maras in search of its salts. This takes us to the edge of the mountains above the Sacred Valley. From above I can see the white vein of mineral deposits and we slowly wind our way down to them. I am amazed by the creative way they catch the mineralized warm water and directed into hundreds of pools which cooled and crystallized and then were drained to make available the reddish-white Andean salt.
I pay my driver and the 5/s entrance fee, receive a detailed set of instructions on how to get to the road I can see way in the distance down the hill and across a river. My main concern other than never having done it before is making the distance before dark. Already I could feel the sun getting low and evening not so far away. Without further ado I take off following a small white trail that winds its way along the pools. I stay down in the salt zone as I was instructed to do and make my way along. I can’t help taking a few pictures of this natural wonder and sustainer of life. I also capture a few shots of the workers whose job it is to gather up these crystals and bag them up to send off to the cities.
Eventually I make it to the last set of pools that then drop away to a small gorge and at its bottom a white stream bed flowing. Here I cut over to a small dirt road and follow a small group of native people with their pack animals down, down to the valley below. Every few minutes I am amazed by some plant I am passing—a native tobacco, a cucurb in fruit, a different species of Opuntia cactus. These I try to capture on film.
At the river I find a bridge with a small road that takes me up to the paved road. I arrive just a bit before dark and hail a collective taxi which takes me to the closest town where I catch a bus back to Cusco.
I arrive a couple hours later than I had planned but that is one of the risks of adventure. No loss. I eat some dinner and soon after head off to bed after a day of adventure.

FCC

(1/nueva sol is worth about 30 cents.)

Today marks the 20th year since I began dreading my hair. Amazing how time passes. I know that none of the hair on my head is from that time—like a river flowing—it is the way of being that defines. I am a dread. My head is dreaded. The vibration flows through me.
Morgaine shared with me a story about dreads the other day that is worth repeating here. As a woman assisted her in getting her hair dread going, she said, “You know dreads do not grow just on the outside. They also grow inward. They grow into your brain so you think differently. Then they grow into your eyes so you see differently. And then they grow into your heart so you feel differently.”
That has certainly been true for me. I am forever changed. When I meet people who once wore dreads, I try to remind them of that—how once a dread, always a dread, even if the world can no longer see them.
For me, in the winter of 1987, I was quite naïve in many, many ways. And around the subject of dreadlocks I was particularly ignorant. I knew the song, “I Shot the Sheriff” and the like by Bob Marley and perhaps knew he was a Rastafarian in some base way.
I did know that my shoulder length curly hair was becoming an increasingly big hassle to comb every day. I was losing patience with it. My girlfriend was not into combing it. What to do? Somehow I came up with the idea of just letting it go. As I said, I had no aspirations to be a Rasta as I was ignorant of all that. Very quickly my hair started matting especially in the back. I braided my long strands of hair in the front and just never took the braids out. And over the years my hair dreaded fully. I would occasionally pull them apart to keep them from becoming one big dread.
When I went on the road in 1992 I realized that thousands of people had dreaded or were dreading their hair. In those years I began to become aware of Rastafarianism. On the road, since I had been dreading my head for five years, people assumed things about me and in this way I learned lots about the cultures that embrace dreadlocks—notably, the Rastas and the Hindus. There was an alternative culture booming around the US and many youth were dreading or wanting to. Most of these people only kept their locks for a little while.
This journey was for me all new territory. My dreads taught me many things about being simple, about vanity, about stereotypes. I remember in Louisville, Kentucky in 1993 walking through a neighborhood and this burley black man came up to me and placed his hands on my dreads and asked me at each weak link, “Ahh, what sin did you do here?” saying that those spots were where Jah reminded me of my human frailties. Over the years the dreads certainly have budded (as I like to call it). I usually bury them near where they come off.
I have had to treat lice perhaps half a dozen times. I have had to learn how to wash them and how to avoid mildew; learning when to keep them up, when to let them down. I have faced oppression and admiration.
In 1997 I went to India for what turned out to be nine months ( I went there with a one way ticket and a couple hundred dollars). I had a lot of questions for that continent. Some of them had to do with the roots of dreads and chillums and ganja. I learned so much from that journey and died several times along the way. A friend said to me back in the states that in India people follow you around if you are a white dread and want to start an ashram around you. In the states if you are a dread people follow you around to make sure you are not shoplifting.
In 2003 I traveled to Jamaica with a companion, Claudia, to understand its culture a bit more deeply. I was very impressed by the Rasta culture I met there. Those whom I met were good, simple, kind people. Some of them sat along roads with their pumpkin soup and other ital food making enough of a living to take care of their families.
In the late 1990’s I traveled with a good friend, Mark, around the US in a 1971 VW Superbeetle named Lucy S. Dobson. We met so many people who asked about dreadlocks that we considered putting together a little pamphlet of the twenty most asked questions about dreadlocks. We wrote up the questions but did not take it further than that.
I have now traveled all over the world and everywhere there are people aware of dreadlock culture either through Bob Marley and Rastafarianism or Shiva and Hinduism. In Southern Africa I would interact with many people each day around being a white dreadlock. In India people would inquire everyday as to who I was.
Now twenty years into it, I want to take a moment to honor all these dreads have taught me along the way. When I walk into a space people expect something different from me. I am not easily stereotyped. They have been good companions in all their forms. As a green being, they feel to me in many ways my roots. I think of this each day when I do my headstand. I am blessed by them. I feel honored to wear them as long as they wish to stay with me. If they go away externally, I know they will always stay with me inside my being.

Praise Be to the Most High.

Frank Cook

In the Bush of New Zealand
February 17, 2007

Report of my journey to New Zealand and Australia:
 
Adventures Downunder   Feb-Mar 2007
 
    I am sailing in a whirlwind of travel now at the end of my month in New Zealand.  Before coming here I spent two weeks in Australia traveling with Morgaine and her 8 year old daughter, Makyziah.   Before that I spent nine days in England.  That has been my traveling since last I wrote you all upon my return from Costa Rica.
     I have spent many hours in airplanes to do this journey.  There are some obvious negative aspects to that on my health and the health of the planet.  But I know inside myself that my being has wished to fly in my body for eons and I see planes as a step in this direction like the internet is a step towards our abilities to communicate telepathically.  On the planes I do get a lot of writing and reading done which is very needed.
     Also there are occasionally movies that call to me.  On these flights I have seen three and all of them I highly recommend to those who have not seen them.  They are:  “Fast Food Nation”—showing us a movie version of the across the board negative impact of industrial food; “Inconvenient Truth”—Al Gore lays out clearly our global crisis around global warming with lots of creative media; and one I bet many of you have not seen, “Who Killed the Electric Car?”—a very powerful view of the complicated world we live in and the forces that shape it.  Learn what happened to the California initiative to have zero emissions from cars.  Powerful!  See them and tell others about them.  And to think these were shown by airlines (Specifically, Qantas and Emirates)!
 
                             Time in chilly England
 
     England gave me a little more winter and we even had some snow in London.  I spent a few days there visiting with friends, Kew Gardens, and Chelsea Physic Gardens.  Then I went to Schumacher to meet with people there and turn in my application to attend their MSc. program in Holistic Science this autumn.  That all felt good.  Unfortunately I came down with a chest cold and that took away from my trip to Hastings with Marianne to visit one of our teachers from school, Colin Spencer, and his partner Claire, in their lovely country home build in 1819.  I tried to make the most of it and we enjoyed a long walk and history lesson from Colin down to the English Channel.  If any of you travel to England and want to stay at their pleasant B and B, let me know and I will hook you up.
 
                                      Australia
 
       With my cold and luggage I flew off to Sydney, Australia.  Though hard, the trip was not as bad as I feared it would be.  Most of the time I was in Australia, I was under the weather.  I was glad that Morgaine was there to help.  We were kindly hosted outside of Melbourne by Morgaine’s Friends, Yodi and Pier.  While visiting them we had the honor of a day with David Holmgren and Su Bennett who caretake the permaculture site,  Melidora.  David is one of the originators of the permaculture movement.   We spent a fascinating day down along a stream behind there house that they help caretake.  David expressed that we needed to stop battling the exotics but instead observe their evolution with the currently native plants.  It was a day full of insights.
    We stayed a little while in Melbourne and did not get much out of being there other than a nice day at their botanical gardens and a couple of visits to an innovative restaurant called Lentil as Anything (check out their website).  They focus on high vibe food and encourage you to pay as you feel.  It has been a successful movement there with several locations.  I would love to see that idea take hold all over the planet.
      From Melbourne we flew to Perth on the far side of the country.  I was interested in checking out one of the half a dozen Mediterranean climates of the world.   We stayed at the eco-friendly One World backpackers and checked out a grassroots movement teaching permaculture principles called City Farm (associated with the Men of the Trees movement).  We also visited the botanical gardens there which I was very impressed with.  They emphasized native plants and had lots of information on who many of the plants were to the aborigines (a general term encompassing many different tribes of peoples spread throughout Australia.) It felt wonderful to walk through their abundant gardens and meet people at their weekly market all built on an abandoned railroad yard.  We also ventured to Freemantle and had some time in their vibrant marketplace.
    Up to this point I felt myself struggling some to stay focused and positive while in Australia.  Besides the exceptions mentioned above and the overall kindness of the people we met, I felt there was a shallowness to our encounters.  My physical dis-ease did not help this perspective very much.  To connect more with the land, the three of us took a train north of the city and hitchhiked 100 km to camp out for a couple of days.  This worked beautifully and I felt a real shift in myself.  The hitchhiking was challenging to get to a river we saw on the map, but we eventually made it.  This place was a little heaven despite the presence of lots of little ticks.  The cool waters and forest of paperbark trees were very healing.  On that journey we also had a wonderful encounter with an ancient plant called balga (Xanthorrhoea) who reminded me of the Welwitschias. I had a chance to really commune with it and learned a lot.   Morgaine summarized this plant well in her letter to family: “the balgas are these most ancient of plants, also called grass trees, that look like cousin It. They were regarded as the most useful plant for aboriginals of western Australia, being used for food, tools and shelter. They only grow 2 cm a year, so when I see one my height or taller, I feel awe-inspired.”
    As so often happens, once we had gotten our lessons from the journey, we were zoomed back to the beginning.  In this case a couple from Ireland came by as soon as we got to the road and drove us all the way back to Perth.  That brought an end to our traveling time together and I bid Morgaine and Makyziah farewell.  They went on to travel for several weeks across the country for more adventures there and have now returned to the states.  I caught a flight to New Zealand for an entirely different experience.
 
                                      New Zealand
 
    The first thing I have to say about NZ is that it seems to have very little connection in any way to AU beyond being in the general same part of the world and having a history of colonialization.  It reflects my own ignorance.  The vibe is totally different.
     For financial reasons I chose to hitch around on my travels here.  In these last three weeks I have had the honor of 46 rides from people covering several thousand kilometers.  Some of the rides have been nothing short of miraculous and I have met a wide range of people from Maori indigenous elders to modern Maori to all forms of Kiwis-- sheep shearers to antique restorers.  There has also been a good number of kind tourists mostly from Europe.  I feel it is a real blessing to have seen the country in this way as I would have missed a lot of important encounters had I traveled by bus or rental car.  Not only did I get to experience the beauty of NZ, I also go to hear a wide range of stories of the challenges here.  Some of those challenges are the same ones we are facing all over the world as corporate mentality continues to erode our humanity.  People here are amazed how much I have seen and experienced in my time here.
As you know, my purpose for being here is to get to know the plants and healers as well as visit sacred places.  All of this has happened in magical ways.  As soon as I got off the plane and passed through their misguided quarantine, I began hitchhiking out of Auckland.  This had its challenges.
      Soon after I had been standing on the motorway two cop cars appeared lights flashing.  The first one rolled down his window and told me that for my own safety I was not allowed on the highway.  And if I stayed, there would be a $450 fine.  I felt I was talking to a shark who had, fortunately, recently eaten.  He pointed to the top of the hill to an on ramp with no pull off area.  He said that that was were I needed to be.  So I walked up there with my heart on the ground.  Things did not look good.  I began to look around for a place to spend the night as it was approaching evening. 
      But angels were looking out for me and within a half an hour Don stopped in his smoked mussels truck—pulled right up onto the grass and whooshed me out of there.  He asked me where I was going.  Toward Rotorua I said.  He seemed surprised and said that he was going to Coromandel Peninsula and figured I was going there being how I looked.
      Don turned out to be a great story teller and over the next few hours I learned all about his life.  He had grown his kind heart through the trials of the underside of life.  I was impressed with his strong sense of morality.  He invited me to camp on his lawn which I did and over the next three days grounded and got a sense of this new world I had arrived in.  I met the great Kauri trees and many of their relatives.  I walked on the beaches and gathered seaweed from the beautiful turquoise waters (there are over 600 species of seaweeds around NZ—40% are only here!) 
     I then headed out crossing the small mountain range to the east side of the island and made my way down toward Rotorua (also known as Roto-vegas).  On the way I spent my first night in the bush.  I got there on the wings of a 17 year old kiwi full of energy.  He dropped me off not too far from the road at his favorite off roads track and told me to walk in and I would find some nice bush.  I did and it was wonderful to be out there away from everyone with tall Rimu (one of the twenty unique conifers of NZ) trees overhead and vines of supplejack climbing them (a relative of Smilax).  Through the night I could hear the scurrying of possums around and I wondered about their aggressiveness.  NZ has only two native mammals—both small rare bats.  Through introductions there are now many including the possums (estimated to be 70 million of them), deer, rats running through the woods plus 40 million sheep and millions of cows.  And least we forget the 4 million humans, the most destructive of the introduced mammals.  The plant story is just as telling.  There are about 2300 native plants with over 20,000 introduced plants. More than 2000 of these introduced plants have gone native.  NZ is so beautiful on the surface but beneath that pollution runs rampant and there is this distorted view that they need to eliminate the exotic beings (except the sheep and cows and humans and crop/horticulture plants.)  I was so thankful for my time with David Holmgren in AU as he prepared my mind for this.  The reality is that these naturalized plants and animals are not going away no matter how much you poison, pull or trap them.  The energy to do that and the further damage to the ecosystem is wasteful.  We have to find ways to co-evolve.  When people would bring up the possum whom they love to trash (and is a protected animal in AU where it comes from), I would suggest a analysis be done on the environmental impact of the sheep compared to the possums (not even to mention the humans who have somehow come to see themselves as the center of the universe—oh that ego!).
 On my way to Rotorua I was picked up by a Maori father and son.  They shared such kindness with me, spending the whole day taking me to their favorite lakes in the area including a swim in Lake Taupo (an ancient crater with an explosion 26,500 years ago producing a hundred times the fallout of Krakatoa).  They also took me to a museum of an unearthed Maori village buried from a volcanic explosion 120 years back.  Fascinating.  They fed me and showed such respect towards me.  I was honored to be with them.
    I stayed in Rotorua a couple more days then made my way south stopping at Waikite Valley to soak in the hot springs there that have the largest outpouring of hot water in NZ—600 liters a second.  I camped there and had a profound experience sitting before that spring!
 
                             South Island
 
    Then after a series of wonderful rides I somehow magically appeared at the bottom of the island at the capitol, Wellington.  I was blessed to have a night with friends of my parents there and the next morning, Elisa took me around to see the Maori exhibit at the Te Papa Museum and a visit to the Otari Nature Reserve with an impressive collection of plants representing half the flora of NZ. 
     Then I caught a huge ferry traveling 3 hours across the Cook Strait to the south island.  On the journey I met a number of interesting Europeans—One a plant enthusiast from France also a Dane who had a car heading my way.  He and I camped out that night and made a fire baking kumara (sweet potatoes) and roasting corn. We had a wonderful time under the starry night sharing stories.
    The next morning he dropped me at the road and soon a man named Rod picked me up.  He was on his way to meet an elder named Steven who had been homesteading for 30 years.  Rod is going through some big changes in his life and wanted to check in on Steven’s life and learn from him a bit.  We had a lot to talk about and I ended up hanging out with them for that day.  We had a walkabout Steven’s homestead seeing all the remarkable ways he is a model of the striving for self-sufficiency. I found him a very interesting person.  He was co-incidentally driving that afternoon to pick up a horse in the direction I was going so we had a nice ride together all the way to the coast. 
     Soon after he dropped me off, a young man with the familiar name to me of Liam, stopped and gave me a lift.  He took me on tour of the area which is famous for greenstone (serpentine/jade).  I ended up camping in his family’s back yard.  Liam’s father, Dinny is a real bush lover.  Once he knew my interests he stacked a wonderful pile of plant books in front of me that I spent hours going through.  We also went for a sunset bush walk up to a beautiful gorge with turquoise water and old forest.  I was blessed by their kindness.
 
                                      The Glaciers
 
     I was on a tight schedule so headed out to the road the next morning.  After a short ride to the next town, a young Scottish doctor who had relocated to NZ picked me up and drove me all the way to the glaciers.  Ever since seeing my parents’ pictures of the glaciers with a tropical forest below them, I knew I needed to go there.  And there I was. They were as spectacular as I had hoped.  These two glaciers, Fox and Franz Joseph (really silly names for glaciers in my opinion! In Maori the area is known as Ka Roimata o Hine Hukatere (Tears of the Avalanche Girl)) were powerful and foreboding.  Out of the base of them were caves with rivers roaring forth.  I was amazed by the disheveled landscapes and the pioneering plants that re-colonized them. I was very amazed by one of the plants that seemed to be the first to come back called Tutu in Maori (Coriaria).  This plant has killed a number of humans and countless cattle but is also a very powerful healing medicine.
      After a day with the glaciers, I retreated to a campground and the next morning started hitching back north.  This was my third encounter with glaciers-first time as a child in Iceland and the second on my quest to see the source of the Ganges up in the Himalayas at a place called Gamuk.  I was blessed with only a sprinkling of rain in a place where it averages over 8 meters of rain a year.
      Some wonderful rides came the next day and whooshed me back to the top of the island.  I spent the night at Rod’s house (the man who had picked me up a few days before).  I met his young family and we did a plant walk around his land taking in the diverse beings there.  We found an edible mushroom the Maori call harore (Pholiota).  Though I was in NZ  a month early for the mushroom season I saw a nice collection of mushrooms along the way including Ganoderma, Russulas, Auricularia, and Lycoperdon. 
      That day I hitched further north to the top of the island getting a kind ride from a French man who was touring about after a year of nursing in New Caledonia. He took me to an idyllic place called Golden Bay.  I stayed there only a night having a full time with one of the founders of the Tui Community, Robina.  She is a energized crusader for a better world and I enjoyed my time with her.  She also had a great book collection. She took me to visit an herbalist, John Massey, who had spent some years in the states and even went to the California School of Herbal Studies back in 1982.  He is a kindred soul and our hours together passed full of good stories, a healthy meal and a nice walk around his gardens.  In Golden Bay there is always fruit to eat any time of year.  It is one of those relatively rare places on earth were apple trees grow next to lemon trees.
       That afternoon a couple of rides took me back over the mountain to visit with Hera, a friend of Luke’s.  We only had a day together but shared some good stories and walked in the bush around her house.   She is an accomplished basket maker in the Maori style. We parted after having a wonderful dunk into a sacred glowing crystal pool.
I got a little stuck hitching back to the ferry but eventually an angel appeared, Marianna, and lifted my spirits back up and showed me her home being converted to a permaculture forest and then took me to the ferry back across to the north island handing me a bag of food as we parted.  I felt fed at every level as I rode back across the Cook Strait.
 
                             Back to the North Island
 
       I arrived in Wellington late and walked to base backpackers for the night.  I slept well and after a morning of errands I walked out to the highway to head north.  I had some trepidation around this as my guidebook had warned about the challenges of hitching from Wellington.  I got to the onramp and it was a hard scene.  But after sitting with it for a while, a man named Adam from two lanes over at a stoplight picked me up and lifted me out of that metropolis.  It was raining some but it did not dampen my spirits one bit. Besides they were in a drought and needed the rain.  After a couple of short rides, a North American couple picked me up in their traveling van and took me northward. 
     I spent that night under a big bridge by a beautiful river.  The next morning in a slight drizzle I made my way out to a little road that lead to the center of the north island.  I was on my way to a Maori plant class that started the next day.  While waiting for a ride, I noticed a prolific plum tree across the road.  I ate my fill, perhaps ten of them, and put another 30 in my pockets feeling the abundance of nature.  Soon my ride came.
    This ride was with Welby Barrett and felt very much like a pre-arranged meeting.   This white-haired 68-year-old Maori great-grandfather was a just the person I was hoping to meet.  In his own way he pointed out plants all along the way to Rotorua and shared who they were and what kind of medicine they provided.  He said that he had shared the plant knowledge with all his children and even his grandchildren (who numbered in the 30’s).  He was a round jolly man who seemed happy through and through.  He had the accent of the English and said he was descended from a man named Barrett who had owned whaling ships.  Some years back there had been a family reunion with English Barretts coming also and the total number attending were over 2000 people!  Wow, that’s quite a reunion.
     I truly felt lucky to have spent time with that man and took lots of notes.  He let me off in Rotorua and I stayed there a few hours catching up on email and buying food for the weekend.  Then I headed back out on the road and three more rides took me right to the forest lodge where I was to spend the weekend learning Maori medicine.  There were 14 students with half of them being Maori.  It was a delight to intersect there with a brother named Tyler.  We met in Asheville last year and planned on this intersection once we knew we were both coming to NZ.  He is there immersed in a 6-week herbal studies intensive. 
 
                                 Maori Herbal Class
 
     The weekend went by fast taught by a pakea (white person)  named Robert McGowan who had immersed himself in Maori healing ways over 30 years ago.  He had a good knowledge of the plants in the bush as well as the Maori culture.  I took away some good nuggets from our time.
     That weekend for me peaked my journey to NZ.  In my last week I hoped to integrate all I had learned in my several thousand km journey around the islands.  Fortunately, an angel in the class, Brita has a native plant nursery near by and offered to provide a homebase for me to ground for a few days.  And I did that, getting caught up on my notes and some on my emails.  I took a wonderful walk up into a forest of Kauri’s to say goodbye to them and had a wonderful evening hot spring soak with the infinite universe overhead.  There is nothing like feeling that home feeling while out in the world.  Thank you, Brita.
      From there I hitched my way toward Auckland stopping for a night with Zac, a Maori man who had picked me up earlier on my trip.  I had some time with his extended family learning about their history and visiting their Mauri (spiritual meeting house).  They dropped me off in the small town of Te Ahora (The Love) which boasts the only soda spring geyser in the world.   I sat and watched a couple rounds of that (every 30 minutes) and enjoyed drinking the bubbly water.  I restocked some on food, had some internet time and spent a couple of hours in the library reading plant books. 
     A series of four very kind rides took me a couple of hundred kilometers to a beautiful beach called Piha west of Auckland and I spent an idyllic night in the dunes beneath the moon.  In the morning I did a little coastal plant walk and yoga on the beach.  I was impressed by the amount of seaweed washed ashore and the cliffs that reminded me of the NW of the US.
     A friend who lives in NZ of my friend Chris who traveled with me in Africa, recommended that I stay at a place called Swanson Sanctuary outside of Auckland.  As soon as I made arrangements to go there, it seemed the universe gave me the green light to get there.  Two rides from the ocean and I was standing at the sanctuary being welcomed by a woman named Rose.  The place is hopefully the kind of place that will pop up all over the world.  It is a sweet retreat center that pays the bills by an idea called a gift economy.  A couple of dozen people are at the core of it and help to make it happen.  One of them, a kiwi named Frances, appeared and was all about plants and nature.  She owns about 70 hectares which she is planning to preserve as native forest and educate people about the importance of that.  As you can imagine we had a lot to share!
      We ventured for to the Auckland Botanical Gardens and had a memorable five hours there.  Finally I was able to taste the “fruit” of the podocarp—so Sweet and Yummy!  We had a number of memorable tastes that day.  They had one of the best kid’s garden areas I have ever seen and I enjoyed our time in the native forests.  Frances and I also enlivened a garden bed at the house with what I call the Forcinelli method—digging a hole, throwing in brush, and covering it with the dirt mixed with compost.  Made the bed look like a pregnant mother. I encouraged them to do that all over the land and have a goal of feeding themselves over the next year.
   The sanctuary was just what I needed to ground and integrate my trip to NZ.  I now venture back to the north of Australia for three weeks to see what it has to off.  More on that next time…
 
 

Report From Downunder
Journey Downunder Part II
March 2007
Leaving New Zealand was hard for me as I found many interesting appealing aspects of life there. In spite of the clear presence of the new world order, magic and wonder still ruled the land. I found the people from many walks of life engaging and kind. But I also felt the islandness of the place and I knew once I left that it would seem to me a small wonder on the planet. There are some huge challenges to overcome there (which I will elaborate on when I write out a full report) though I am hopeful when I think of that land.
Off to Brisbane
Returning to Australia was challenging for me but I knew it was such a big place that I needed to go deeper to better understand it. These were my feelings as I flew from Auckland the thousand miles to Brisbane. There I was hosted by a wonderful couple, Dawn and Peter, who have found a wonderful groove for themselves. They have a house full of books and worldly artifacts. Brisbane is in southern Queensland and is subtropical. Despite being in a drought it is still relatively green. Their backyard is a little jungle full of palms, flowers and birds. I was delighted to be there and had wonderful times getting to know these well-developed human beings.
On my first day there Dawn took me to the Botanical Gardens laid out with creative architecture and tropical plants of the world. When I got to the Australian Section I slowed down to try to take in its diversity (70% of AU’s 22,000 plants live in northeast AU). There was so much there I came back a couple of days later for another go and knew then I would need to come back to AU if for nothing more than to try and get to know better these oldest tropical beings on the earth.
The next day Peter took me on a memorable journey to a rainforest in the hills outside Brisbane. Nothing feeds my soul like time in old growth woods. Huge strangler figs dominated and many fungal friends appeared to delight us including beartooth, honeys, chanterelles and Amanitas. We saw a wallaby scurry by and I got to see my first kookaburra chilled out on a limb waiting for handouts. The birds and reptiles downunder really trip me out!
During my time in Brisbane Peter feed us good homemade food and played some wonderful folk and classic guitar. On my last day Dawn and I walked through her garden. She has even made a plant list much to my heart’s content.
Rainbow Country
From Brisbane I hitched a couple memorable rides down to Byron Bay to intersect with a rainbow brother, Marcus, author of the travelers’ companion, "Vagabond Globetrotting". He really made me feel welcome and made great efforts to look after me and hook me up. We shared stories and went swimming in Byron Bay with some of the most beautiful ocean water I have ever swam in. Then we went to Mulimbimbi Saturday Market full of Brothers and Sisters selling their wares and a soulful drum circle.
Then we headed inland to the rainbow temple. We were given a tour by an elder named Guy who has been there nearly thirty years building this hip retreat space. One of the highlights is a several story tall chakra temple. Another is a tunnel he is building under the center. It was so meditative to be under ground in this sound chamber listening to his vision of future labyrinths. Guy and I settled down to some wonderful irie sharing about how he had traveled the world eventually coming to there to settle and create this haven for travelers.
From there we journeyed to the famous center of hippydom, Nimbin. On the way we passed by majestic Mt. Warning, the enduring lava tube of an ancient volcano. I was complaining to Marcus that even in the homelands of Macadamia nuts (though 90% of them are grown in Hawaii) they sell for the same price as the US. Around us were plantations of macadamias. And as soon as I uttered the words, "Why aren’t there little stands from farmers selling them?" there appeared to our right one of those farmer’s stands. So we stopped and got both shelled and unshelled wonderful local nuts.
Evening was coming so we just drove through Nimbin. Just in that passing through I could feel the unique vibe of the place and that the rainbow caravan had touched down here. I looked forward to going deeper the next day. We stayed the night at a near by permaculture settlement caretaken by a man named Wolfgang. I spent the night in a refurbished train car. The next morning Wolfgang gave me a ride to Nimbin for the Sunday market. In addition to checking out the town, I hoped to have some time with a well-known bush tucker (wild food) expert named Koa. On the way into town I heard a rich account from Wolfgang of his philosophies towards permaculture as they compared to Mollison’s,
In Nimbin I truly felt I had come home—like a large established welcome home camp. Rusty at the Nimbin Environmental Center showered me with kindness and help. I toured the Cannabis Museum and walked about town feeling the vibes. I was so lucky to catch the once a month market which was sheer delight. In many ways it was a dreamlike scene. It takes place next to the rainbow community center near the center of town. Talented family took to the open mike to share songs with us. One person sold a wonderful array of horticultural plants from Hawaiian woodrose to yage to Psychotria. There were flower essence vendors, crafts of all kinds and many food stalls. I could not believe my eyes when I saw a man selling south Indian food. He called himself a Dosa Walla. He made organic Dosai with tasty fillings served on banana leaves. We talked a while sharing stories. I was in awe of his dedication.
The only missing piece was Koa. He did not appear but I was led to his landmate, Bodhi, who invited me to the land and said I would find Koa there. In the afternoon I hitched back to Wolfgang’s and Marcus took me out to where Koa lives. As evening came I approached his lean-to and there he was. He had a minor eye injury so had decided not to go to town that day. We sat in the dusk and got acquainted. Koa has a soft-spoken demeanor and deep convictions towards getting our family ready for the coming changes. He has made several DVD’s to give people confidence about the abundance in the bush. His website is: www.bushtucker.ws/
For the night I went back to the community house and set up a camp spot. This land is owned by the world-renowned John Seed. He and the half a dozen people I got to know over the next several days amazed me. The next morning Bodhi took me on a walk through the permaculture gardens. I was very impressed with the level to which they had developed plant guilds (communities). They had also made some beautiful cactus gardens. Much to our delight we discovered that we had mutual friends at Moonshadow, TN.
One brother I particularly bonded with is the local plant knowledge keeper there, Gareth. He has amassed a impressive library on plants, healing ways, and indigenous cultures. In addition, he has compiled many subject binders of articles along the same lines. He is of the same mold as a couple of contemporary plant heroes Dale Millard and Dan Madrone Nicholson. Gareth took me on a plant walk around this beautiful land surrounded by national park. In addition he arranged for another well-known bushtucker master, Peter Hardwick, to come for a visit.
On that day a small intimate circle of Koa, Peter, Gareth and myself played off each other for hours sharing stories on all sorts of topics from B12 to acorns to DMT in Acacias to the fallacies of reductionism. We talked about lots of plants and sampled different bush tucker including large steamed Banya Pine nuts (an Araucaria), Suillus mushrooms, and a Davidson plum cordial. We even eventually got out for a walk about the land. With these formidable people one can really feel the abundance of nature. I was touched beyond what words can tell.
Off to the Top End-Darwin
You can imagine how hard it was for me to leave the Nimbin region but I had been empowered by the prayers and donations of the circle to fly off to Darwin. As the saying goes, "Parting is such sweet sorrow". I felt I would come back in a few years to see how this back to the land movement was maturing.
In the morning I was kindly given a lift by John to the main road and four rides later I was in Brisbane. I caught a late night flight to Darwin arriving at 1:30 am, catching a shuttle to a hostel, and waking the next morning in a tropical zone about 12 degrees from the equator. I arrived at the end of the rainy monsoon season with it humid and full green. I could not imagine what this land was like after the coming 5 months of no rain. It was just before the tourist season but tourism was already gearing up in its ugly manifestations.
I befriended several people at the hostel and heard their stories. Each day I followed leads to get the most from my time there. Darwin has a colorful history which involves it being blasted to smithereens twice: First by the Japanese bombers during WW II for being a haven for US warships. Secondly, in 1974, from the power of Cyclone Tracy’s 200+ mph winds. I visited the museum and one of its highlights was a sound chamber which blasted a recording made during the cyclone—the sounds of a train from hell! Many died each time and the cyclone leveled most houses.
I visited the old botanical gardens taking in its lush tropical vibe. The whole area was a wonder to walk through with it coconut palms, so many kinds of palms and native Baob (Adansonia) and fruiting Noni trees. Rainbow colored parrots flew all about. I walked a neglected aboriginal plant walk but still gained some good knowledge nuggets. I also read a big sign of a man named Ian Fairweather. What a story! He headed out in 1952 from Darwin in a scrapyard made boat and somehow made it 400 miles to Timor. Famous as artist and adventurer, he seemed to walk that line of master and crazy man, I read with interest some of his translation of "The Drunken Buddha". Darwin is right on the coast and I enjoyed collecting shells (those not occupied by hermit crabs) . Swimming was discouraged due to the abundance of jellyfish. I visited three markets in the area each with their own charm full of Indonesian-Asian cuisine and local contemporary crafts. Darwin has a beautiful bay front and in the evenings I would watch huge fruit bats fly about. Australia also has an amazing diversity of different reptiles.
I often say to people that if you can only visit somewhere for a day it is still worth it. There are so many millions of impressions that come through experience that no story or picture can convey. One of the realizations I had was that Aborigines do not represent one culture. Prior to European colonization there were over 200 different languages spoken—now only 50 survive. There were groups of aboriginal people around the town. I would sit by them sometimes trying to feel their vibe. Though we were physically near we were worlds apart. These were the city dwellers often with plastic bottles of some sort of spirits in them. Try as I could, I was not able to connect. This brought up a lot of frustration for me and each of the leads to finding some sort of intermediary or other way to connect ended fruitless. It was as though there were three societies there—tourist, locals, and aborigines and their mixing was minimal. For example, I found one tourist group that offered a half day walk with native people. They wanted $88 per person and a minimum of three people. I was willing to do this. I put up signs around town to get two other people but nothing came from it and the company was not willing to budge any. There was a frustration in all that within myself and the situation.
Kakadu World Heritage Site
Eventually I decided to rent a car and headed several hours south to feel the land and to check out the famous Kakadu cave drawings. I am so glad I did though the journey took me beyond my edges.
My first stop was this little known hot spring a couple of hours south. I cruised into the outback in my little Hyundai. Flooding was present all around. Where I went and what I did was largely dictated by these annual floods. Few people knew much about these springs and as I headed towards them I crossed several precarious spots , but on I went eventually coming to a gate with a sign that said, "Spring closed due to flooding". Undeterred I packed a small bag, left a note on the car and hiked the remaining kilometers to the springs. The sun there is particularly penetrating so I used my yoga mat as a sunshield. I saw a number of kangaroos and a small herd of water buffaloes thundering off left me saying, "holy shit, holy shit". I later found out that water buffalo were introduced from Timor in the 1820’s and propagated to become among the largest wild herds in the world. I forded one thigh high deep stream with thoughts of crocodiles, water snakes and leeches. But decided to drop my stuff and go back for a plunge anyway.
Once at the campground I was so excited to have the place to myself. Each campsite had a raised platform and I picked one near the river. I ate some lunch and then heard a sound in the distance like a strong wind but it persisted. I realized a downpour was coming and so I grabbed my handydandy tarp and took shelter with my stuff. It rained steadily for over an hour and pools of water formed all around the platform. But I and my stuff were still quite dry in my little cave. I curled up and daydreamed drifting back to childhood memories of sitting under blankets and in tents during rainstorms.
Eventually it passed and I came out into a beautiful evening. I was taken in by the beauty of the forest and big white parrots with lime green flushes saying, "Uh-oh, Uh-oh." I tried to ignore their ominous calls. I was aware that it was likely the hot spring was submerged in the swollen Douglas River, but I wandered around hoping for the best. I took pictures of lots of amazing plants: Zamias, paperbarks, Acacias and many familiar weeds.
There was a wonderful sign welcoming us balanda (non-aboriginal people) to this sacred spring which Aborigines bring their daughters for puberty ceremonies. There were several areas off limits to outsiders. I followed the river a little ways and saw a small tributary coming in. I put my foot into it and glory be is was nice and hot. With nightfall I realized I had forgotten my flashlight but luckily the moon was gibbous. I followed the stream a little bit and it flowed from a big hot bilabong (a pool that endures through the dry season).
By moonlight I immersed myself in the hot water so vibrant and clean, My body tingled and I heard all sorts of sounds and thought I could see some images in the distance. I sang loudly to keep my courage and to let my presence be known. After I had had enough I left, promising to return in the morning.
As I made my way back to the platform I heard familiar sounds that unnerved me slightly—the buzzing of mossies. I soon realized I was caught in a catch-22. To keep away the mosquitoes I needed to burrito up in my tarp. But when I did, I felt like I was in a sauna. The nights there do not cool off and the mosquitoes do not stop coming.
So I compromised with the lower half of my body wrapped in the tarp and the top half covered in a sarong. The mosquitoes were not particularly fast or clever but their sheer numbers were daunting. I am sure I killed hundreds of them but they sucked right through my sarong. By first light I had been bit a couple hundred times. I tried to visualize them as reincarnated acupuncturists taking out my bad blood. I reflected on Doug Elliott’s telling of a Cherokee story of how the mosquito needed to suck blood after saving humanity. But honestly that morning I felt I had been molested.
Despite that it was a beautiful morning. I did some yoga and took some more pictures then got into the sacred waters. I could have been there all day for they largely restored me. But my time was short so I packed up, thanked the land, and headed off to the Kakadu National Park.
A couple of hours later my first stop in the park was the cultural center designed by the local people. I learned some history about the cultures here. On the entrance they wrote: "We tell you stories that have been told to us by our old people. They go on and on. The passing down of stories is our Bininj [local people] book. People from different clans have got different stories of their country. You can learn some of our stories as you walk through this display." Then I drove on to the ranger information center. They had a good little library which I did some research in and the ranger there kindly supplied me with a plant list of over 1500 species in the park. I have looked over it with delight several times now. She also told me that all the campgrounds in the area were closed due to flooding and that my best bet was to look for lodging in the outpost of Jabiru.
There was still some daylight left so I ventured into the amazing petroglyphs at the world heritage site. These drawings were on the walls of a majestic rock outcropping. I wandered among them until darkness came taking in their messages and meanings for us modern peoples. This was an area the aborigines came during the wet season for shelter and because of the abundance of food. I nibbled on a native turmeric relative there and was moved by the vibes of the place. The oldest remains there dated back 20,000 years, but amongst the 5000 sites in the park there is evidence of human presence for 50,000 years. Current thinking suggests that aboriginal people island-hopped to Australia 60,000 years ago when the ocean level was hundreds of feet lower. I was very impressed with the place.
With the dark I drove to the outpost town. I was not excited about the prospects of this place, knowing what I did. Namely, that as a great illustration of our modern dilemma—here in the middle of the world heritage site is a Uranium mine. This outpost was built to supply the workers.
I arrived about 8:00 and went to the two lodging options. Both were unacceptable to me culturally and economically. The cheapest options were campsites for over 25 dollars and anything else was over a hundred dollars. So I filled the car up with petrol and headed back out into the bush to see what nature was going to teach me that night. The moon glowed overhead and after a couple of deadends I decided to venture into one of the closed campgrounds. Two owls appeared before me on the road in and then a big gray snake slithered off to the left. Several signs warned about crocodiles. With those foreboding omens I knew I was in for a night. I parked the car in the deserted campground and looked around with my flashlight. Just ahead I heard a loud reptilian splash in a flooded area. "Whoa!" I said outloud. Throughout the night I could hear the croaking of the croc tribe not far off. "Hmm," I thought, "What to do about all this?" I decided to sleep in the car. Some mosquitoes made their way in also. Being in the car was not only hot but also stuffy. I tried to open a window and rig a tarp so it would let in fresh air and not mossies. This did not work and after an hour I decided to risk crocodiles and try sleeping wrapped in a tarp on a concrete picnic table. At least I could make a breathing hole and get fresh air. This also failed with my being drenched in sweat. Eventually I was broken down and humbled. I made my way back to the car and turned on the air conditioner for 10 minutes dehumidifying and cooling the car. Then I went off to sleep like a baby until three in the morning when I needed to do it again. That got me through the night. Ah, those humble lessons of being ill-prepared!
I was up again at first light, did some yoga up on the picnic table, then spent the next several hours on a couple of walks up to overlooks. (All the lower walks were flooded.) The first walk was spectacular with a nice view of the hill of cave drawings. There were so many amazing plants there—deep red flowering Grewellias, tasty fruiting passion vines, Eucalyptus growing our of cracks in the rock, I heard a little waterfall call to me. When I found it, there was this little dipping pool built for one.
The second walk took me high up onto this platform where I gained a wider perspective. To the east the Arnhem escarpment; south was the headwaters of the Alligator River, one of the biggest rivers in Au; to the west were the bushlands; and to the north were the floodplains leading to the coast. All around me was wooded, a diverse wonderland.
I started making my way back towards Darwin. On the way I visited the Litchfield National Park. I saw an amazing waterfall roaring down over a cave full of rare bats. I swam in an energized spring bursting forth and I stood in wonder before twenty foot termite mounds at sunset. I was not up for another night out in the wild, so I drove back to the hostel and slept very well that night.
The next day was my last in Darwin so I walked about the town taking it in, doing errands, and saying goodbye to the friends I had made. Late that night I caught a redeye to Sydney.
In Sydney I had a couple of relaxing days with friends and visited the Botanical Gardens. In the gardens I was blown out by the energy of a glass pyramid there. I learned the sordid history of European arrival as their first settlement occurred there in the gardens with seven ships of over 1000 people—700 of them convicts from twelve countries. Two-thirds of the local native people were dead within a year. It is a sad story not unlike the US history occurring around the same time.
Then I took an epic twenty-one hour flight to London (with a one hour refueling in Singapore) and had a couple of sunny, warm days there visiting friends and a spectacular day at Kew Gardens exploring some of the 300 acres I have not been to, as well as, time in my favorite haunts there.
And now I write this to you on a ten hour flight back to Turtle Island. This journey downunder provided lots of lessons learned, plant knowledge gained and an initial sense of the lands and cultures. I feel I will go back in about three years if the planes are still flying. Care to join me?

[The following article appeared July, 2007 in the Illinois Valley News]

“They aren’t quite ripe,” Frank Cook noted of the yellow plums filling a tree off the deck of the Siskiyou Project office in Takilma on Friday, July 20.

As a self-styled “thrivalist,” Cook pays particular attention to the plants and trees around him.

Site Evaluation of a piece of land in Asheville, NC for the practicum of the Permaculture Designer’s Certification with Chuck Marsh.

August, 2007

Introduction

I began this project just over a year ago and have spent two months of that time living on the site and observing the seasons and the life unfolding between the humans and the rest of nature. These two months were spread over the year so I was able to gain some larger perspectives by observing the change of seasons.

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Why go to Schumacher College?

I have been exploring for years alternative places of higher learning in consideration of furthering my formal knowledge. In the 90’s I looked at various naturopathic colleges, in 2000 I checked out the California Institute of Integral Studies. For various reasons these never came to fruition. In the nineties, a good friend David Minkow lent me a book by Satish Kumar called “Path Without Destination.” In that book Satish described an alternative college in England called Schumacher College started by the famous economist E.F. Schumacher (“Small is Beautiful”) where Satish is the Program Director.

Frank Cook
Holistic Science
Chrysalis One Essay
October 9, 2007

Intuitive

Building inner images to the point they come alive in my imagination is essential to my work and links me to the unfolding Collective (un)Conscious (Akashic Records). Within me mysteries and realizations dance about that have not been received through the tangible senses. Through practicing Goethean Techniques I am opening to the living expressions of a

Leaf

At one level it is wholeness unto itself,
at another it is part of a

greater whole

There are the crude (and at the same moment wonder-filled) aspects of the leaf blowing in the breeze, each unique, yet, staying within the parameters of all the leaves that make up the character of the plant. Leaves are

Transformers
of light
into sugars.

Before me

I
T S
C O
M P
O U
N D
L E
A F

…is made up of leaflets, each coming off a central stem

Ladder
a
climbing

Botanists have made a whole new language to describe the leaf—its shape
its texture
its means of attachment.

These terms are the bane of most students having to memorize them.
They are also beautiful eulogies,
poetic attempts
to tell us who we are meeting.

My
leaf is
Pinnately
compound
w/ eleven
glabrous,
lanceolate,
serrated
leaf-
let
s.

Organ-izing seems a lot like Goethe’s view that we need to build
an organ of perception.

A leaf is a finger.
We are young trees.

Anthropomorphism or Anthropodenial?

They (we) are intimately connected through a
fat, bud-studded

Stem

to the whole plant. Leaves grew from the stems.

There is a bone-like quality to this branch I have found on the ground. I thought I would need to look up to see a branch and now I see I only need to look down. That seems to be at the core of what I am being taught here. We can make plans but they must be adaptable to the process that unfolds as the journey is undertaken. I am being taught the dance of thinking/experiencing. Thinking is balanced by other modes of perception. For instance, acknowledging the scientific validity of feeling the bone-like qualities of this branch.

I take time to observe (simply that). I see knobby leaf scars opposite each other at the leaf node. The branch terminates with a meristematic bud filled with potential to express itself as petiole, leaflet, branch, pedicel, or flower depending on the needs of the moment. I notice there are different lengths of stem between nodes. “Why?” I wonder. Each length tells a story about the year it lived. I know the age of this fallen branch if I know it only puts out one set of leaves a year. Does it? I leave the answer to another day. Perhaps this, too, will be revealed to me with enough reflection.

The stems channel together into bigger branched energetic streams to be
Tree

The first plants of my inner garden were trees. They are so clearly our elders. With this tree I sit in a good spot for observation and reflection. My brain downloads what it knows about this genus from previous experiences, stories and book knowledge. The knowledge that was so intensely pursued categorizing the world is now available almost instantaneously via computer. Now what? What does that accumulation of observation and categorization mean to us? What were the visions of those who came before us? Perhaps the tree can tell me if I slowdown enough to listen. And along with these thoughts I notice beautiful reflections of the late day sunlight filtering through.
These words, formed with care and love for the tree being, do not fully capture its wholeness, nor its place in the larger whole of Gaia. For this we need symbol and allusion, prompting the mind to release its grip on stable thought and to jump off the cliff into

Poetry…

Ode to Ode to Ash Trees Ode to

Waving in wind
or still beneath sky
Firmly rooted in myco-earth
Yes, firm yet, feminine
Keeping my faith
in dappled lichen dress,
sensuous reaching limbs

The forest loves you so much
Animals come and
play with you.

Matronly pigeon landing, not gracefully,
on you.
Fly boldly through your
outer compounds.

Scurrying squirrels
Running between you
and masculine oak neighbors

Who are you, Fraxinus,
cousin to the olive tree?
Who are you through/to us?

Your oneness clearly unfolding
We come for insights
sitting below
Wondering/Knowing
Content with these words.

Above all, feeling

Awe

AHMEN

Reflective

Stephan Harding formed our chrysalis by defining holistic science with Jung’s four ways humans relate to the world: Thinking/Feeling and Sensing/Intuiting. He defined these and compared practitioners of western science with those of holistic science in terms of those four ways. He encouraged us to pursue a balance to these areas and that the zone within the whole of them was “real grace” and a “revelation”.
Brian Goodwin introduced a number of concepts to us. He described Chaos Theory as a form of magic, wonderfully illustrated in the example of weather patterns. He encouraged us to maintain a respect for western science and to learn its lexicon. Their tools give us a limited meaning and are part of a greater whole. There is a dance of the ethos and logos going on best represented in storytelling. We reviewed the hermeneutic approach to understanding. Brian shared how Hermes is the god of interpretation. Through hermeneutics we can learn the languages of Nature.
Our second chrysalis will focus on the wisdom and knowledge of the Living Earth thr0ugh the stories of Brian and Stephan.

Henri Bortoft, historian, physicist and philosopher was our teacher the rest of the week. His main focus was to massage our brains and present another perspective on some of the foundation figures in western science. The first area of focus was on part/whole relations. We have been lulled into relying on our physical senses to identify “reality” for us. This form of habitual thinking is actually downstream of the dynamic living beingness of life. He illustrated this well with a story of sitting along a river and seeing the water flow by. With his inner eye he could imagine the source of the river flowing out and along its course eventually getting to him and then flowing on. Applying this to living organisms we see there is a dynamic state of unfolding that precedes our awareness of it.
People have been taught to believe that the whole comes from assembling the parts. This normal way (the counterfeit whole) of thinking cheats us from truly feeling the presence of an authentic whole. The authentic whole has a presence. I am reminded of a passage out of Robert Pirsig’s classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” in which he describes the dismantling of a motorcycle into its separate parts and then reassembling it again. He explores how a running motorcycle is more than the sum of its parts; there is a synergy from these combined parts that allows the motorcycle to run and maneuver about. This is even more apparent in living beings.
Henri described how Goethe provided a way through gentle empiricism to participate in the wisdom of Nature. This is achieved by developing a receptive mode of observation that is “non-verbal, holistic, non-linear, and intuitive.” (pg 291) Henri writes that this approach “emphasizes the sensory and perceptual instead of the rational…it is based on taking in rather than manipulating, the environment.” (pg 291) Within life the part carries with it the whole. The more parts present, the more the presence of the whole can be felt
Through Henri’s telling of history, I developed a deeper understanding as to why Goethe was so discouraged to read Newton’s description of color. Newton’s approach was to convert the unique qualities of each color into uniform mathematical “equivalents” and then to leave color behind and go on to manipulate these quantities into his theory. As Henri writes, “something that can be measured replaced the phenomenon of color, and in this way color as color was eliminated from the scientific account of the world.” (pg 293 )
The introduction of logic to scientific inquiry in the 1700’s created a distinction between qualities that can be quantified and those that cannot. This led to the exclusion of these latter qualities and a deadening of dynamic being into lifeless objects described by abstract concepts.
Henri helped us to see that the scientific history we have been told is very skewed and limited. He recommended whenever possible returning to the primary texts of the scientists and trying to get a sense of the work in its historical context. He credited Goethe as being the first historian of western science.
Henri noted that understanding cannot be reduced to logic. Meaning cannot be grasped like an object. Marshall McLuhan also came to these realizations in his studies of communication introducing phrases such as “I seem to be a Verb” and “The meaning is the message.” After further inquiry, he came to see “The meaning is the massage.”
When something comes into manifestation its form is just one out of many possibilities. If we can train ourselves to look into that realm of potentiality, we can gain insights beyond what can be ascertained from only considering the manifested aspects. Goethe encourages us to dwell in the phenomenon. The distinctions between the different forms manifested point back to the unity from which they came. When Henri spoke of shifting our focus from outcomes to the act of distinguishing I felt a volcano erupting in my psyche!
It seems to me that one of the big stumbling blocks to embracing this way of being is our attempts to live in the construct of linear time which creates a past and future as distinct from the now. This is an illusion through limited perception and though useful can be unhealthy if taken as absolute.
An example came to me in a lecture by Jon Rae the other evening where he spoke about greenhouse gases (a complex array of different kinds of gases that come from many natural processes in Gaia and trap heat from the sun inside her body, giving her a fever). The percentages of these gases are reduced to a common denominator of CO2 which is then calculated and used as a measuring stick over time. By doing this we have been cut off from the unique qualities of these gases and there is a narrowing of focus as to how to reduce CO2 emissions. This creates a tendency to try and solve the “problem” by looking at sources of CO2 emissions rather than a deeper approach of seeing the many facets of the atmosphere and our connection to it. Thus we see people embracing carbon neutrality as a way to solve our environmental problems. Satish Kumar wrote recently, “Focusing only on carbon emissions without protecting ecosystems is simply treating the symptoms rather than the causes of global warming.”
We were encouraged to think how a plant lives. Goethe’s approach was to observe the subtle details of a plant (the organizing ideas), then to go upstream from those physical senses into the imagination and meld with the plant. By repeating this over and over he was able to gain insights not immediately apparent. My work with this has me confronting the laziness of my brain/mind in noting detail. Henri encouraged us to not be onlookers but to place ourselves into the distinguishing mode of the plant. He worded beautifully the sense of wholeness at the family level of plants by imploring us to note the family resemblance of plants that permeates through the distinctions.
Our language needs a re-awakened lexicon from both the past (such as: ether, aura, empathy, dis-ease, and co-incidence) as well as emerging terms from our unique era (such as grok, vibe, I and I and google).
When we first delve into the phenomenon we bring with us prejudices and limited observation. Henri implored us to not be discouraged by this. It is expected and not a problem. It is a beginning, but we should not stop there. With each round of observation we are able to dispel or at least suspend more of our biases and limited habitual thinking. Eventually we step through our limitations into holism, into the dynamic-ness of the being presencing itself.
In our last couple of days Henri introduced Hermeneutics explaining that this came out of the monks’ reflections on the meanings of the bible as words from God. Henri encouraged us to “let the book you are reading teach you how to read it.” We could see how reading is a dynamic unfolding of meaning/understanding like a plant growing in its environment. As in a paragraph, the more sentences one reads the more the presence of the paragraph can be felt. When something you read affects you that is writing living through you.
The author writing the work creates the urtext which expresses the multiplicities out of its unity each time it is read. This is not something one needs to rush through or become quick to label or understand. A book expresses itself from the text as it is read; hence, the con-text. How do you feel when something is expressed out of context? Henri implored us to “read between the lines” for full understanding. I was reminded of a good lesson I learned at a conference many years ago. Our teacher asked us to look at the intention behind the words and tone when a person speaks to us, to go upstream and understand from where a person was speaking.
A warning from Henri stays with me in which he spoke about how scientists have intuitive flashes (epiphanies) that spark them towards great contributions to science. But after these great insights the attempts to convey them to others make them vulnerable to co-optation and in some cases flip them to their opposite meaning. This is memorably expressed in Orwell’s “1984”. In this way I am confronted with the fading memories of Henri’s inspired lectures and have only my notes to recount the aha’s of our time together.
From that week with Henri most of us were quite shifted, it seemed, in the world we were viewing. Thus it was perfect for Craig Holdrege to appear with his bag of exercises and deepen our awareness of Nature. He grounded our shifted awareness in practical experience as we learned the techniques of Goethean Science. We were asked to think like a plant grows.
Though seemingly straightforward I found the experiences of visualizing a leaf, then a branch to be very helpful in understanding Goethe’s delicate empiricism. In the afternoon exercises, I felt myself actually able to swim upstream some, letting the images in my mind come alive. Further, Craig’s writings have proven to be very accessible and revealing. His description of encountering skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus) was helpful for me to see how he went about going deeper.
In the commentary that followed his narrative I gained another important understanding of why Goethe encourages us to go back and forth between encounter with the plant and then integration time. Stephen Buhner also shares this view, “Your relationship with plants deepens through the years… taking a walk, as you pass the plant in a field, a deeper knowledge of the plant and its purposes, its uses in medicine, will flash into your mind.” (pg 166)
Craig puts it well, “When you go back to characteristics you have studied before, they may suddenly express the unity you have discovered through another part. You have an ‘aha’ experience in which you recognize connections between what previously appeared to be separate facts.” (pg 45)
From Craig I relearned a lesson I know from cooking and medicine making that simple is not easy. He recounted the lessons from his teacher, Jochen Bockemehl’s, after their long walks together in which Bockemehl would spend hours drawing out the details from his memory. I found this humbling for it showed the importance of showing up to do the work of, as Goethe says, building the organ of perception. I am grateful for Craig taking the time to cross the ocean and coming to share these approaches of melding with the wisdom of Nature.
After these two very focused weeks with individual teachers, our third week represented a big change in that we had three different teachers during the week. We also flipped from all male teachers to all female teachers.
Francoise Wemelsfelder, animal behaviorist, came to teach for two days. I was impressed with her as a human being but felt concerned about the sacrifices she’s made to make changes within the system. Her focus as a scientist is on animal welfare taking a unique approach of trying to understand the animal’s point of view. Current animal behavior research is dominated by the systems approach reducing animals to biochemical reactions firing off synapses.
She has done a wonderful job shifting consciousness from animals viewed as objects to the more compassionate level of acknowledging their being-ness. Her emphasis on not “fragmenting animals” allows us to engage them and accept the mystery. She quoted the philosopher Martin Buber about the importance of seeing beings in a subjective “I and thou” approach rather than “I and it”.
As a scientist within the dominant paradigm, Francoise has to be very careful with her use of words. I had a discussion with her about this and cautioned about allowing powerful terms that describe the reality to be co-opted or made extinct, terms that western science has discredited such as: ether, spirit, astrology, feelings, placebo, anecdotal evidence, intuition, doctrine of signatures and subjectivity among many others.
She spoke of how she redirected critiques that her form of science is wrought with anthropomorphism. Her answers have been that what has been called anthropomorphism are just mistakes in recognition due to a lack of skill in communicating with animals. She felt this can be overcome by better training. She emphasized that “fallibility in the skills doesn’t justify the status quo of invisibility” around the issue of animals having feelings. I pointed out that my research had turned up the term anthropodenial: the tendency of humans to deny common traits with other species. Another point she made is that if all that was going on in observing animals was anthropomorphism then the studies would turn up with random results, which they do not.
Francoise has modified a statistical package called Free Choice Profiling, a scientifically validated approach, in which groups of observers can watch the body language of animals and write their reactions to them. Through extensive studies she has shown high statistical correlation around the reactions to the animals observed. We spent time practicing this method by observing animals she has filmed.
We discussed research she is doing in collaboration with Stephan about the quality of landscapes. I mentioned that this may be a good approach to finally having scientific support for the efficacies of organic food and herbal medicine.
In the middle of the week we had the day with astrologer Carmen Maraschin. She calculated each of our birth charts and took us through an informative slide show relating astrology to post-Newtonian physics and opened us up its symbolism and archetypes.
Prior to 1700, astrology was valued along side astronomy. On a recent trip to Chelsea Physic Gardens in London one sign noted that the “fanciful theory” the Doctrine of Signatures had been “denounced in 1650”. This view that the form of plants can indicate it influences in the human body aligns well with Goethe’s views. Efforts need to be made to reinstate the Doctrine of Signatures as a valid means of assessing potential food and medicine.
Carmen described the basics of how the charts work and set up times with each of us to discuss our personal charts. My current impression of astrology is that I feel a lot of mystery and questions around it. I look forward to exploring this path more deeply.
In the last part of the week, mythologist Jules Cashford came to share images and interpretations of ancient artifacts. Her presence was magical and her teachings came from a place of deep knowing. She shared with us stories of Gaia, “the last goddess of the west.”
We learned that we are collectively between myths and Jules posed the question, “The old gods are dead or dying, who will be the new?” She encouraged us to “make room for imagination to grow within us.” She warned us not to “take myth only literally, for then we lose its symbol and it can become dangerous.” Through her eloquent speaking I could see that dualism is life in time. I felt more courage to develop my imagination and open to Goethe’s delicate empiricism to where “empirical observation finally ceases, inner beholdings of what develops begins” (Craig pg 50).
Jules extolled that “imagination will bring us back into life.” Her teachings were transmitted to us at many levels and I am thankful for the work she does.

Integrative

All these teachers shared alternative ways of looking at the world that reach beyond the limitations of western science. This holistic science of qualities rests on the many facets of Goethe’s delicate empiricism. Learning to recognize Henri’s authentic wholes within li