It has been a while since i have blogged. Lots of life changes, moved to Superior Arizona near where i was born and raised, opened a cafe, began forging new relationships and work in a new community and began remodeling an old adobe house to call home. I reflect back on Mizuta Mashide, the 17th century Japanese Poet and samurai, wrote the following haiku: " Since my house burned down/ I now own a better view/of the rising moon."

This haiku hits close to how i see my old and new worlds, their realities and the gifts of understanding how change is constant and to surrender to the flow of change is healing. There are moments where I feel I have woken up on the embankment of a torrid rushing river wondering what happened and how I arrived, looking up the river only to see a place in the past too hard to get too and too overwhelming to think about, when these feelings rush upon me I only have to look up towards the sky or reach towards nature and plants to ground myself again. For it is the plants and nature that have become my new reality.

I left the streets of San Francisco, the cable cars, the people, the wonderful smells, the art, the social awareness and my dear friends to be closer to the plants. It is through them that I find the answers to my hard and painful questions. It is in their new buds and decaying flowers that life has meaning and when the light of a brilliant sunset shines through new leaves and creeps upon and shadows the colored earth, i am breathless and I know as Dolly once wrote "wildflowers don't care where they grow".

I have been studying plant medicine since before i left San Francisco. Boyce Thompson Arboretum which is 3 miles from my home has been a gentle place for me to hike, reflect, learn and understand our relationship to plants and their intrinsic value to our future and especially in healing our bodies away from the disease and environmental apathy.

I am preparing my home for a dear friend Eda Zevala Lopez a Peruvian Medicine Woman and Amazon Rain forest Activist who will be spending a few weeks with me here in Superior AZ, teaching me more about plant medicine, performing healing ceremonies with local Native American Tribes, conducting regional lectures and workshops on plant medicine, her culture and work with indigenous people. She invited me last year to Peru but I got caught up in opening the new business and relocating to AZ. As things settle here in AZ Eda and I will be planning an extended trip for me to her village in Tarapoto Peru where her and her brother founded a healing center. Here I will continue my studies of plant medicine.

change the one constant in life.....blessings to you my friends!