It is sad that the first thing we learn about plants as children is often “No!” We learn that nature is dangerous, that wild plants can poison us and that we shouldn’t put them in our mouths. We learn that a few dozen plants such as carrots, potatoes, and culinary herbs are exceptions to the rule, and for most people that’s where it stops.

It is only in the mass movement of caring by many people, not the ponderous deliberations of the degreed, that care for the Earth will return to our species. Thinking will never restore caring. No matter how elegant the theory, the territory must still be entered and experienced. It is deeply ironic that one of the most powerful antibiotics Alexand

Oh, I understand! You were being a bridge. Well, that’s nice, bridges are important. But you know, the only problem with being a bridge is that you, yourself, never get to cross over. —Nan DeGrove

We must begin to develop the consciousness that everything has equal rights because existence itself is equal. In other words, we are all here: trees, people, snakes, alike. We must realize that even tiny insects in the South American jungle know how to make plastic, for instance; they have simply chosen not to cover the Earth with it. —Alice Walke

For those of us who were taught, and came to accept, that the Universe is a machine, the journey back to wild water is a long one. We find our way one step at a time.

I think that many adults, driven by something they do not understand, are being called to fill those holes in themselves. They are beginning to “come to their senses.” I meet them at herbal conferences, in tea rooms, and in bookstores. And though they may think they are crazy, they sometimes tell me (often in whispers) that once they were sick and

Even when schoolyard landscapes invest heavily in drip-irrigated, low-maintenance landscaping, the composition of their shrubbery remains cut off from qualities of the nearest natural habitats. In fact, such overly manicured, formal designs are not habitats at all, in the sense that other life-forms—wildflower, swallow, hawk moth, gecko—might settl

To what does the soul turn that has no therapists to visit? It takes its troubles to the trees, to the riverbank, to an animal companion, on an aimless walk through the city streets, a long watch of the night sky. Just stare out the window or boil water for a cup of tea. We breathe, expand, and let go, and something comes in from somewhere. —James

There is sometimes a porcelain whiteness to the skin of Caucasians that is delicate and soft. Life shines through that skin like a candle flame through the delicate onion skin of a lantern. But her skin was pale, as if never touched by the sun, as if it lived in darkness and in such isolation that some essential life had been taken out of it. It se