Desert Tortoise Botanicals ~ Plant Medicine Wilderness Retreat

 

White Mountain, AZ Photo by Jon Mancuso

If you are attending the Herbal Resurgence Rendezvous with me near Flagstaff, AZ this September 19 - 22nd or just happen to be in Arizona or New Mexico and love plants, I want to let you know about another event that will be happening just afterwards.  

For some people that attend the Rendezvous, this is a vacation and they don't want the fun or learning to end.  So John Slattery, the Sonoran Herbalist of Desert Tortoise Botanicals, has created an event nearby to complement the Rendezvous. 

John Slattery, the Sonoran Herbalist

John's Plant Medicine Wilderness Retreat is September 25 - 28th in the White Mountains near Alpine, Arizona. 

How I became a home herbalist for (almost) free

Me around ’95 smoking cigars and chugging beer.  Motorcycle driving, crazy-woman phase to come a little later.

In 2000 I decided to change my life because of an extended illness that I thought was going to kill me, inside I felt dead already.   Before I knew anything about anything, I had enough of my life and decided to get out of debt, move to the country, be healthy, and grow vegetables.  I had no idea how to do that. 

I started simple; reading homesteading books an old guy in the neighborhood gave me and magazines like Countryside and Mother Earth News .  Other books came as gifts just at the right time, drizzled to me slowly in perfect sequence and with perfect timing.  One of the most crucial books was “Miracle of Mindfulness” by Thich Nhat Hahn from my dear friend Lola, though she and my friend Mary Anne loaned and gave me so many more over the years.  These books and magazines fired me up about the mind/ body connection and using diet for health.    An herbalist wrote in to Countryside, and I thought “THAT’s what I want to be, an herbalist!”  I also thought about a massage therapist, acupuncturist or anything in the healing arts.   But again, I had no idea how I could possibly do that.