Post #120 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to publish the first of the award-winning contest entries – Honorable Mentions – for our Memoir Writing Contest — Aprils Past, April Memories category. This Honorable Mention goes to Shondeya Betari for her memoir vignette Herb School. Congratulations Shondeya.
HERB SCHOOL
by Shondeya Betari
April 6th, 1986. A life-changing day. The day I embarked on my decade-long dream of becoming an herbalist. I had dabbled in herbology by reading books and working in health food stores, but that just left me aching for some hands-on experiences. I was delighted to find the California School of Herbal Studies (CSHS as it was commonly called) a few years earlier in 1982, very nearly in my backyard after I moved from Costa Mesa, California, to Windsor in Northern California. This fine April morning in 1986, I was starting a four-month intensive course in Herbal Studies at the Herb School in Forestville, California. It was and still is one of the premier herbal colleges in the country. I was excited beyond belief this opening day! I had been working directly toward this goal, banking as much money as I could all through the year leading up to it, so that I could attend the 4-month course full time.
The previous year when I heard that the school was offering two half-scholarship work-trades, I signed up and was chosen to work in the gardens at the school. I had my own housecleaning business and could set my hours so this worked out well for me. I was able to fit in gardening hours whenever I could. I earned half of my tuition working in the gardens for the spring and summer of 1985. Without this help I would not have been able to attend the course, so I felt incredibly grateful. I worked with the resident head gardener, Tim Blakely, who would also be one of my teachers the following year. Tim Blakely was a down to earth, solidly built young man, with dark curly hair, a full beard and a twinkle in his eyes. He was in his late twenties and incredibly passionate about herbs. He loved teaching others about the myriad miraculous properties and uses of all the amazing plants that graced this area of the earth and especially the ones that were blessed to call CSHS home. I felt very lucky to have this head start into the gardening aspect of the herbal course. As I happily weeded away the hours, Tim taught me a little about the habitat, growing habits, properties and soil preferences of the fifty five plus herbs that were cultivated and surrounded the hillsides and valley floor around the school.
This course was designed to cover all aspects of Herbology, with the use of medicinal herbs being the focal point. We were going to be learning how to identify wild herbs, harvest them in their native habitat (termed wildcrafting), prepare herbs as teas, tinctures, poultices, salves, ointments, natural cosmetics, as well as cooking up some tasty wild foods. In addition to a through knowledge of western herbs, the course would cover Chinese Herbology, Flower Essences, Shamanism, Earth Ceremony and Ritual, Planning and Teaching an Herb Class, Running an Herb Business, Clinical Herbology, Wild Plant Identification, Botany, Herb Gardening and Legal Herbalism.
The land the school called home was an 80-acre piece of property, called Emerald Valley. That was a good name for it, as it shone like an jewel and felt very remote and special like a rare gem. It was nestled into a lush Bay, Oak, Madrone, Manzanita and Douglas fir forest in the rural community of Forestville; about 18 miles west of Santa Rosa, the largest city in Sonoma County. Once you turned off of Gravenstein Highway and headed down the winding dirt roadway leading to Emerald Valley, you immediately entered into the magic of this land, where people cherished the earth and honored a very ancient tradition of healing. This was such a sacred time in my life, and I was fit almost to bursting that fine April morning, as I joined my class of 27 fellow students and we started our journey together. We embarked on learning about the world of herbs, and all manner of living and healing practices in honoring, communing, cultivating and gathering these sacred and special medicinal plants.
The school was staffed and owned jointly by six teachers that lived on site and taught at the school. Each of these teachers had expertise in a different specialty. The founder, Rosemary Gladstar, a petite brunette with gypsy blood, could easily be called the grandmother of modern herbology. If we would have just had access to these six teachers it would have been a more than adequate, high-quality education in herbology, but we were blessed with a new visiting guest teacher almost every week. We got to learn from some of the best teachers in the country that showed up at our school as eager to teach us, as we were to learn. The classroom was simply called The Barn, though it was really an old converted house, painted a bright barn red. This rustic structure had been turned into the school’s classroom, which included a kitchen laboratory, library, and celebration room where parties and potlucks were held. The Barn was the perfect place to absorb our knowledge of herbs. It was earthy and homey, and held many years of previous herbal lessons that felt like they permeated the very air and walls of our classroom.
We were blessed with a jackpot of well-known herbalists that came to teach us that year: David Hoffman, Amanda McQuade, Herbal Ed Smith, Christopher Hobbs, Cascade Anderson-Geller, Jane Bothwell, James and Mindy Green, Michael Tierra, and several more.
Our first week of classes started out with Ed Smith, the founder and creator of a very successful herbal tincture product line, called Herb Pharm. As all of us took our places that first morning, mostly sitting cross-legged on the thread bare carpet of The Barn the magic began. I looked across the sea of anticipatory faces, and never dreamed how incredibly close I would become to these people in just a few short weeks and months ahead. Spending time with a group of young people that were as passionate about herbs as I was became a heaven-on-earth experience for me. I only knew one person in the room, and that was Terra Mizwa. I had met her the previous year at a week-long herbal retreat at Heartwood, a healing retreat center further north in Humboldt County. She had come out to California from Minneapolis for the week-long course with Rosemary Gladstar. For both of us, it was our first in-depth look at the world of medicinal herbs. We immediately became fast friends, and continued to write each other all through the next year when Terra returned to Minnesota. She decided soon after the week at Heartwood to move out to California and start her new life by enrolling for studies at CSHS, just as I had, making her dream a reality as well.
It was Terra’s birthday that opening day, and little did we know that we would become life-long best friends that birthday when she turned 29. I have known Terra for 26 years now, and she is such a dear and precious friend of my heart. I met another life-long friend during the course, though I have not stayed as connected to him as I have to Terra. It is funny how at the time you don’t know the depth you will share with new people in your life, and what they will come to mean to you, and the contributions they will make to your life. One day they are strangers and then next they are an integral and important part of your life. These four months, as I look back now, were the highlight of my life. I didn’t know while I was living it that it would be the highlight, though I clearly recognized it as a special opportunity and time of my life. The experiences that year contained the fulfillment of all my core values. I can see now as a life coach, why it was truly such a holy time of my life. The experiences in Herb School met many of my needs and connected me powerfully with the future direction for my life. It fulfilled my values and love of community, learning, personal growth, beauty, connection, and being in nature.
We had incredible adventures together that year. The highlight of the course for me was the wilderness camping trips we made to gather and learn the plants of the regions and counties near by. I particularly remember our three-day trip to Snow Mountain Wilderness Area in Mendocino County where we camped, soaked at Crab-Tree Hot Springs, and had a grand time with our teacher and guide, Christopher Hobbs. The day after we arrived and had set up camp, Christopher led our expedition on a hike to a magical high altitude meadow. We frolicked in this meadow, and collected some higher elevation plants like Arnica, and Skullcap. We added these to the Black Walnut Hulls, and St. John’s Wort we had collected at a lower elevation the day before. The meadow was awash in spring wildflowers: Hound’s tooth, Shooting Stars, Fairy Lantern’s and many more. We confined our harvesting of plants to areas that had an abundance to offer, and would not be depleted by our wildcrafting. We were taught to always “ask permission” of the Grandmother plants and offer a gift to the earth in the area that we were planning to harvest in. There was an abundance of Arnica and Skullcap that day, so those were the only plants that we collected. Besides the day my son was born, I rate this time as the most magical time to date in my 29-year old life.
We were a group of 20 to 30-year old hippies, with a few older folks to balance out all our wild, young energy. We got in the habit of skinny dipping, or bathing in the hot springs naked whenever we found ourselves out in these remote regions. It just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do, and I cherished having this level of trust and intimacy with a group of people; which amazingly, was there from the beginning. We were a tribe. We were passionate about the earth. We were activists, peace loving readers of Mother Earth News, pot smoking, back to the landers; the quintessential tree-huggers and we knew we could make a difference through our earth-centered studies and practices.
In the evenings of our camping trips we would prepare gourmet meals, and sit by the campfire sharing stories, laughing, and singing our repertoire of common CSHS songs. A couple of songs that have stuck with me, and that I remember the most were, “Give Yourself to Love” by Kate Wolf, and “Humble Yourself,” though I don’t remember who the creator of that song was. We had song sheets, and singing was a very sweet part of our coming together as a group. Daniel Pinny, Rosemary’s husband, was the leader of these camping and backpacking expeditions and the guitarist for all our group song fests. As we packed up our camp on the last day, we gathered one last time on a ridge to sing “Fly Like an Eagle” as we held hands and gave thanks to the earth for her beauty and boundless gifts. Right after we finished the song, we had a visitation by a Golden Eagle that swooped out of the east as if on cue, to grace us with its presence. We were all so touched by this sighting, and we lingered there in silence, offering up our quiet prayers. We ended our last day in the mountains with a visit to Crab Tree Hot Springs; a natural springs just bubbling out of the Rice Fork of the Eel River. Once again we all stripped down naked, and lolled around the hot springs for a good part of the day, before heading back to our homes in Sonoma County. Oh those were the days.
As I sit here in Central Oregon where I now live, remembering these joyful times and memories, I am awash in the feelings of excitement, anticipation, and joy that filled my days that year at the California School of Herbal Studies. The training stood me in good stead, as it was just a year later that Rosemary Gladstar, (the founder of the school) wished to sell her little herb shop in the town of Sebastopol, not far from the school, and I was blessed to be the one that bought the business from her. I had the business for nine years, and those too were a continuation of the best years of my life, that started that 6th day of April in Emerald Valley. I can’t speak highly enough of the journey life takes you on when you dare to follow your bliss. By all accounts I had neither the money, time, or experience to make Herb School and later owning Rosemary’s Garden a reality. I was a single mom, recently divorced, while supporting myself with a housecleaning business that I really disliked. My life was already jam packed and I didn’t know how to make my dreams a reality. But I went forward with as much trust as I could muster, and allowed the beneficent force of God and Spirit to show me the way.
The strings that were pulled and gifts that showed up startled and surprised me to my core. It felt as if mountains were moved to make room for my dreams to happen, and they were fulfilled in a way that was even better than what I had been able to envision. The best part was that they came with an amazing ease, and absence of struggle. I highly recommend opening up to your highest dreams and purpose. Miraculous things happen when you dare to commit to living the life of your dreams.
Shondeya Betari © 2011
