As of late, I’ve been REALLY enjoying my time in the woods, visiting 2-3 times a day in some cases.  In addition to my regular trips mountain biking and performing trail maintenance, I’ve also been detailing my hikes by foraging for mushrooms with new friends from the West PA Mushroom Club and advancing my herbal identification skills with Rosemary Gladstar’s Science and Art of Herbalism class paired with a local herbalist for hands-on identification in our native region.  I can’t recommend looking outside yourself for new perspective, enough!

On a recent trip with my partner in crime to California (which you might remember from photos posted to my facebook or instagram pages), I found this lovely little herbal book at Bart’s books in Ojai, CA. One of the things it helped me to appreciate is how different each herbalist takes their relationship with the plants around us – myself included.