Wild Remedies is Now Available!

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There’s a unique kind of joy that comes from wildcrafting. You get to spend time outside with plant friends, feeling the sunshine on your face and listening to the pollinators foraging alongside you.

Carrying your harvest into the kitchen, you make food and medicine with your own hands, nourishing yourself and the people you love. As each season unfolds and you get to know the plants and the place where you live more deeply, your gratitude deepens as well.

Wildcrafting has brought a joyful richness to my life and I am excited to share that with you!

My co-author, Emily Han, and I have spent years creating this book for you. From writing and editing to recipe development and photography and illustrations, this is a book stitched together with love for the natural world.

Here’s what’s inside…

Introduction to Wild Remedies - Your Invitation

This book is your invitation to live a deeply joyful and powerfully connected life. A life that feels more vibrant, in which your senses are attuned to the rhythm of the seasons and you recognize the interdependence of all things.

Too often the alternative health industry is focused on selling you the next wellness fad rather than actually empowering you to find it within yourself. The amount of products, supplements and even herbs that promise to dramatically change your life is absolutely dizzying.

Wild Remedies is about finding joy and wellness within you by inspiring you to learn about the natural world around you. 
We wrote the book based on the Wild Remedies Ideals: 

Journal prompts and exercises throughout Wild Remedies show you how you can strengthen these ideals within yourself.

With current events of this novel pandemic virus, this book is more relevant than ever.

Witnessing the environmental destruction and challenges we face is understandably overwhelming. It’s common to feel helpless, wondering how we could possibly do anything to make a meaningful impact. It is hard to know how to get started. Many proposed solutions leave us feeling unsatisfied or even suspicious.

We were once told that health would come in a pill, and experts offer contradictory advice that can spin us in circles and fill us with uncertainty.

We wrote this book as one small but powerful tool to use in responding to problems facing us today.

While we acknowledge the troubled state of the world we live in, this invitation isn’t about fear. Nor is it about suffering or taking anything away. Instead we invite you to add practices and tools to your life so you can live more deeply and richly. And by doing so, you will participate in a movement to transform our relationships with the earth and with each other.

Wild Remedies: Part 1

At its core, this book will help reawaken your sense of wonder in the natural world and strengthen your reciprocal relationships within it.

Wild Remedies is an action guide to becoming deeply connected to the world around you. Through this book you will learn how to ethically gather local plants, whether you live in an urban, suburban, or rural environment. Even if you can’t forage for wild plants where you live, we offer alternative ways to interact with and heal from nature.

Throughout this book, we will give you the tools you need to get started. We also provide practical and inspiring ideas so you can share what you learn in these pages with your community.

We live in a world in which a zillion different things pull us in all directions. Immersing yourself in the natural rhythms of the earth is a powerful step. We also know that little by little is the most effective way to move forward. Going slowly allows you to more firmly and deeply introduce new traditions and habits into your life.

In Part I: Creating Your Foundation, we share the knowledge you will need to get started with gathering and making medicine from your local plants. We show you that it begins simply and easily—by getting to know where you live.

You will find out how getting to know plants is a lot like getting to know people, and how ethical wildcrafting is strongly rooted not only in gathering but also in tending plants and their ecosystems.

Throughout these chapters, you’ll find community stories that highlight inspiring ways people are working with plant medicine. These stories also include tips for sharing your love of plants with your own community.

Wild Remedies: Plant Chapters

Parts II through VI feature chapters on two dozen plants. You’ll learn about their medicinal gifts, how to identify and harvest them, and many simple recipes so you can bring these plants into your life.

We chose these plants based on factors such as widespread availability and our own relationships with them. We have arranged them seasonally, following a general guideline for temperate regions.

You may find that some of these plants don’t live in your area or that our seasonal listings don’t match up to yours. That’s okay! An integral part of this book is tuning in to the natural rhythms where you live.

My Favorite Parts of Wild Remedies

Creating Wild Remedies with Emily has been one of the most fun and rewarding projects of my life. So many parts of this book are deeply special to me personally. I love that many of the perennial plants I photographed are plants that I know well and see practically every day. I loved getting quotes from friends (and Tori Amos!) to highlight the plant chapters.

The Community Stories are an important part of the book for me - for these we interviewed people who are doing inspiring things with plants. We hope that readers will be inspired to do similar projects and activities in their own communities. Little by little we can create the world we want together!

More than anything I love seeing how Emily and I combined our talents and visions to create something so much bigger than either of us could have done on our own.

If I were to guess reader favorites…

I think the photography and especially the illustrations will be loved. The illustrations are hand painted watercolors by botanical illustrator Ganna Tiulkina. In addition to plant illustrations we also feature insects and other creatures that have a relationship with each plant. These are gorgeous! But they are also botanically accurate and will be a beautiful guide to getting to know plants.

Cons of Wild Remedies

It might seem strange to list possibly negative aspects of this book, but I want people to be happy with their purchase. This book isn’t for everyone and the following may help you decide if it’s right for you. 

Based on feedback I received for my first book, Alchemy of Herbs, here are some cons that I can imagine seeing in reviews….

I know there are some people out there who would prefer more words and less beauty. In this case this book will be frustrating as it is filled with images. This is the book we wanted to create! But if you prefer mostly words in your books, then this one will annoy you.

This book is big and heavy. While it has lots of botanical ID resources, you probably won’t want to take it with you on a backpacking trip. The size of this book means it is better suited to use at home and short foraging trips.

There are two dozen plants in this book. I know some people will want more. We put as many plants in the book as we possibly could (based on space in regards to other foundational chapters and design of the book.) It wasn’t our intention to create a bioregional field guide that included ALL the plants. Instead we are using two dozen plants to inspire you in the many ways you can get to know the world around you and bring plants into your life. The idea is that this is an action guide that helps you develop skills that can then ripple out to more and more plants in your particular area.

While this book contains lots of facts and information, the real treasure of the book is the philosophy behind it. We call this book an action guide because the purpose isn’t solely to provide facts that readers can passively memorize. Instead it’s about learning to live with nature and all the joy and wonder that is found there.

Giveaway!

To celebrate the publishing of this book, I am giving away ten autographed copies!

I have a request about this giveaway, however.

I know that many people’s lives are being turned upside down right now. Many people are suddenly without jobs and uncertain about the future.

If you want Wild Remedies and you CAN afford it, please buy it. We really appreciate your support!

If you are feeling “meh” about the book, but would take anything free, please don’t enter this giveaway.

If you want Wild Remedies and you can’t afford it, due to any circumstances, please enter the giveaway!

Here’s How to Enter the Wild Remedies Giveaway

In the comments below, write what you are most excited about for this book! (There’s no need to share financial hardship, simply what you are looking forward to.)

The ten winners will be randomly chosen on Friday, April 10th at 8am Pacific time. Michele, my assistant, will reply to comments and compile addresses for me to ship out to.

Fine Print: No purchase is necessary. Void where prohibited by law. Due to high shipping costs, this giveaway is only for US residents.

Thank you for your comments! 

This giveaway is now over. 

Winners have been notified below.

Wild Remedies can be purchased wherever books are sold. 

Be sure to get your bonuses at: WildRemediesBook.com

Another option to get this book in your hands is to request that your local library order it in. 

Thank you for all of your support and enthusiasm!

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