Wild Mare Herbs

In recent years my passion has been growing medical herbs such as Yarrow, Elderberry, Echinacea, St. John’s Wart, and more. doing garden walks and teaching others how to grow, harvest, and use the herbs they grow.

How did you come up with the name “wild mare herbs?” she asked.

My mind wondered as I searched for a quick and easy way to tell her. My mind went quickly to
“The Satus” and my time there. As I sat across the road watching a small wild herd of horses one in particular caught my eye. A mare. I caught her gaze just as she had caught mine, neither of us willing to be the first to look away. I wondered about her story and wondered if she was wondering about mine. Was she indeed wild, or a horse that someone had put out, no longer willing or able to care for her? Either way, she seemed to meld into the landscape. She didn’t come closer but tossed her head as I left my vehicle, camera in hand to get a shot. As I leaned against my truck, dodging the passing trucks, I watched as she watched. I wondered if she was thinking about her person or if she had indeed belonged to someone. Or perhaps she was thinking about people in general, and then I wondered what her experience with humans had been. After my brain was willing to settle, I accepted that I truly didn’t know her story. I had no way of knowing if being wild was all she had ever known. I was struck by the fact that she wasn’t willing to approach me, but neither was she eager to be the first to move away from the moment we were sharing. I snapped several more photos, and with a long line of vehicles passing between us, as I looked again, the moment was gone, and so was she.

I have traveled to Satus Pass since I was a young girl in college. My love for horses has been lifelong and for me, there has always been magic there.

Years before I had talked to a local photographer who had photographed and written about the Satus herds, he was a soil science guy studying the grasses that the herds lived on. I was intrigued by the natural ability of the wild horses to know what food what medicine was and what poison was growing among them. There was such wisdom that I knew I did not have, one that I knew we as humans were losing.

My world was disrupted in 2020 when I fell ill with Covid and was hospitalized.  Even after being released from the hospital the road to recovery was long and often hopeless. I was left to figure it out. and that I did.

I had always been charmed by herbs. Dabbled in them in the garden and supplementing with them on occasion. I had enough of an interest that I read a lot about them over the years but never fully commented on their use. Until…..

As I began climbing out of the Covid hole, “everything” I read led me to use herbs in my healing journey. I committed to it as little else seemed to help.  My lungs were wrecked, and my immune compromised, with the little energy I could muster, I began an in-depth education. Today, I grow almost everything I use. I make salves and tinctures and infused oils and…… I have taken courses, read books, and sat among those in the know.

It quickly became a passion of mine to support anyone who wanted to learn with me how to grow, how to use, and how to make use of these things that God has given to assist in our well-being. I feel as called to herbal healing as I do to horses…

So why “wild mare”? When I needed to come up with a bio for a talk I was doing, I recalled that mare… and found myself thinking, no matter how she got there, what her circumstances for being there were, she was confident in her space, she looked at home. She was thriving there, aware of her surroundings and I wanted that for myself, needed that for myself.  I knew we both had a story on how we got here, but what mattered most was that we were here and that all the crazy things that happened to get us to this place only mattered in the fact that here we were…. Growing among the wild things…..  and having the audacity to thrive.