who is it?

a rare windfall this spring for someone in need 

Pedicularis is elusive, magical,
not to be harvested casually, 

I am so happy!

to share their beauty with you here

oh hi its Alison...  a 38 year old mother of an almost eight year old boy, my Solomon... I am a bit uncivilized in a way that makes me so relieved and happy, i am always seeking deeper layers about our being here in these forms... i am an animist, if i was political i'd be an anarchist. being in wild water is my first medicine. Next is Love, mmm, and then yoga... now I am a few years into Chinese Medical school.. like any of you who is reading this. wouldn't it be nice to have the time and energy to really get to know each other and hang? I am starting to fall in love with Chinese medicine too. 

to survive the desert of soulless memorization in windowless rooms with urban noises clogging my spirit, I steep myself in nature when I can... go out of my mind and slow down... get into waaaarm spring water.. when I can!  really one day i want to hone my senses of the unseen, to feel the energy lacing through everything and also get some serious de qi arrival. i think everything is magic, i have begun to learn how to weave plants into baskets...!

please let me introduce you, over there to the left, to Pedicularis densiflora - wood betony - shot through with Trametes versicolor - turkey tail mushrooms. other lives that I am bewitched by - friends of mine :) and teachers


my last name is Wood, my paternal family are plant people, with sawmills, who tapped maple trees and grew ginseng and had a native plant nursery and grew their food... i always had wooden bushels of blueberries coming in with my grandfather, i still can't stomach $5.99 for a handful cased in plastic... my mother line was Palkiewicz, Poland, and I love the color red and taste of straight vodka and the sound of Slavik languages is a lullaby and those people grew plants, and worked hard jobs and played music and somewhere in there was bootlegging and a printing press. i tell my son I'm a selkie and he gets mad at me because now he's old enough to suspect i'm not telling the truth but young enough that he can't be sure... i did swim before i walked, i do feel like a seal...