WE ARE PREPARING THE GROUND

Our Mission

To meet the existential challenges of our times, The School of Forest Medicine is preparing the ground for a more healthy understanding of our human role within the community of life on Earth. As we develop relationships with plants and other nonhuman beings, we cultivate spaces which inspire the emergence of new stories of collective and individual flourishing. We intimately engage with ecological intelligence in order to welcome new patterns of thinking and feeling that will inform the awakening of regenerative lifeways. In these ways we work to support the thriving of individual humans and the Earth system as a whole.

Scott Kloos—ceremonialist, author, wildcrafter, plant medicine maker and practitioner, animist, singer of plant songs, and aspiring integral ecologist—guides The School of Forest Medicine and Cascadia Folk Medicine and is author of Pacific Northwest Medicinal Plants: Identify, Harvest, and Use 120 Wild Herbs for Health and Wellness. Through his writing and his facilitation of co-created spaces of learning and healing, he explores various ways of working with plants and their medicine, relationships with our nonhuman kin, and ecologically integral modes of engaging with and thinking with the community of life.

In addition to his many years of ongoing solo and communal study within dirt-floored and green-walled groves of learning, he completed the 1999 Herbal Apprenticeship Program at the Herb Pharm in Williams, OR, and in 2000, he attended a nine-month Community Herbalist Training Program with Christopher Hobbs. He spent seven years studying the human psyche (his own and others) in Paul Levy’s Awakening in the Dream group. In 2009, he studied Traditional Western Herbalism: An Intuitive and Energetic Approach with Matthew Wood in Portland, OR, and in 2018 he earned a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. He is an Associate Member of the American Herbalist’s Guild.

Samantha Tanis has led a life in deep connection to Earth Medicine from a young age. Visions of Forest wanderings and Animal encounters in her dreamspace, began a subconscious journey into expanding her awareness to the beyond Human. She started consciously working with Plants upon exploring the backcountry when she arrived in Oregon, and then began to gain further understanding of their wisdom through the Elderberry School of Botanical Medicine and The School of Forest Medicine. Continuing to walk the path of Plant Medicine discovery, she traveled to Peru, studied with the Paititi Institute, immersed herself into exploring the Medicinal Plants and Fungi of the Pacific Northwest, and deepened her connection to the dirt through the Ancestral Skills Gathering communities. Along with Scott Kloos, Samantha is an intentional wildcrafter, harvester and Medicine maker for Cascadia Folk Medicine, guided by Plant communion, reciprocity, and regenerative practices. As co-facilitator for the Reciprocal Illumination course and the annual High Desert Odyssey with The School of Forest Medicine, she helps hold a grounding space for participants. You may also find her in the Forest offering an Intentional Hair Cutting experience, calling in and/or releasing energies from within and beyond. With great humility and gratitude, she humbly walks these lands singing to the Trees and the Ancient Ones.

We recognize that we as humans are integral parts of Earth and of Wild Nature, that which gives birth to all.

We honor the wisdom of the living Earth and understand that this sacred knowledge permeates all of existence.

We honor the ways that more-than-human beings and elemental forces convey this wisdom and understand that by opening our perceptions beyond our rational minds we make ourselves available to receive this wisdom.

We recognize plants and other intelligent nonhuman beings as teachers, allies, and guides. As embodiments of archetypal wisdom, we welcome the ways that they accentuate who we are and help sing us into existence, and through practices of embodied animistic inquiry, we cultivate and participate in spaces of mutual learning as we reciprocally illuminate each other.

We understand that, without healthy and properly functioning ecosystems, it is not possible for us to live happy and healthy lives. Until we humbly acknowledge our role as humans and respect the myriad relationships that make our lives possible, we will continue to degrade the foundational bio-systems upon which all life depends.

We acknowledge that, without recognizing our inherent mutuality, we will never truly know who we are. Knowing this we accept our role as People of the Alder supporting the renewal and regeneration of ecologically integral cultures as we work to prepare the ground for the generations that will be.