𓃔 Sheep Fever, Conifers and Terrance McKenna all under the same roof.
Destination Distillation Part 1 of 6 | 2024 Distillation Reports from Coast to Coast
An astro-herbalist I know makes small batch tree medicine working with conifers, infusing their spirit into Ormus and Spagyric preparations that are beyond me. These herbal preparations, when wielded as metaphysical tools, have caused a ripple of impact in my being and in my community standing the test of time in addressing our trauma informed states and psychosomatic stress responses with the grounding and clarifying energy of these trees. She shares that after 550 years of life, the Ringing Cedar (aka Siberian Pine) starts making a pleasant humming sound which is a sign that the tree is ready to share its gathered energy. It’s no wonder they hum with vitality. These coveted trees are growing for all those years while living in the Siberian taiga, which is said to be one of the ecologically purest areas of the world while they’ve also been accumulating solar & cosmic light energy through their needle leaves for over five centuries!
Wild-harvested Siberian cedar nuts (Siberian pine nuts) are said to be the most nutritious and medicinally valuable cedar nuts in the world.
This notion of maturation points is essential when gathering, storing and processing information from the tree’s surroundings over generations; light, sound, wind, fire, water etc. Inspired, I was led to study the seasonal shift in North America in 2024 from spring into summer from the lens of copper alembic steam & hydro distillation amidst varying ecosystems of conifers. This ago old alchemical practice of distillation I have been an avid student of encapsulates not only the aforementioned but also the volatility of the plant transformed into essential oils swimming in cellular plant water, aka hydrosols; a trip for the olfactory system and a safe and accessible way to experience the healing properties of trees. Because this practice at the still calls for… stillness.. it also lends to intimate and restorative hangs with new and longtime friends I planned to visit in my travels, gathering around conductive copper ignited by fire and tended by our presence.
Late May I packed up my cargo van with my provisions for a 6 week 5k mile journey from coast to coast; starting in Appalachia (Western North Carolina) and ending in Sonora (Southern Arizona). Additionally, I packed a contractor bag of sheep’s wool from a shearing I was present at on my friend’s homestead recently to busy my hands and satiate my obsession with sheep, along with my 10 liter copper alembic still and all the associated tools and materials to bring distillation onto the road for the first time. I embarked on a rainy Sunday heading West, Colorado bound for my first of many runs with the still. I had spent some time phoning friends and mapping out a constellation of stars on the map that would expand outside of my typical deer tracks around the country and while at the time of embarking on this road trip I was not sure exactly what my subject matter would be I held a lot of trust of the constellation I was exploring, the fine folks who would be hosting me and so I left space to turn to the land to inspire what would find its way into the still.
After long days in the van with a lot of time to think and unwind from my life as a gardener, a community member and an entrepreneur back East I arrived to the southern Rockies on the Western Slope of Colorado to visit with my dear friend Kelly Moody of the Groundshots Podcast. Freshly moved in at the time she was starting an artist residency at the infamous Elsewhere Studios in Paonia, CO. You may remember Kelly and I dug deep in conversation on the podcast a few years ago while we both were situated for a moment in Asheville, North Carolina on neighboring homesteads during lockdown, where we honed in on plant tending across ecologies, artistic expression and nomadic entrepreneurship. And here we were — distilling together yet again - a reverent practice we experimented with in Appalachia with Tulsi, Lemon Balm, Creosote and more and have continued over the years wherever our paths cross.
During my visit with Kelly Moody at Elsewhere, we gathered Utah and One-Seed Juniper as well as Piñon Pine for distillation, dug wild Valerian root for oil and tincture, and submerged some wild Rose in Mescal to capture the seasonal moment. My dreams of baby sheep and plant alchemy came to fruition on this visit with the guest appearance of newborn Whimsy, who hobbled on a sprained foot around us in deep curiosity and dependency during our day long distillations.
We co-parented her by bottle feeding raw jersey cow milk, loving up on her and many times I buried my face into her freshly curled and perfumed lanolin fur until she regained enough strength to join her flock.
I have been updated since my visit to learn that she has indeed assimilated and even then chose to follow her human who had been nurturing her through her injury at birth. Last fall she passed away due suddenly and will be missed by those of us who were graced with her pure presence.
In the tradition of seasonal medicine interweaving bioregional glimpses, the Juniper hydrosol we distilled turned out unique to time and place, reflecting the heat and intensity of this desert landscape meeting the high Rocky Mountains. Juniper distills with a certain sweetness in this climate and as her steam was condensed back into liquid drop by drop I was elated at her regulated pulse. It is ideal to fine tune each element in this alchemical process to discharge distillate at a steady heart rate. Can’t always achieve it based on the plant, the weather, the elements being ever so slightly out of wack… but when you get it, ohhh the gettin’s good!
The Pinyon Pine hydrosol was wildly aromatic, making a rich and buttery complement to a precious yet short lived morning coffee ritual I took up, married effortlessly with raw milk, local honey and Siberian Cedar Ormus. While Juniper has a regular rotation in my still, most commonly Juniperus californica, Pinyon was indeed my favorite and the most sensory rich of my tour and I simply could not get enough of it. I have been savoring delicious drops of Monica’s Pinyon Pineal Spagyric and enjoying pine nuts from New Mexico from time to time but never have I ever danced in the still with this epic tree spirit. I place Pinyon in the same category as Clary Sage, Rose Geranium, Sweetgrass and Creosote when it comes to the weight and the sensation these herbs carry when entering my senses. There is a heaviness that lingers and these plants in particular lend a fatty somewhat buttery coating to the mucous membrane. I attribute it to the resin alive in these plants and the depths of their abilities to clean and cleanse, thus penetrating deep into my being.
Our fingertips were resinous with sap for days and nostrils flaring wide open to invite potent whiffs of freshly scratched Sweet Cicely and Valerian roots. All in all I feel my senses were very tantalized by this drop in with Kelly and my spirits lifted from our shared time and conversations. Honoring the age old tradition of folk medicine making we meet again in yet another biodiverse region, and we walk this good medicine road together.
As a traveler my bones grow weary at times and I have witnessed in myself where I start to compromise out of convenience when I am not so grounded. However, I will share that traveling does indeed ground me, it is more so my relationship to stress and digestion that I have to regulate to enrich my experiences on the road. I have found that trees ground me, deepen my breath, clear excess energy and keep my detox pathways more open so that I can better digest life, especially on the go. Whether aroma-therapeutically drenching my face and body with hydrosol, sipping on a Hydration MerTini formulated with Juniper distillate from my line of elixir concentrates The MerTails or soaking up a bath laden with freshly plucked needles - I drink in the medicine that is tree. I stand tall like tree. I remember my roots like tree.
Next stop - Idaho for a hot spring dip and a drop in with my friends at Greenfield Water Solutions.
Enjoy some sweet and raw captures from my time in Paonia below on sheep time, indulging in all the raw dairy treats, real talk about herbalism online and a morning’s worth of a wild rose harvest we steeped in mezcal that I am still slowly sipping on to this day.