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Walk with me. Don't forget your
basket. The air this morning at Hazelbrand is brisk; the fog over Eva’s Pond is hanging in luminous strands. And watch
your step! Every plant under your shoe is important; each one is part of our web and part of our story. The chickweed ahead
is going into our salad, and the violet blossoms and nettles in the shaded, weed-infested perennial bed will be brewed for
our tea. For the soap we are going to make today, we will gather pine needles and rosemary stems and dig some roots. The chickweed
and violets and nettles will probably end up in the soap too. We don't create boundaries between what is food and what is
medicine.
In fact, the whole of the land -- the garden plants, the weeds, the trees, the wind, the sun, the constant bird
song, and the life of the river, are all part of the life force that is at the heart of Hazelbrand, and indirectly a part
of the soap we make here. It is the medicine that instinctively wells up from this land. Some we gather with our hands, some
with our hearts. In one way or another, they will all end up in our soap, and on our table, and become us. We feel renewed
by this sacred, constant pulse of life, a circle too big and too beautiful to describe with words. The best way we know to
describe our dance with God is to offer you the work of our hands.
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