Book Review: Mirrors in the Earth by Asia Suler
“The world isn’t ending—it’s just beginning. The rigid perspectives that led us to this point in history are dissolving, and the Earth-led way of perpetual regeneration is taking hold again. If we’re willing to let go of what we think we know and embrace the possibilities of what might be coming, we can align ourselves with the New Earth that is arising.” ~Asia Suler
We recently returned to the land in California to celebrate the season of autumn; both with our friends, they like a good Halloween party, and with the land. It was too hot to work up here in July and now that it’s October, we hope that the weather will be more aimable for us humans as we embark upon the next phase of fire recovery—taming the wild to make a few cultivated spaces for our homes, infrastructure, patios, and gardens. To complete the permaculture design plan I created last fall, tie the three THOWs together with a patio, and truly live here again.
This is no small task, for the mountain has grown wild in our absence and new plants have arrived for us to contend with. Plants like Yerba Santa, who are allies and medicine for the land after a fire, they call it mountain balm after all, but also prolific in their generation. They will cover every square inch of your land if left unattended and after eight weeks in Chicago, these beautiful plants are now growing up to the THOWs themselves, all over our water pressure system, several hose lines, and the driveway. I love this plant and yet it’s simply too powerful to be allowed to grow near our infrastructure. Finding this balance with nature is key to the lessons here—this land has allowed us to come home, but it is also still healing. What medicine stays and what can I ask to move on so that we too might live here?
On the car ride across the country from Chicago to Santa Cruz, I read the book, Mirrors in the Earth, by Asia Suler. I discovered Suler this time last year, taking an online plant medicine course of hers to work with the new plants that I’m encountering on the mountain now that the land has been so utterly changed by the fire and the subsequent tree remediation done by the power company. Suler is a natural healer, gifted herbalist, and founder of One Willow Apothecaries, and her course not only gave me a foundation from which to get to know these plants, but also a way to understand how we humans are a part of the web of life, not outside of it. In addition, Suler awakened me to both sacred beekeepers and the importance of ancestral work. Both techniques have come in handy recently, especially with regards to working with my elders as they begin the later phase of their lives. Recalling and understanding those who went before them creates a positive space for aging rather than regrets and sadness.
As I worked yesterday, pulling up the Yerba Santa from under the THOW that is to be my office, I recalled a chapter from her book titled, “Young Forests.” In a nutshell, this chapter focuses on the history of the loss of trees in Appalachia and how in her heart, Suler mourns for the forest that once was. She also must contend with the pioneer species on her land, those plants that moved in after the trauma of clearcutting those mountains. She writes, “Pioneer species are the sacred volunteers of the plant world. As the first trailblazers to move into a shocked or compromised ecosystem, these plants are experts at weathering hard times and brining life back after devastation. Make no mistake, these volunteers are a hardy crowd. Land that has been disturbed, whether by human activity or natural forces, is often left with very thin or poor-quality soil, which lacks the nutrients needed to sustain many forms of life. When the ancient forests of Appalachia were logged, we lost thousands of years of accumulated topsoil. While old-growth forests need this kind of rich soil to survive, pioneer species are able to thrive on very little. With adaptations, like long earth-stabilizing root systems, the ability to fix nitrogen, and the capacity to reproduce asexually, pioneer plants can bring barren places back to life. By reducing runoff, anchoring the earth, and increasing biomass, over time, these species completely refurbish the soil, literally rebuilding the ecosystem from the ground up.”
This is exactly what Yerba Santa has done for our land post-fire. It has rebuilt the soil, added life, provided habitat for the small animals now thriving here since all the house cats left the neighborhood, and granted us privacy after PG&E slaughtered the oaks along the road, exposing us to everyone within sight. When these plants first arrived, I was grateful for their tea, yet unaware that they could grow twelve feet high and form a literal woody forest of their own. This is a blessing along the road and in places between our houses as well as the property lines, but not so good if it’s growing around your pipes and under your THOW. A forest of Yerba Santa isn’t welcome everywhere, but it is a magical force that Suler’s book reminded me to love. As I pulled hundreds of them up from the ground yesterday, I honored their amazing form of reproduction, they do it via their roots, as well as their medicine and all their gifts. Then I informed them that they aren’t needed by the infrastructure. They’re too powerful for our dwellings. If we’re to live together, we will need to find the balance. The plants let go from their places in the ground willingly, but they were clear that it would take much of my effort to guide them into something a bit more civilized.
Suler goes on in her essay on “Young Forests” to compare us humans to both the young forests themselves, places where ancient beauty once existed and the renewal after the devastation is just getting started, as well as the pioneer plants—sacred volunteers who bring just the right medicine to this time. What that medicine is, depends on the person, Suler doesn’t assume she has all the answers, rather she believes that only we can know what our medicine is and the truest way to find this out is to spend time in nature and listen to what it has to say.
I personally have had this sense of the land speaking to me since the day I met it in 2007. I felt it again on the shores of Lake Michigan and in the forests of the Upper Peninsula. Always, there is a dialogue in the field of life, that unseen network of hunches, synchronicities, and imaginations. We are never truly alone, and that is a key component of Mirrors in the Earth as well, that our modern heartache is caused by the sense that we’re alone and abandoned, when nothing is further from the truth. We have separated ourselves from nature and as a result, sense that something is very wrong. We’ve mistakenly assumed that wrongness is inherently within us as humans. This simply isn’t true. We are children of the Earth, created by nature just as the flowers, whales, redwoods, chestnuts, and Yerba Santa. We belong here, no matter what our religions have told us about original sin. It is the belief that we are broken that led us to break the world…and it will be our understanding that we are a part of the world that will help us figure out how to heal ourselves and the world around us. There’s no progress in hating humanity, instead the path lies in forgiveness and understanding. We were never abandoned; we just went inside. The time has come to go outside and live with nature. The smallest patch of land will reveal the medicine in all.
Mirrors in the Earth is a gift, plain and simple. It’s a guidebook from self-hate to humility and joy. We are all little pieces of the puzzle, medicine for these times, unique and important. Not necessarily grand; the solution isn’t a free ride on the back of a savior and none of us are called to be the lone hero. These times call for all of us to share our medicine as a network of life. The solution is a web of possibilities not a phalanx guided by a king. We long for the king, hell we even long for the apocalypse, because it is easier to believe in someone else or in ultimate destruction than it is to believe in our own goodness and the power of many. If you’re looking to find your medicine, I recommend this book, and all the books published by North Atlantic Books. From Charles Eisenstein to Chenoa Egawa, they have a list that will ignite the spark within you that is longing for relationship with the Earth and all beings—rock, twig, fish, and human.
For more information about Asia Suler, her book, and her medicine, check out her website, One Willow Apothecaries.