The Druid’s Garden Summer 2025 Newsletter

Blessings of the summer solstice and high summer to all in the Northern Hemisphere. And blessings of deep winter to all in the Southern Hemisphere.

Here in Western Pennsylvania, we’ve been finally blessed with a rainy and warm summer, which is such a balm after so many summers of dry heat and drought.  The land is so rich, happy, lush and abundant–it is such a balm to my spirit.  I am happy to share my quarterly newsletter today, starting with the big news–my new book coming out in late October!  I also share artwork and other wonderful things.

The Big news: Eco-Spirituality for the 21^st Century – New Book Releasing at Samhain, 2025!

I’m delighted to share that my newest book, Eco-Spirituality for the 21^st Century is being released on October 28^th, 2025.  The International release is January 28th, 2026 (and preorder links should already be available in your country!)  For those in the USA, here are preorder links:

Preorder at: Barnes and Noble (USA)

Preorder at Bookshop (USA, connected to local booksellers)

I wanted to take some time in this newsletter to talk about this book and how it came to be and to give you some insights into the content of the book!

This book offers a new vision for nature spirituality by drawing upon both ancient, ancestral connections and visioning human-nature-spirit connections for a brighter future. We recognize that if humanity is to survive and thrive in the coming decades, we need to re-envision our entire approach to human life. Eco-Spiritualtiy offers an in-depth guide for seven principles—what we call the 7R’s—for re-envisioning humans’ relationship with the living earth. Our book offers a radical expansion to what is considered traditional nature spirituality, offering insights not only on ceremonies, practices, and spiritual cosmology but also in nature awareness, community building, creative expression, and more. Through exploring human-nature-spirit connections in these seven themes we offer new spiritual seekers and seasoned practitioners a roadmap for a 21st century nature spirituality through bard, ovate, and druid frameworks. And in doing so, we offer a hopeful vision for a better world. Here is a brief overview of each of the chapters:

• Chapter 1: Reconnection. Reconnecting to the earth, ourselves, and our communities in a deep, meaningful, and lasting way.
• Chapter 2: Respect. Developing deep gratitude practices that honor and respect nature.
• Chapter 3: Rewilding. Recognizing that we are part of nature, we belong to nature, and working to re-align ourselves with wild spaces, places, and the wilderness within us.
• Chapter 4: Regeneration. Recognizing the damage that humans have caused and offering both physical and metaphysical practices for healing that damage; empowering readers to be a force of healing and good.
• Chapter 5: Resilience. Cultivating mindsets, practices, and spiritual tools that allow for quick adaptation to a radically changing world.
• Chapter 6: Reenchantment. Recognizing the enchantment and magic within nature and the world around us.
• Chapter 7: ReVisioning. Recognizing the power of storytelling and visioning in order to create a world where all life can thrive.

Many of us are longing for deep and meaningful connection with each other, our ecosystem, and the world around us.  Eco-Spirituality for the 21^st Century offers practices that create a brighter vision of the world, a vision in which humans have repaired and explored a more balanced interaction with the living earth, a vision that offers sacred spirituality rooted in the wisdom of our ancestors, and a vision that creates a world of balance for future generations.

How did this book come to be? Five years ago, I met Nate Summers and we began discussions about writing a book that used nature spirituality as a framework to rewrite human civilization. This was going to be a book that neither of us could write alone because it required a very wide range of knowledge and skillsets. For years, we had long conversations every two weeks talking about our own respective experiences—mine as a permaculture practitioner, druid, land healer, herbalist, wild food forager, and nature artist, and his as a  bushcraft, wilderness survival and nature skills instructor, martial artist, rewilder and druid.  We recognized that modern Western civilization isn’t working for most of us anymore.  It’s not working for the rest of life on our planet, and everyone—human and non-human alike—and we’ve got to find new ways of interacting, living, and experiencing this beautiful planet.  So we decided to create a roadmap for how to get there!

Frameworks in the Book

To create a better present and future, we can exploring, rebuilding, and strengthening our relationship to ourselves and the natural world around us.  In our book, we took seven themes and expanded the three paths of the druid tradition to explore each of the seven themes. I’ll now share a snippet of the way this looks through the theme of Rewilding.  Rewilding is the dual practices of letting the landscape return to a more healthy and abundant place of wildness and also in recognizing our own inherent wildness—we are part of the land and are animals of the land too!

The Ovate Path: Nature Awareness and Connection.  In Eco-Spirituality, ovate practices focus on building our relationship with the world around us, which includes establishing and deepening baseline ecological knowledge, learning to use nature for our own needs, and recognizing ourselves as a force of good in nature. The book offers a range of methods, many of which have been passed down and preserved in the wilderness survival communities, to deepen our relationship with nature.  Rewilding as an ovate includes rewilding our minds and bodies through embracing natural rhythms, embracing our own inner wildness, and exploration and play.  Rewilding our landscapes can include creating more space for nature to return—even in more suburban and urban environments–and protecting wilderness areas.

The Druid Path: Ceremonies, Cosmology, and Inner Work. In our framework, the druid path focuses on the world of spirit, which includes cultivating an inner life through connection to nature: work with nature spirits, meditation, gratitude and offering practices, as well as animist cosmologies that help us reframe the world as one that is enchanted, alive, and magically responsive. We didn’t want to write a stuffy book full of scripted rituals but rather a book of intuitive, wild, and primal ceremonies—the kind of book that someone who is curious about nature spirituality could pick up and feel competent to use, but also a book that even seasoned practitioners could really enjoy and deepen their  practices.  Thus, part of what we’ve done in this teaching nature magic in a way that is intuitive, wild, and much less formal—but not less effective.  Thus, we can take the idea of ceremony and show how to build intuitive, expressive, and enjoyable ceremonies rooted in your ecosystem and in the living earth.

Rewilding ceremony is all about going into nature and connecting to the Genus Loci, the spirits of place, and cultivating intuitive, unscripted ceremonies in nature.  This can also include rewilding or offerings, and even rewilding our meditations can deeply connect us with the living earth. I offer a simple rewilded ceremony at the end of this newsletter.

The Bardic Path: Communities, Creativity, and Connection to others.  In this book, we see the bardic path as both creative and connected.  Part of the joy of being a human being is being with supportive communities and rebuilding community bonds among human beings.  The other half of the bardic path is in exploring our own human creativity and gifts.  This is especially true in a post-human age where AI is trying to replace everyone and everything.

Rewilding asks us to build community in the most ancient and wild of ways– ancient idea of gathering around the fire to tell tales and break bread, embracing that wildness through wild movement and free expression together. .  We also focus on nature directly to create rewilded art and expressive forms!

In sum, I hope you’ll consider preordering the book and sharing about this book!  Here’s a final excerpt from the Introduction to the Book, “The book your hold in your hand is a specific remedy against this strange miasma of reality-distorting and hope-crushing grimness. It is a grimoire to dispel a dark future, and a magical act designed to help us create and reveal a new future freeing us from the dystopian world we have all woken up to.”

If you want to support me and my work, please consider preordering, sharing the book with others, and once it is out, writing a review!

Preorder at: Barnes and Noble (USA)

Preorder at Bookshop (USA, connected to local booksellers)

Eco-Spirituality in the 21^st Century will be released internationally on January 28, 2025 – you can preorder from your favorite bookseller now!

Rewilded High Summer Ceremony

To continue our theme of rewilding as part of this newsletter, here’s a simple ceremony you can do in the summer that ties to the idea of rewilding. Go out into a wild place on the landscape in high summer. Take a basket. Simply begin by walking, feeling that heat radiating in you—see how it affects you, feel the heat upon your skin, feeling that heat sink into your bones as your ancient ancestors would have.  They did not have air conditioning, they just lived with the seasons as they passed.  Really take time to sink into being present in this place and do whatever you want to make yourself feel a part of it (e.g. taking off your shoes, dipping your toes in the stream, streaking mud upon your face).

Begin to wander—have no purpose, just see what draws your eye. As you wander, gather up that which calls to you: sticks, leaves, flowers, shells, taking nothing that may disrupt or harm the ecosystem.  Find a quiet spot—a place where you won’t be disturbed—and begin to lay the materials out in a pattern, again, using your intuition to guide you.  For this, there is no right and wrong, simply engaging in the pattern in an intuitive, meditative way.  You could create a mandala (a four-fold circular pattern), or it could be a pattern around trees or large stones, following the natural curves and shapes (see this post for more info).

As you engage in this wild ceremony, sing, chant, or offer your gratitude. Let go and simply feel the energy you are putting into the pattern, and feel that pattern weaving both within and without—a blessing to the land around you and a blessing of the land being returned to you, strengthening you, inspiring you, and bringing you joy!

When you feel finished, engage in the space in whatever way you feel led—this may be dancing, singing, or simply meditating and being present in the space.  Feel yourself being deeply connected to this space—being just another animal of the land!

There is no right or wrong way to create a wild, intuitive, and unplanned ceremony–this is just a time for you to connect with nature, create something beautiful, and be open to whatever wisdom nature is ready to offer.

For those in the Southern Hemisphere, check out my post on snow mandalas!

For more inspiration of someone who does this kind of rewilded nature-based art on a massive scale, you can see the work of James Brunt (https://www.jamesbruntartist.co.uk/selection-of-recent-works/ )

Artwork from Eco-Spirituality 

I’m happy to share a few of the images from the new book! For this, our vision was to create visual roadmaps to each of the chapters–Nate and I designed them together and I drew them for the book.   Here is an overall image and then the visual roadmaps for the first three chapters of the book.

Here is the roadmap for Chapter 1!

The roadmap for Chapter 2!

And the roadmap for Chapter 3!

Teaching and Appearances: Herbalism Classes in Western Pennsylvania

Finally, I wanted to share my schedule of herbalism, wildcrafting, and foraging classes for the rest of 2025. These classes happen in Western and Central Pennsylvania, USA for those who might be in the region.  I’m happy to share that June was just full of wild medicine classes, where my students and I went out and learned about opportunistic (invasive) plants on the landscape, how to ethically harvest these plants, and prepare them as medicine.  I wrote about this general philosophy on the blog recently here.  We focused on Japanese Barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica)—removing these from the ecosystem to make more room for native species and using these roots to making powerful medicine.  I’ve had a lot of interest in more opportunistic plant posts and how to host this kind of walk in the future, so stay tuned as future posts on the Druid’s Garden will present more medicinal and community-based things you can do with these wonderful and abundant opportunistic plants!  Here are a few photos from my recent classes in the woods!

Here are my upcoming classes!  You can learn more at www.paherbschool.com and register for any classes that require pre-registration.

• July 14^th – Summer Edible and Medicinal Plant Walk (Blue Spruce Park in Indiana, PA – Free and no registration required) Blue Spruce Park, Indiana County – Pavilion #2 – 5:30 – 7:30pm. Each year, I offer a number of free community plant walks. Learn 15-20 edible and medicinal plants that are in-season during the summer months as well as foraging ethics, reciprocal practices, and how to be a good human on the landscape.
• August1-3 – Class on “Shrooms for Your Skin” at Mycofest, near State College, PA. I am really excited to be teaching at Mycofest this year. I don’t have the exact time/date of the class yet, but I’ll be teaching a mushroom topicals class where we learn how to make mushroom salves from local medical species such as Birch Polypore and Reishi.  Here’s more info on Mycofest: https://www.mycofest.net/
• August 21^st, Fall Edible and Medicinal Plant Walk (Indiana, PA – Free and no registration required) Yellow Creek State Park, Indiana County, Lakeview Pavilion – 5:30 – 7:30pm. Join me on interactive walk to learn about 15-20 edible and medicinal plants that are in-season during the early fall months along with foraging ethics, respect, and being a good human in nature.
• September 18^th – Herbalism 101: Taking up the Path of Herbal Wisdom and Holistic Healing.  5:30-7:30pm in Indiana, PA. In this 2-hour interactive workshop, we explore the foundations of holistic herbalism: how to think like an herbalist, the foundations upon which herbalism rests, how to source and prepare herbs, and how to begin to chart a path towards plant-based healing. Register at https://www.paherbschool.com/event/herbalism-101-taking-up-the-path-of-herbal-wisdom-and-holistic-healing/
• October 4^th –12-3pm – Fall Wildcrafting Medicine Walk with the Pittsburgh Herbalism Group (more details forthcoming), Tarentum, PA.  In this 3-hour walk, we will walk in multiple ecosystems and explore the local medicines available, making teas, tinctures, and more!  This walk will focus likely on Goldenrod, Wild Cherry, Burdock, Yellow Dock, and other fall plants, herbs, and roots. Participants should bring mason jars and 80 proof vodka for tincturing.  (GETTING DETAILS BEFORE YOU RELEASE THIS)
• October 16^th –Creating and Using Your Home Herbal Apothecary. 5:30 – 7:30pm in Indiana, PA. A home apothecary is a collection of herbs and herbal preparations: tinctures, salves, dried herbs, vinegars, for the purposes of having easy access to herbal remedies you need for yourself and your family. Register at: https://www.paherbschool.com/event/creating-and-using-your-home-herbal-apothecary/
• November 13^th – 5:30 – 7:30pm – Acute Herbalism: Herbs for UTIs, Migraines, and Nausea, Indiana, PA. Acute Herbalism refers to using herbal medicine to treat sudden or severe health concerns, including nausea, flu, infection, injury, or pain.  In this class, we will discuss the different categories of acute herbalism and what preparations to have on hand. https://www.paherbschool.com/event/acute-herbalism-herbs-for-utis-migraines-and-nausea/
• December 11^th – 5:30 – 7:30pm – The Medicine of Conifers: Conifer Resin Salves (yes, you can make salve from your Christmas Tree!). Artist Hand, Indiana, PA. Join Dana from the Pennsylvania School of Herbalism to explore the medicine of conifer resins—including those resins typically found in your pine, spruce, or fir holiday tree.  We will make salves and tea.  https://www.paherbschool.com/event/the-medicine-of-conifers-conifer-resin-salves-aka-yes-you-can-make-salve-from-your-christmas-tree/

Into next year, I will be appearing at the Plant Cunning Conference in late July 2026!  More dates and appearances will be added soon.

Thanks again for reading and following my work! May the blessings of nature and the wisdom of the trees be with you.