reason plant people are generallygentle, compassionate, and giving. They are often amazingly creative, too -coming up with new pictures, herbal formulae, and solutions where science fallsshort. I don't mean to disparage any way of "knowing", as all waysare necessary. I simply feel that knowing through plants is so very beautiful,and makes its people beautiful, too.Next, herbal medicine has a way ofreconnecting our species to nature. Clearly a no-brainer: we get outside more,we tend to eat differently, we appreciate a woodland walk differently when wehave an intimate knowledge of the green folk living all around us. This getsinto our heads slowly, insidiously, and deliciously. Before we know it, we mayfind ourselves kneeling on a city sidewalk looking at plantain (the horror)!But I feel like the gift of reconnecting to nature that herbal medicine offersus is most clearly evident in what happens when nature and wild plants areremoved from human life: this is what, in Western culture, we've been workingon for a few hundred years. The results are dramatic: epidemics of chronicdisease affect the population, not because of the rise technological medicine,but because of a removal of traditional medicine! Additionally, to supporthomogenized, un-wild, unchallenging food systems we are also creating epidemicsof chronic disease in the environment: new chemical signals that affectfertility, waste material that alters climate and ecosystem balance,disorganized living arrangements that sprawl over the landscape. I may beoverly optimistic, but I believe that we don't need to remove technology to fixthese issues: we simply need to bring plants back in to daily life. Once wedevelop the botanical habit, herbs begin to mess with our heads (where we alltoo often live). As we lose our heads, we save our spirit - and spirit beingall-encompassing and transcending the human species, we participate in a moresustainable dance with the rest of nature.Which leads me to my final point ofappreciation for herbal medicine: mystery. Anyone who has seen a plant effect acure knows that there is something magical about this process, as it may neverbe able to be replicated again. The herbalist, plant, and client have somehowmanaged to work together, in that one timeless moment, and the feeling all(plant included!) are left with is similar to what you feel when you run in toa random friend in a random place at just the right moment. It is synchronicitybeyond coincidence, and we glimpse for an instant what it is like to be theimmortal Universe. A healing modality that respects and welcomes mystery is mykind of medicine: because in the end, no matter how much we dress it up orunderstand its details, a human physiology brought back in to balance alwaysreveals an awe-inspiring mystery. All good scientists know this. Einsten, forinstance, tells us:The most beautiful experience we can haveis the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle oftrue art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder,no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.I have great faith in the power of herbalmedicine to heal not only people, but also culture, species, and ecology. It'sreally pretty