SWSBM

The wind starting blowing 24 hours ago, and I think it may never stop. Bisbee is getting a cold front, the clouds are racing over the tips of the Mule Mountains, the street of Brewery Gulch are filling with dust storms and tumble weeds are flying high; take shelter! Everything on our porch blew over, but we rescued our humming bird feeder before it flew to Mexico. We heard what sounded like a piece of corrugated tin flying through town a few hours ago; no rain yet, but tomorrow seems like the day.



Neil and I are greatly enjoying the South West School of Botanical Medicine. We are really glad that we came here; this is exactly what we were looking for. The first three weeks of school we concentrated on human physiology with an herbalist from Oregon. We spend the majority of the day sitting at our desks typing and writing pages of notes. Michael Moore, the reason that we all come here, is awesome. He is a man like no other. His knowledge and brain is like a warehouse and all of us, even him, frequently get lost in there. Our tasks as students is to keep him on track when he starts wandering too far from the herbal path…he is a lover of pop culture and obscure trivia, and he is a master of human perception. He takes stereotypes to a new level, but he really seems to have human nature down to a tee, the way he explains each herb and the scenario and personality type that they would be useful for is usually side spitting. You have to see him to believe him. Anyone who comes to visit should sit in on some class; you wont be sorry.

We sit on our butts from about 1-7 Monday thru Thursday, and have Fridays off; a glorious reprieve. The hardest part of class is the sitting. We don’t go out in the field (although next week 7 Song, an herbalist from Ithaca, NY is coming to teach us botany, maybe we’ll go outside) with class, but there is much hiking an exploring to be done of these crazy lands. I checked out a ton of books from the library to see what animals live in these lands: coati (this weird lemur/raccoon thing, jagarundi, jaguars, bobcats, cougars, ringtails, otters, minks, jackalopes, etc. etc. I can’t wait to see more than the tail of the deer I saw in the Riparian area yesterday.

Well, we’re just sitting here with some friends, trying to do our taxes……free fun provided by the feds, thank a lot Uncle Sam.

And then, 24 hours later: The rain came last night, the wind bashed things around and drunk people howled at the weather from down in Brewery Gulch. A Wild night.