Our Numinous Nature

Katie McMillan Crutchfield is the chef & owner of The Dancing Bear Cafe: a renovated chicken hatchery nestled in the corn fields of Corder, Missouri amongst her old farm house, 2 AirBnB rentals, 13 peacocks, 5 horses, 5 cats, 7 dogs, a multitude of chickens & ducks, one pig & a pony. And then there’s the wildlife…orphaned raccoons, killer foxes, and leaderless coyotes. In this fun and kooky episode we hear what life is like at Katie’s plant & animal oasis; a peaceable kingdom surrounded by never-ending ag fields where crop dusting planes roar overhead & cancer is commonplace. When it comes to story time it might as well be the beginning of a whimsical children’s book: two tales from the time when Katie - at a life crossroads & very much alone - moved into an abandoned farm house with no doors where she lived with her animal friends both domestic & wild.  And as her reputation in the community grew, she became the unofficial, local wildlife rehabilitator working with the likes of barred owls, pileated woodpeckers & possum joeys.  Today, all the farm's outbuildings have a new life: the dilapidated chicken hatchery is now a destination fine-dining restaurant, and a railroad shanty from the ol’ coal mine behind the property is a charming AirBnB cottage. This episode is further proof that you can build your own version of a happy & unique life.Check out Katie's restaurant Dancing Bear Cafe on Facebook & Instagram. And next time you're passing through Missouri, book one of the AirBnBs at her farm:  Artist Cottage or The Pond House.Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Chuck Bonner is a family-taught paleontologist & artist hailing from the chalk beds of Western Kansas: once an ancient ocean teaming with large swimming & flying reptiles, fish, sharks, and turtles. He and his wife live off-the-grid in an old chalk church they've renovated into a fossil gallery a few miles down the road from Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park. We begin by learning why this landscape makes for such good Cretaceous fossil hunting & get a glimpse of what a hunt in the chalk beds is like. Chuck shares two memorable "fossil fishing" stories: the first about a pteranodon skull found when he was only 15; the second about how his family name [Bonner] has been forever immortalized by science.  After story time, Chuck gives us a tour of his workshop. Did you know Indiana Jones was based on a real life, legendary paleontologist [not an anthropologist]? And if you're like me, I found it extremely helpful to reference the illustrations & fossil photos on Chuck's website for a clear mental picture of what these ancient animals looked like.Check out Chuck & his wife's gift shop, fossil & art gallery: Keystone Gallery. And watch the Bonners at work in their fossil beds in NOVA's Making North America: Life.Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Tyler Chadwell-English - a charismatic librarian & folklorist with a masters in folklore & museum studies from George Mason University - lights our imagination with all-things Appalachian witchlore! We begin with me sharing my own personal story of Brooklyn witches & a possession experience that left me white as a ghost. Once the interview commences, Tyler teaches us about the three types of Appalachian witchcraft: white witchery, black witchery, and witch doctoring; followed by the various sub-genres of witches: the water witch, shapeshifter, bloodstopper, and granny woman.  We hear four local folktales about: troublesome cats in a mill, a widower’s haunted lilac bush, a mysterious hitchhiker, and a lock of hair in a shoe.  Then it's time to dust off our old brooms & Bibles as we learn a handful of regional ways to protect our homes from witches & evil spirits. The conversation creeps through Grimms, the connection between the queer & occult communities, and if folktales should be believed as truth. Make sure to stick around till the very end as Tyler shares two of his personal spooky stories: one about the death of an old cat lady, the other about a mysterious occurrence with a rose during a harrowing car wreck. This is the bewitching Halloween special I had prayed for!Check out the West Virginia Folklife Center and the books mentioned by Tyler throughout the episode: Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians;  Signs, Cures, and Witchery: German Appalachian Folklore, and The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales.Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Joanne Bauman of Topeka, Kansas is a yarb woman and the host of Mother Earth News' "Heirlooms & Herbals" podcast. Coming from a long line of plant people - Appalachians, an Oglala Lakota medicine woman & a pharmacist father - Joanne encourages us to foster a relationship with the land. She instructs us on how we might give an offering of herbs or our hair to the plants and animals we aim to forage and hunt. We hear about mullein torches, elderberry folklore, herbs specific to the prairie, and 'the doctrine of signatures': an ancient tool for determining a plant's medicinal properties. Joanne then shares a powerful story about both healing the land and intergenerational trauma surrounding Lt. Colonel George Custer, the Lakota & Cheyenne of the Black Hills, and The Battle of the Greasy Grass [aka The Battle of the Little Bighorn]. Perhaps one of the highlights of this entire podcast series comes after her story, we have the great honor of hearing Joanne sing a Lakota horse song. Wow!!! We finish up our backyard garden conversation listening to Joanne's experiences studying psychology & working with folks' dis-eases of the psyche. In closing, Joanne gives us a fun, yet precise tip about the real meaning of the word "guru."Check out Joanne's Prairie Magic Herbals & her Heirlooms & Herbals Podcast Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Deputy Stan White is a deputy sheriff, trapper, & fur buyer in Barry County in the Missouri Ozarks.  As a darkening storm swirls in the background, Deputy White speaks to his county’s rising drug-use, homelessness, & domestic violence as well as the changing collective feeling amongst the locals. He tells us a little bit about the fur market: from beaver castors to mink farming, 70's coons to western bobcats. We hear about growing up trapping with his father and uncle, and how setting his first trapline was an exercise in facing fear and possibly a rite towards manhood. Approaching story-time, our tastebuds wonder as muskrat meat, bobcat back straps and baked possum are brought to the table. Deputy White's first story illustrates the archetypal tension of fathers & sons; his second speaks to animal temperaments from a cantankerous cottonmouth to a stoic bobcat that seemed to act against its fiery nature.  Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Victoria Fillmore of Cedar Hill Homestead is a community herbalist in the wooded hills of central Tennessee where she homesteads with her husband, son, chickens, goats & herbs. We start our convo hearing about a rat snake in the chicken coop, the Foxfire books, poke sallet, experimenting with poisonous plants and capturing wild yeast. Then there's a massive shift from light plant talk to deep wisdom: Tori shares the story of her deceased mentor [a Lakota elder named Hawk] and his lesson-learned-too-late about dissipating others' negative energy. From there we are in the realm of animism, cleansing practices, and messages from the dead.Check out Cedar Hill Homestead on Instagram & Facebook.Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Lynn Faust - The Lightning Bug Lady - is a Tennessean naturalist and citizen scientist who has written the first ever North American guidebook on lightning bugs: Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs. She has consulted in-the-field on numerous nature documentaries including BBC's new Seven Worlds, One Planet and their 2015 Life That Glows as well as Netflix's Night on Earth. This super folky episode is much more than Lynn's lightning bug 101; we hear about sailing the world, Appalachian packrats, firefly folklore, working with David Attenborough, glowing mushrooms, digging mayapple, and stolen sang. Quite the raconteur, Lynn shares multiple stories, the first about her discovery of a synchronous Smoky Mountain lightning bug, another about her granny neighbor who warned of the blue ghosts that haunt Lynn's property, followed by a series of moth synchronicities surrounding her brother's sudden death, and finally, to end this glorious episode, how her son was stalked by an aggressive mountain lion. This one is a must listen!Check out Lynn's firefly guidebook and the BBC trailers for Life That Glows and Seven Worlds, One Planet. Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Michael Fies is a wildlife biologist & the furbearer project leader at Virginia's Department of Wildlife Resources [formerly known as Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries]. Furbearers are defined as animals with commercial fur value ranging from the tiny least weasel, the mighty beaver, and mischievous raccoon, to the elusive bobcat and trickster coyote. Mike shares how his grandfather's love of the outdoors & their rabbit beagle led to his 37-year career in wildlife. This is an educational episode where we discuss a wide range of topics: the little known squirrel-sized spotted skunk; fox-sized weasels [fishers] making their way from West Virginia; restoring river otter populations; scat IDing; skunk essence; a gruesome tree full of coyote corpses; and even eastern mountain lions. Mike clears up misconceptions about trapping; how it is not only humane when following Best Management Practices, but can be beneficial to wildlife management, followed by his thoughts on how Native Americans may have used naturally made traps. Mike tells two fun stories from his career: one about a backyard skunk and the other about dealing with a mountain lion call. And before this educational interview, we read a potent and timely Cherokee legend about the ghostly flower [Indian pipe] that grows where friends and family quarrel. Check out Mike's work on the spotted skunk and the department's nature-loving Instagram. Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Forrest Green Farm in Louisa, Virginia is the no-spray, beyond-organic family farm of Krista & Rob Rahm. They pasture raise cows, pigs, and chickens, and grow heirloom veggies and an impressive array of medicinal herbs. The theme of this episode is family. We talk with Krista about finding their run down farm house and how her son's learning disability led to herbalism & homeschooling. She shares what it's like to raise kids on a farm and her feelings about abandoning a career-oriented life for self-sufficiency and nature. From her husband Rob, we hear about slingshot hunting as a kid, fox trapping with their son, and get a practical tip for folks who want to try farming. Most interestingly is how the Rahms use their intuition: how Rob constantly reads the signs of the farm while Krista receives enlightening information from her plants. We culminate with their experience dealing with the bee stings that nearly took Rob's life. Check out Forrest Green Farm on Instagram & Facebook.Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com 

Edward Clark, Jr. is the president & founder of The Wildlife Center of Virginia, a world-renowned wildlife hospital in Waynesboro, Virginia. Ed - a passionate & gregarious wildlife advocate and a real character - tells us about their 19 orphaned bear cub patients, a brutal case of mange, an ornery bobcat's thrill ride, & how hunting in his youth sparked his love for nature. We hear a handful of potent PSAs: dos & don'ts when handling our wild animal neighbors and the potential of loving an animal to death... Between our fascinating convo Ed recounts two tales: the first about a poisoned bald eagle that blew the lid off a pesticide conspiracy; followed by a deeply personal account he's never shared publicly, the story of his numinous bond with a peregrine falcon that left him utterly mystified. This is an epic episode!!!Check out The Wildlife Center of Virginia on Instagram & Facebook.Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com