Sophie Strand is a writer and author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, The Madonna Secret, and her most recent book, a memoir called The Body Is a Doorway. She lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she writes about mythology, ecology, and the intersection between storytelling and the more-than-human world.
This conversation spans a lot of ground. We talk about what it means to be from a place versus being of a place, Tom Bombadil and what Lord of the Rings has to teach us about ecology, communicating with plants through dreams, the concept of pharmacon and the problems with how we use psychedelics, making good soil as both metaphor and practice, and how Sophie's experience with chronic illness has deepened her relationship with the natural world.
A brief note: This conversation includes some discussion of drug use and psychedelics in the context of plant medicine and healing.
00:00 - The Hudson Valley as savior
04:42 - Being from a place vs. being of a place
06:38 - Human beings as peripatetic wanderers
09:07 - Sardinian throat singing and inherited traditions
11:16 - Eucatastrophe: the happy disaster
15:31 - Tom Bombadil and ecological wisdom
19:26 - Communicating with plants
20:13 - Dreams as messages from plants
22:23 - Dreams come from a place
27:34 - Being an instrument played by fungi
28:51 - Naming and ownership
35:25 - Hopi language and present tense
37:09 - Telepathic communication as wordless
39:24 - Psychedelics and plant medicine
41:17 - Pharmacon: potion and poison
43:10 - Our culture of addiction
46:39 - Ayahuasca and ego death
50:39 - Creating communities that honor intuition
54:31 - Aphids, ladybugs, and observation
56:41 - Make me good soil
57:21 - Degenerative connective tissue disease
59:36 - Soil as tomb and womb
01:01:44 - Nature and healing
01:07:18 - The blue heron as messenger
01:09:36 - Favorite food memory: apples and cheddar
Episode 6
