The Ground Shots Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

full shownotes and maps to reference in this episode: groundshots.substack.com

Episode #84 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Jeff Wagner out of Paonia, Colorado, director of Groundwork, a regional nonprofit educating about food systems in a changing world and more.

Sign up for my August 2-8 high country field ecology and ethnobotany course in Western Colorado on the Grand Mesa

Groundwork is a place-based education program working to deepen our society’s relationships with land, food, and water and to cultivate generative and regenerative ways of living and relating. Our mission is to inspire the cultural shifts needed for a sustainable future.

Rising to meet the challenges posed by climate change, ecological decline, and environmental injustice requires more than new technologies and policies. At Groundwork, we believe it also requires profound shifts in the ways we relate to one another and to the world around us. Groundwork offers educational programs and publications that seek to shift the foundations of the ways we understand ourselves and our place in the world, in order to work towards more just and sustainable shared futures.

A culture, like our planet, is a living ecosystem, constantly shifting and changing based on the values, attitudes, and practices cultivated within a particular community. Groundwork creates spaces to critically reflect upon, challenge, experiment with, and create anew those building blocks of culture. Our offerings create opportunities for the emergence of new kinds of relationships and ways of being within the human and more-than-human world.

We believe that reimagined relationships and practices—in essence, emergent cultures—are the foundations of systemic change.

Colorado Public Radio ‘Parched’ Series

‘Chasing Water’ movie

Johnathan Thompson’s Landdesk publication on Substack regularly writes on current issues of the Colorado River

Cadillac Desert The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisner

Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen

Thinking Like a Watershed: Voices from the West by Jack Loeffler and Celestia Loeffler

Glen Canyon Institute

Encounters with the Archdruid: Narratives about a Conservationist and Three of His Natural Enemies by John McPhee

The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive by Martin Prechtel

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Water Education Colorado

‘The uncompromising environmentalist behind the Sierra Club’ by Joshua Zaffos High County News article about David Brower

‘Western States Opposed TribesAccess to the Colorado River 70 Years Ago’. History Is Repeating Itself.’ article by Mark Olalde, ProPublica, and Anna V. Smith, High Country News

Colorado River Compact

Elsewhere Studios

 

for full shownotes to this episode, go to our website post here

or our substack post here

Episode #83 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Callie Russell, an interview recorded in the field on a goat walk in New Mexico this past March. You may know Callie from the Alone show, though I have never watched it. We have known each other for many years and this past Spring we camped together for a few weeks by a river, with friends and her goats. We took time to record a conversation together for the podcast. The episode starts with us at camp with Rain, an old friend, and our banter getting ready to leave for a walk. If you want to skip that part you can fast forward 10 minutes or so past the field recording beginning. It’s funny though- to get a glimpse into life at camp. Most of the convo is of us walking with the goats and talking while on a walk. We eventually sit down to finish the interview. On our way back, one of the goats pushes me off a cliff and abruptly stops the recording, and you hear the incident in the episode. Thankfully I catch a root and Callie grabs me and all is ok. What we do for podcast recordings..

Become a paid subscriber to Ground Shots extras on Substack to hear an extra story from Callie not included in the main interview. She tells a story of saving a goat from a mountain lion when she lived in the wilderness years ago. Its quite a story!

Callie’s website where you can find classes and updates Traditional Tanners online hide tanning courses Episode 10 : Adam Stolte and his Goats My August 2nd-8th field ecology course - sign up here! Vibrant Earth Seeds : Regionally adapted to the Southwest. Use ‘GROUNDSHOTS10’ at checkout for 10% off seed orders  Bookshop buy me a book! Bookshop : recommended books for you (buying here helps support the podcast) Venmo : @kelly-moody-6 Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn website archive and extended shownotes: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Theme Music: Mother Marrow Hosted and Produced by: Kelly Moody

read the entirety of the show notes for this episode here. Episode #73 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Alex Zubia (XeF) out of Fresno, California.

Alex Zubia, who goes by “Xef” is a Chef by trade. Born and raised in Fresno, CA (yokuts Land). Alex attended The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone land) in 2007. His passion for cooking came with his passion for eating. From 2008-2015 he worked at Community Regional Medical Center’s Emergency Room as a Patient Liaison. During that time he witnessed people from his community dying from diet related issues. That realization led him to opening his food truck, which  focused on healthier, farm to fork versions of familiar foods. In 2015, Alex moved to Santa Barbara (Chumash Land) to further his skills as a chef. There, he discovered that so much of the beautiful produce he was cooking with came from Fresno. He wondered why he never saw all this produce available in Fresno. Alex moved back to his hometown in 2021 to fight for food justice as a Food Sovereignty Director at Fresno Barrios Unidos. Alex’s goal is to bring his community back to eating and cooking their indigenous foods which are so plentiful in the Central Valley.

In this conversation with Alex, we talk about:

• food apartheid (or ‘food deserts’) in Fresno, California, which is in the Central Valley of California, a place where so much food is grown yet not a lot of local food is available for the folks who live there

• food is medicine, culturally and physically

• Alex’s journey doing work with food, cooking in Santa Barbara and Fresno

• the corporate industrial food complex as it intersects capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy

• Alex’s work as a patient liaison at the Community Regional Medical Center’s Emergency Room and how it changed their perspective and what they observed as harmful aspects of the hospital industrial complex

• The importance of love, community, and good food for good health

• Navigating the nonprofit world when trying to do food justice work

• some raving on TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge) Chico and Ali Meders-Knight’s model of land tending in California

• regenerative agriculture stems from indigenous practices

• The four R’s and more on Transition US (Resist, Repair, Reimagine, Regenerate)

 

Links: Sign up for Summer 2023 field ecology classes in the southern Rockies Late Spring Terratalks Ecology study group, for late April and May

 

Fresno Barrios Unidos Transition US Alex/Xef’s Instagram: alexander_fresno Transition US’ instagram: transition_us Fresno Barrios Unidos’ instagram: fresnosbarriosunidos My Homie’s Kitchen instagram: myhomieskitchen Guest Music: “Walk Away” by Ambeeka  

Episode #73 is a solo episode with Kelly Moody, Ground Shots Podcast regular host.

I get into a slew of things on this episode, reflecting on camping near the Mexican border and the implication of borders, water, fire and ecological disturbance, summer field immersion programs I’m doing in Western Colorado this season and more.

A shorter episode with just me and some sweet banjo tune by Mandalin Sattler as background music.

Links for this episode:

Ground Shots Substack publication, subscribe for free

Patreon Support for the Podcast if you want to support that route

Terratalks philosophy and ecology online 3 part class, late Spring Session Waitlist

Field Ecology Programs Western Colorado Spring/Summer 2023 in collaboration with Groundwork, sign up here

Elderberry’s Center in Paonia, Colorado, Lisa Ganora’s Herbal Education Center

Lisa Ganora’s Herbal Constituents Online course, starting at the end of March. Sign up here with my discount code ‘KELLY’ for 10% off and using it also helps support the Ground Shots Podcast!

Music for this episode by Mandalin Sattler  of Water Daughter  and @mossymandalin on Instagram

Sign up for my spring mini study group starting February 10 (sign ups open for a limited time!) here: Terratalk sessions Episode 72 of the Ground Shots Podcast is with Lisa Ganora, herbalist and plant chemist, out of Paonia, Colorado. Lisa and I got together at her Elderberry’s Farm spot, on the edges of Paonia, Colorado’s town limits. On a cloudy day with intermittent rain and snow, we sat in her herb lab, drinking hot tea, to do an interview. Lisa Ganora began studying traditional Western herbalism in the ‘80s. Later, she lived and wildcrafted in the Appalachians where she studied with folk healers and created herbal products to sell as she traveled the festival circuit with her herb booth. After practicing as a community herbalist for a decade, Lisa returned to college and graduated from UNCA summa cum laude with multiple awards in biology and chemistry. After graduation, she focused on studying pharmacognosy and phytochemistry. In addition to directing the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism from 2012-2020 and managing Elderberry’s (a Rocky Mountain herbal education center in Paonia, Colorado), Lisa has also served as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacognosy at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and has lectured and taught classes at numerous schools and conferences. She is the author of Herbal Constituents, 2nd Ed., a popular textbook on practical phytochemistry for natural health practitioners, which is used by herbal schools and universities worldwide.

To see more show notes and what we talked about summaried on this episode, go direct to our blog page for the episode, here. 

Links: (for extended links list, go to our episode page, linked above)

Lisa’s website for Elderberry’s Educational Center

Herbal Constituents website

Instagram for Elderberry’s

Support the podcast on Patreon 

Ground Shots Substack Publication

Donate to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow

Susan Tweit is a plant biologist with a calling to restore nature and our connection with the community of the land especially close to home. Plants are her people, as she says, fascinated by the myriad ways they weave the world’s living communities, forming the green tapestry that covers this planet. Susan began her career as a field ecologist studying sagebrush, grizzly bears and wildfires. She reveled in the work and the time outside in the west’s expansive landscapes, but eventually realized she loved the stories in the data more than collecting those data. So, she learned how to tell those stories, not an easy trick for a scientist schooled in dispassionate and impersonal prose.

Susan and I met at the Paonia Books opening event in Paonia, Colorado in late fall 2022. During the event, we ended up getting into a conversation about plants by the hard cider sample table, and decided to try at some point to do an interview for the podcast. I was curious about Susan’s work as a writer and botanist, ecology scientist and was excited to dig deeper. We managed to meet up a few weeks later and recorded a conversation in Paonia Books’ back room where they hold writing workshops.

She has written a handful of books on a variety of themes. Some of her titles include ‘Barren, Wild and Worthless, Living in the Chihuahuan Desert,’ ‘The Rocky Mountain Garden Guide,’ and ‘Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying.’

read the blog post for the episode, here Links:

Susan’s website

Paonia Books

Support the podcast on Patreon  For one time donations to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial music: Old Maid's Draw by Riddy Arman Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #70 of the Ground Shots Podcast is a conversation with Sarah Galvin of the House of Yore who was a past guest on the podcast. 

direct link to episode on our website

Listen to Episode #54: Sarah Galvin of House of Yore on the need for madness and chaos medicine in our culture here. You might want to pop over and listen to that episode first before this one to get more context for Sarah’s work, but you can also listen to this episode standalone.

In this episode of the podcast, Sarah and I talk about:

• mothering in the modern era

• attachment wounds that begin at childbirth and how they are passed down through ancestral trauma lineages

• how changing ancestral traumas that are passed down happens incrementally, and we do the work for the people who come after us

• giving birth in her cabin in Alaska without much assistance

• tracking internal and external landscapes as self-work for healing

• how living in victimhood narratives even if we are victim to things that have happened to us perpetuates trauma and carries those wounds on

• radical self-responsibility and self-accountability as a path to healing

• breastfeeding and birth humor, and more

Links:

Sarah’s website: House of Yore Sarah on Instagram: @house.of.yore

Charity of Mother Marrow’s GoFundMe

GoFundMe for the podcast and transmission replacement for Kelly’s truck

 

Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this work: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject 

 

 Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Theme music: 'Sweat and Splinters' by Mother Marrow Interstitial Music: ‘New Futures’ by Prae Hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #69 of the Ground Shots Podcast was recorded in southern Oregon this past August among old Juniper trees tucked just below a special Tableland mesa, with Nikki Hill of Walking Roots, and Sigh Moon assisting in the conversation.

Link to our website where you can donate to the podcast, and find the blog post on the podcast episode with photos and bios of Nikki and Sigh Moon as well as a few photos from where we recorded the episode: www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/lithiummine

We talk about:

• What is a tableland or mesa?

• Nikki’s intention in doing survey work at Thacker Pass, a place in Nevada slated to become a large lithium mine

• Questioning the sustainability of lithium

• Seeing wild gardens and patterns on the landscape that reflect historical relationships of indigenous peoples and places

• How deserts have been hard for European ancestored folks to conceptualize and how this makes it easy for us to consider it a wasteland to be inverted to perpetuate modern culture

• Considering certain lands sacrifice zones comes from the idea that we are separate from land and that we can actually have an effect

• the effects of private land ownership on the water table and water flows on land

• seeing through a lens of botanical archaeology

• how archaeology is often focused on ‘settled’ life evidence not nomadic life evidence

• how do we start to re-see why plants are on the landscape in relationship to human historical tending of those plants?

• the misinformed idea that hunter-gatherers (gatherer-hunters) were not sophisticated in their tending

• what is the point in caring about anthropogenic landscapes?

• Nikki’s plant survey process at Thacker Pass in Nevada and some of the plants she found like Yampah, Biscuitroots, Mariposa Lilies and more.

 

Links:

Nikki’s Website: Walking Roots

Counterpunch article by Nikki: “Botany as Archaeology, to Stop a Lithium Mine’

Nikki’s instagram page: walking.roots

Sigh Moon’s Instagram page: tenderwildeyes

Sigh Moon’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmu0A77ja3o8DZ32ttOsIA/videosSave

Thacker Pass Campaign website

‘The Ecology of Eden: An Inquiry into the Dream of Paradise and a New Vision of Our Role in Nature’ book by Evan Eisenberg, a book I read in college on critical ecology that feels relevant to this episode

“The Void, The Grid & The Sign: Traversing The Great Basin” by William Fox, all about concepts of void and land value in the Great Basin Desert, a fascinating book

“1491” and “1493” by Charles Mann, alternative histories to North and South America mentioning anthropogenic landscapes including ‘terra preta’ in the Amazon, mentioned on the podcast

Save Oak Flat and the Apache Stronghold Campaign

Angela Moles Ground Shots Podcast interview mentioned on the podcast: Episode #57: Gabe Crawford interviews Angela Moles P.h.D. on the rapid evolutionary responses of plants due to climate change, challenging scientific dogma

Past episodes of the podcast featuring Nikki Hill:

Episode #31: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on the basics of wild-tending

Episode #33: Wild Tending series / Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford on re-thinking the concept of invasive plants

Episode #59: Is there such a thing as an "Invasive Species"? A conversation with Matt Chew Ph.d. hosted by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume, Nikki Hill and Gabe Crawford

Music for this episode: Reverie, Spires and The Undergrowth by Juniper Blue This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody

Episode #68 of the podcast is a conversation with Adam Larue of Sharpening Stone Gathering, out of Grants Pass, Oregon.

visit our blog post on the episode to see a few photos of the land where we interviewed: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/2022/6/12/episode-68-a-conversation-in-a-camas-meadow-adam-larue

Adam and I recorded this conversation in a Camas meadow adjacent to his land after I taught wild-tending and critical ethnobotany plant plant walks for a week at the Sharpening Stone Earthskills Gathering, which Adam helps run.

In this episode with Adam, we talk about:

• How Adam got the land that he lives on and runs the Sharpening Stone Earthskills Gathering

• Some of the methods and madness of logging in Oregon which happens all around Adam’s private inholding near Umpqua National Forest, the herbicide spraying and GMP tree planting replacing forest diversity

• the downfalls of profit-centered thinking vs. ecological centered thinking

• some info about the Sharpening Stone Earthskills Gathering which takes place on the land we do the interview on

• Re-wilding as a hot topic and trend right now

• dancing with modern technology while trying to reconnect to land

Links: For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Interstitial Music: ‘I’m Moving to the Mountains’ by Adam Larue Theme Music: ‘Sweat and Splinters’ by Mother Marrow This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody Sharpening Stone Gathering on Instagram Becoming Wild on Instagram Sharpening Stone Gathering Adam’s Youtube project: ‘Becoming Wild’

Direct link to episode with extra photos and Ted's poetry: https://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com/podcastblog/tedpackard

 

Ted studied History and Anthropology at Christopher Newport University, got a Master’s in Teaching, went on the road with the Momentary Prophets band, and then went to study with Alderleaf Wilderness College and Wilderness Awareness School. He taught various program for youth around the greater Seattle area for many years before relocating to Durango, Colorado to dry out, as he says. After some years of a break, Ted just started up a new nature connection program for youth in the Durango community. Ted does lots of things, including various handcrafts, refurbishing guitars and other instruments, music-making, writing, wood-burning and more. As college peers, we spent a lot of time together researching things like mushroom cults, the esoteric origins of Judeo-Christian religion, the anthropology of psychedelics, zen koans, and more. We both have lived in different places since and woven in and out of each others’ lives so we spent some time really checking in about how we think about things now vs. when we were radical activist driven neo-pagan coyote-trickster troubadour mind-melters.

 

  In this episode with Ted, we talk about:

• Ted’s nature connection mentorship work with youth in Washington and Colorado

• Ted’s upbringing in northwestern Virginia

• Our experience in college of community: artists, philosophers, musicians, activists, and neo-pagans and our reflections on that time now

• seasonal ritual as a somatic map

• ways that Ted’s anger at an eco-cidal culture has transformed over the years to a yearning for finding points of connection vs. telling someone they are wrong or how to live

• what is a community of mutuality in a broken society that emphasizes hyper-individualism?

• activism can look many ways and can even be in small moments of advocacy

• awareness of the isolation of capitalism is often crippling

• the reality that financial security is generally not available to our generation (millennials)

• Ted’s musical projects which include Momentary Prophets from his early 20’s, that had a coyote-troubadour element with community driven instigation, as well as his own solo projects

• paying attention to ‘nature’ bringing you closer to crazy synchronicities that become signposts to keep going

• weaving a web of interrelated ideas and ecologies as a way of being

• trauma, neutrinos, quantum physics intersecting eastern philosophy, bodies as multiplicity, the mycelium nature of everything, music as ecological channeling

  Links: The Emerald Podcast, mentioned on the podcast Daniel Quinn, author we mention on the podcast Mystic Moon of Norfolk, VA, pagan community mentioned Terence McKenna, mentioned on the podcast Mountain Justice: organization dedicated to ending mountain top removal in Appalachia Momentary Prophets on Facebook Momentary Prophets on Bandcamp (Interstitial music featured on the episode) Ted’s music on Bandcamp (he is putting out a new album RIGHT NOW, his individual music featured in the intro of this episode) Wilderness Awareness School Living Earth School Sophie Strand Ted’s Patreon for his music, art, writing Ted’s revived blog of writing (do yourself a favor and read and savor) Ted’s Venmo if you’d like to donate to help support his musical projects : @Theodore-Packard Support the podcast on Patreon to contribute monthly to our grassroots self-funding of this project  For one time donations to support this podcast: Paypal : paypal.me/petitfawn VENMO:
@kelly-moody-6 Cashapp: cash.app/$groundshotsproject   Our website with an archive of podcast episodes, educational resources, past travelogues and more: http://www.ofsedgeandsalt.com  Our Instagram pages: @goldenberries / @groundshotspodcast Join the Ground Shots Podcast Facebook Group to discuss the episodes Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the Ground Shots Project Music: by Ted Packard and Momentary Prophets This episode hosted by: Kelly Moody Produced by: Kelly Moody and Ted Packard