About Me
I love the Great Basin and its many plants, animals and minerals, and every thing I do here is to show you that this land is beautiful, full of life and medicine, and that we must preserve it for all the generations to come.
Hey its Leah. My story is one of a burned out nurse seeking reconnection with the land. This of course is the simplified version of all I could say. Our stories are so complex, but not so interesting to others as they are to us. So I will try to keep it short, in case you are interested, but don't want to spend all day...
​I started high desert hiking in our lovely public lands because they were in close proximity to my home in Minden, Nevada. Every chance I got, it was the best escape to move my body and set my mind free. My shifts would leave me feeling like a wrung out sponge but being out in the sage and pinion would have me floating up mountains. Being out here really healed my spirit...and gave me strong quads!
My first intention is always just to be out here. To see beauty in nature. To this day, I never go out to get anything. Nature always reveals her gifts when you are open to them. When you can let your mind be at ease, you receive so much information, and I started to wonder what this plant...and that plant were good for.
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When you come out here almost every day you will create a relationship to the land. Plants and trees will start communicating with you.
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One day, out of the blue, I remembered a time many years ago while I was living in Markleeville, CA, a native friend gave to me some "NDN tea" (Indian tea) when I had a bad head cold. It was made up of just one plant otherwise known as Mormon tea (ephedra). It helped quite well at the time and it had sparked my interest in native plants. Through some research I found that this plant was very old and one of the best and only antihistamine plants in North America. I started to wonder if there were more plants out here like that, and guess what? Of course there are! Now I spend much of my time researching pub-med to see if any studies were done, reading old texts and talking to elders. My best experiments I will offer on this site!
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What I don't forage, I grow and if I cannot grow it, I buy organic.
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Leah's Naturals is a journey into the medicinal plant world of the Great Basin and eastern Sierra. I hope it inspires you to look at dusty hillsides and sagebrush differently.
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L