Weekend Nature Craft: Smudge Sticks!

This weekend I made smudge sticks from plants that either grow wild around here, or plants that we have grown ourselves. It was so much fun!

Smudging, traditionally, is a ceremonial ritual performed by indigenous people.

In some First Nations and Native American ceremonies, certain herbs are traditionally used to purify or bless people and places. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smudging

Smudging is most commonly done with sage. It is also believed that burning herbs like sage can cleanse a person’s aura, and protect a space from negative energies.

Whether those things are true is beside the point for me. My pleasure in making these was very earthy:

The collecting of the herbs.

There is something so satisfying about going out in to nature to bring back goodies. You can honour Mother Nature by making good use of the bounty that she provides, and thank her for it, as you are collecting them. And, you are actually in nature while you are doing so: bird song might distract you from your inner-monologue, or you might stop to check out something cool along the way. It’s a very satisfying process.

Especially when you do so in a wooden basket as lovely as this, that you found at the rubbish tip.

The actual making of them.

The fragrance that surrounded me as I was wrapping up these little bundles was incredible. They are little smelly bundles of nature! It was another one of those interruptions from nature. I would get lost a little in my thoughts, I would become aware of these scents, and stop thinking for a while to just enjoy the smell, then for sometime after fully concentrating on what I was doing, my mind still.

The thought of burning them after they dry.

I have to wait two whole weeks! And, when I burn them I can connect with nature once more, in a different way, in a way that it is letting it go back, burning it and returning it’s ashes to the earth. It is not even necessary to burn them, they smell amazing as they are!

This, to me, is what ritual is all about. It is all about connecting with the self and with nature.

I made a few different combinations of herbs in these smelly bundles of nature. The first ones I made were lavender, bay leaves, sage, rosemary and thyme.

The second lot I made were with pine needles, rosemary and thyme.

These three plants: pine trees, rosemary and thyme, will forever remind me of this place, of Spain. The smell of pine tree sap infusing the landscape on warm spring days. It feels like a very calming, relaxing smell. As well, when the dogs come back from walks smelling of rosemary. It goes without saying really, that this is extremely pleasant compared to how they smell at other times!

Their abundance out here amazes me. It’s a tough environment: the clay soil is baked for many months of the year, temperatures as high as 54 degrees (in the shade!), and very little rain for many months at a time. And, to boot they have to withstand frost because it can get down into the minuses in the winter! These plants have not only managed to survive, but thrive out here.

Check out @holisticmom’s post (Finding Home: Off-Grid Adventures ~ Part 4, Nature's Abundance & Wild Herbs) to find out more about the benefits of rosemary and thyme.

For sure, whenever I travel away from here in the future I will now take with me a few smudge sticks made from pine needles, rosemary and thyme.

The process is very simple.

1. Lay your herbs in a pile. Aligning the woody sticks at the bottom.
2. I found it best to hold the plants in a handful and wrap the string around the bundle that way.
3. Grab a longish piece of cotton.
4. Place the cotton over the top of the bundle, at about the half way point of the cotton, with equal lengths on either side.
5. Wrap both pieces around the bottom of the bundle, a couple of times in roughly the same place to secure.
6. I found that you can wrap one piece around 3 or 4 times, and then catch up with the other strand, so you don't have to keep switching over to the other side to cross them over.
7. Hang them up to dry for a few weeks.

Hope you enjoyed my post. One more thing! Tip/rubbish dump find of the week, these amazing succulents Why would anyone throw these away??

Check out http://www.offgridyoga.com for more info on our off-grid Yoga retreat.