Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Bella Cloude. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Bella, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.
I was fresh out of college in the 60s leaving NYC at the advice of Jerry Garcia who I met while working at the restaurant Max’s Kansas City- a hang out for all the Filmore East performers. He told me to go to San Francisco where people for one brief moment in time were caring.sharing and living creatively-away from the materialism of the “rat race” ”
I travelled as far as New Mexico. where the smell of the sagebrush and the color of the mountains inspired me. I lived on a “commune” where The Taos Pueblo Indians taught us how to grow food, make adobe bricks and the value of the sage and the cedar. Somewhere deep in my soul was an instinct for the wild medicinals. I roamed those mountains for many years harvesting the edible and medicinal plants that mother earth gave us freely and abundantly..
With the help of a partner – a grassroots herb company was formed- “Teas with a Purpose.” A local who knew the plants well helped us to build drying racks and bring in the harvest. A Naturopath who was part Cherokee helped us to identify many wild native medicinals.
This was the beginning of today’s MountainSpiritHerbCo.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We still hand harvest most of the herbs used in our teas tinctures salves and liniment either from the wild or from pesticide free backyard gardens grown on American Soil.
Our syrups are based on abundant native or naturalized plants such as dandelion flowers found almost everywhere in the United States . They are soaked in honey with tinctures of sinus clearing herbs to add in harmonizing our respiratory tract with the pollen around us.
We have a you tube channel called Herbal Mamma that demonstrates the plants themselves and the process of creating these formulas.
Its a labor of love and a way to connect with the Earth that shows respect for her gifts. The goal was and still is -to teach those clients who were interested to be less independent on “better living thru chemistry” and big pharma.: to share the plant consciousness that enables us to truly connect and adapt to the rapidly changing natural world, Or as the first nation peoples taught- our medicine wheel is right around us and every blade of grass has a purpose.
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
I think that the medicine plants chose me . Within many of us is a yearning to connect to our planet, Many of us have an ancestry of parents or grandparents or even further back who have used “home remedies” to heal us. When I lived mostly off gathered or homegrown plants I was the healthiest Ive ever been, Ive been given a voice for these “Plant people” who have guided me to heal my family friends and to reach out to a bigger collective of “health conscious” people who want to learn how to heal themselves.
You tube instagram and many of the social media platforms are perhaps the best way to teach this knowledge.
I personally found that sharing this knowledge is more beneficial than providing the already packaged end result of the journey through health and healing.
As a hands on body worker Ive used many of my “products” as an adjunct in the healing process. This seems to be the best use of this kind of endeavor- one that is so labor intensive intuitive and personal.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Back in the 70″s when we first created the nation wide tea business called Wahatoya Herb based on wildcrafting herbs we had a consultant tell us that we would never make enough money doing the labor intensive work of hand harvesting and processing, While hand picking red clover blossoms one by one -as sweet and fragrant as they were- with a team of young middle schoolers who were on an “herb walk and talk” I felt the truth of what we had been told. It was then I decided not to harvest herbs as a business but as an educational tool. This was before podcasts, you tube, instagram etc.
Today social media presence makes this possible and I hope to pass on my knowledge this way. I still sell herbal formulas to friend and clients thruout the nation but its not practical as a retail business
Contact Info:
- Website: mountainspiritherbs,com
- Instagram: Mountainspiritherbs
- Facebook: mountainspiritherb
- Youtube: herbalmamma.com
Image Credits
Amber Kayo photographer/amberkayo.com