Becoming Vegetalista

The remarkable story of the powerful visionary episodes Stephen Harrod Buhner experienced over half a century ago.

The demands that were made for his reformulation of the self, and his subsequent training with the plants of the high Rocky Mountains into their uses as medicines and ecological modulators for planetary health. And as well, his meeting and training with some of the most innovative teachers of the latter half of the twentieth century. This is the most extensive description of visionary experience since that of Black Elk’s in Black Elk Speaks and Manual Cordova Rios’s in Wizard of the Upper Amazon.Stephen Harrod Buhner was the award-winning author of 25 books on plant medicines, Earth ecosystem dynamics, emerging diseases, and the states of mind and being necessary for successful habitation of Earth including numerous articles, memoirs, short stories, and poetry on nature, human-plant, and human-Earth relationships. He taught throughout the US, Canada, and the EU for over 35 years. Stephen was an interdisciplinary, independent scholar, polymath, autodidact, Fellow of Schumacher College UK, and had been head researcher for the Foundation for Gaian Studies for the past thirty years (gaianstudies.org). His book, The Lost Language of Plants, received a Nautilus and BBC Environmental Book of the Year Award. In 2022, he received the first annual McKenna Academy Distinguished Natural Philosopher Award in recognition of his work. His book, Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss, also won a Nautilus award.