Healing Gardens

            Howdy, my name's Allie Denzler.  I was born in St. Peters Hospital in Olympia, and I’ve been in the same place ever since.  I grew up mostly at my mom’s house, which is in five acres of forest.  Most of my family has been in Washington since before the 1920s, though some on my mom’s side are from the east coast.  Before that, my ancestors immigrated from Germany, England, and Poland.  I went to community college on and off after high school, and that’s when I took a plant identification class.  I didn’t really know until then of my passion for plants.  With my education at Evergreen, I hope to widen my knowledge of plants, their relationships within ecosystems and with humans, learn of ways to nourish our environment and live with a minimal footprint on the Earth.  What drew me to Healing Gardens the most was tending to a garden/landscape.  I absolutely love caring for plants and maintaining relationships with them, I feel that I gain as much as they do from the energy put into these relationships.  The other part that attracted me to this program was learning how to make herbal medicines and learning about traditional peoples’ uses of native plants.  Since I was a child, I have always been brewing potions made of plants and things.  Someday, maybe this quarter, I’ll finally make a useful or pleasant smelling concoction!

Creation “story”

So, I suppose I believe that the Big Bang and all that business created the galaxy and the Earth, and then some cells started splitting and so on, until some legged creature emerged from the ocean.  Or cell evolution could have happened on land, or both.  Growing up, I was never taught or told stories of Earth and its inhabitant’s origins, so I molded my belief of its beginning from evolutionary theory and the opening credits of “The Land Before Time.”  Recently though, I have been entertaining the possibility of some external force placing a bit of intimately cooperative energy on some barren planet and giving it a purpose, to live life.

            In both of these views, I feel that every living thing is here by chance.  Humans are children of the Earth, for she supplies (or used to supply) everything they need to survive. As a human myself, I try to leave a light footprint on my mother Earth, because I don’t want to give her bruises.  Ideally, I would like to give back to the Earth equally what I take from it.  If I think of the Earth as my body, then it’s easy for me to see how I should treat it.  I do my best to avoid subjecting my body to harmful substances and treatments, and I think the Earth deserves the same.