July 11-12th, 2026
9:30 AM-5:30 PM daily
There is a difference between studying herbs and meeting them in their native soil. The Wisdom of Herbs Gathering is a two-day immersive herbal experience held on the land at Wellspring Ranch in Southwest Colorado. This is not a lecture-style conference. It is an intimate learning circle rooted in direct relationship — with plants, teachers, and community. We gather in the mountains to walk the terrain, identify native medicinal plants, craft medicine together, and weave ancestral wisdom with modern clinical insight.
What Makes This Gathering Unique:
• Field-based plant identification in native Colorado ecosystems
• Ethical wildcrafting and sustainable harvesting practices
• Fresh and dried herbal medicine making
• Clinical applications from experienced Naturopathic Doctors
• Mycology and wild food exploration
• Sacred circle and community integration
• Building relationship with plants
Who this Gathering is for:
• Herbalists seeking deeper field immersion
• Health practitioners wanting plant-based clinical insight
• Homesteaders and wildcrafters
• Those feeling called to strengthen their relationship with the land
• Anyone ready to move from intellectual knowledge to embodied wisdom
Event Details:
When: July 11–12, 2026
Time: 9:30am–5:30pm daily
Location: Wellspring Ranch — Bayfield, ColoradoLimited to 30 participants
Cost: $350- full weekend $295 early bird (ends June 1st) $185 single day
Schedule: See below.
Each day will include a balanced flow of outdoor learning, practical medicine making, and community integration.
An Intimate Learning Circle We intentionally limit this gathering to 30 participants to preserve depth, accessibility to teachers, and meaningful connection.
If you feel the call to gather on the land and deepen your relationship with plant medicine, we invite you to join us.
We have some full and partial scholarships available upon request.
Contact Aaylah at 970-769-2494 for any questions.
We do have some camping spots available and we can supply you with electrical if you want to come bring your RV
Saturday
9:00 – 9:30 AM
Arrival & Welcome
Participants arrive, check in, and settle into the land at Wellspring Ranch.
9:30 – 10:00 AM
Opening Circle
We begin the gathering together in community, setting intentions for the weekend and honoring the plants, teachers, and land that will guide our learning.
10:00 – 11:00 AM
The Magic of Poulticing: Prickly Pear for Natural First Aid
with Deb Buck
11:00 – 11:15 AM
Break
11:15 – 12:45 PM
Wild Wisdom of the Land
with Katrina Blair
12:45 – 1:30 PM
Lunch Break
1:30 – 3:30 PM
Wild Mushroom Medicine
with Marija Helt PhD & Brady Wilson
3:30 – 3:45 PM
Break
3:45 – 5:30 PM
Plant Meditation & Forest Bathing
with Dr. Aaylah Wellspring
Sunday
9:00 – 9:30 AM
Arrival & Welcome
Participants arrive, check in, and settle into the land at Wellspring Ranch.
9:30 – 11:00 AM
Medicinal Plant Walk: Meeting Our Plant Relatives
with Deb Buck
11:00 – 11:15 AM
Break
11:15 – 12:45 PM
Three Plants for the Physical & Emotional Heart- Hawthorn • Wild Rose • Yarrow
With Marija Helt PhD
12:45 – 1:30 PM
Lunch Break
1:30 – 3:00 PM
Botanical support for stressful times: nervines and adaptogens- Nicola Dehlinger
With Dr. Nicola Dehlinger ND
3:00 – 3:30 PM
Break
3:30 – 5:00 PM
Formulating the Perfect Cup: Herbal Energetics and Flavor
With Dr. Aaylah Wellspring ND
5:00 – 5:30 PM
Closing Circle
We will gather to reflect on the weekend, share insights, and close the gathering in community.
Katrina Blair
Author/ Chef/ Wild Crafter
Katrina Blair began studying wild plants in her teenage years, spending an entire summer camping alone to focus on living from wild foods. That formative experience shaped a lifelong devotion to land-based nourishment and ecological regeneration.She later authored The Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants of the San Juan Mountains as her senior project at Colorado College, where she earned a degree in Biology. In 1997, she completed her Master’s in Holistic Health Education from John F. Kennedy University.Katrina is the founder of Turtle Lake Refuge, a nonprofit established in 1998 dedicated to celebrating the connection between personal health and wild lands. Turtle Lake Refuge has served as a wild-harvested, locally grown, living foods café, microgreen growing operation, and sustainable education center for the community. She later founded Bee Happy Lands, a statewide land stewardship initiative focused on organic regeneration of public and private lands across Colorado.She is the author of Local Wild Life: Turtle Lake Refuge’s Recipes for Living Deep and the widely celebrated The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival (Chelsea Green, 2014). Katrina’s work embodies lived wild relationship, practical survival knowledge, and a profound reverence for the intelligence of the land.
Offering:
Wild Wisdom of the Land
Join Katrina for a guided exploration of the plants growing around Wellspring Ranch. During this immersive plant walk, participants will learn how to identify local medicinal plants and understand their traditional and modern uses.
Katrina will share stories, ecological insights, and herbal knowledge that bring these plants to life as living allies rather than simply botanical specimens.
Participants will also gather wild plants along the way that will later be used to make a fresh, nutritious medicinal green juice.
This walk invites participants to slow down, observe closely, and cultivate a deeper awareness of the medicine growing all around us in the landscape.
Deb Buck
Community Herbalist
With over 23 years of experience as a community herbalist, Deb Buck approaches plant medicine through an animistic and relational lens. Her work is rooted in listening — to plants, to people, and to the subtle threads that connect all living beings.Deb has studied with elders and wisdom keepers from around the world, cultivating reciprocal relationships with plants as living teachers rather than passive resources. Her teaching style invites students into respectful partnership with plant allies, encouraging lifelong learning rooted in humility and curiosity.Her intention is not only to teach herbal actions and preparations, but to help others remember how to live in deeper harmony with the sentient world.
Offerings:
The Magic of Poulticing: Prickly Pear for Natural First Aid
Join Deb for a hands-on exploration of Prickly Pear as a powerful natural first aid ally. You will learn the incredible potential of this desert plant for supporting the body during common injuries and acute situations.Participants will learn how to properly prepare and apply a fresh plant poultice, when it is most appropriate to use this traditional preparation, and how it can support a variety of first aid scenarios such as inflammation, irritation, and minor injuries.This class offers practical knowledge you can take home and use right away, while deepening your appreciation for the healing potential of the plants growing all around us.
Medicinal Plant Walk: Meeting Our Plant Relatives
Join Deb for a guided plant walk rooted in animism, designed to kindle a deeper connection with the plant relatives of Southwestern Colorado.This experiential walk weaves together plant identification, medicinal qualities, storytelling, and plant communication practices. Through direct participation, sensory awareness, and embodied presence, participants will begin cultivating meaningful relationships with the living plants around them.Rather than simply learning about plants, this walk invites us to experience the plants as teachers, allies, and living beings within the ecosystem we share.
Dr. Nicola Dehlinger ND
Naturopathic Doctor
Dr. Nicola is a board-certified Naturopathic Doctor with over 20 years of clinical experience transforming the way patients understand their health. She is known for her ability to look beneath physical symptoms to uncover underlying stress patterns, trauma, and unresolved emotional burdens that contribute to chronic illness.
Her integrative, whole-body approach moves patients beyond pharmaceutical dependency by addressing root causes and restoring resilience. She weaves botanical medicine, nervous system regulation, and holistic lifestyle care into her practice with clarity and depth.
At the gathering, Dr. Nicola brings a clinical lens to plant medicine — grounding tradition in modern naturopathic insight.
Offering:
Botanical support for stressful times: nervines and adaptogens
Description TBA
Ann Marija Helt PhD
PhD Biochemist/ Clinical Herbalist
Marija is a mycoherbalist, microbiologist, writer, and clinician in practice since 2009. A former cancer and infectious disease researcher, she now dedicates her work to bridging rigorous scientific understanding with practical plant and fungal medicine.She teaches and writes about a wide range of plant, fungus, health, and science-related topics — from the clinically relevant to the delightfully curious. A devoted mushroom and plant enthusiast, she forages, gardens, and cooks extensively with wild foods.Marija brings intellectual clarity and scientific literacy to the gathering while maintaining deep reverence for plant and fungal allies.
Offerings:
Wild Mushroom Medicine- Marija & Brady
With Marija's biological expertise and Brady's outlaw foraging tactics, this dynamic duo offers a unique synthesis of perspective on some of earth's most mysterious beings.In this workshop, we’ll dive into the medicine of a few of our favorite locally wild-foraged mushrooms (Red Belted Polypore, Artist's Conk, Wood Ear, and Chanterelle among them) — how to identify them, how to prepare them, their energetics, nutritional and medicinal values, and their most widespread uses. As a group, we’ll discuss and demonstrate a couple of tried and true medicine making techniques and recommended applications with hands-on opportunity for all.
Three Plants for the Physical & Emotional Heart
Hawthorn Rose Yarrow
Rose, her more prickly grandmother Hawthorn, and the protective healer Yarrow are beloved herbal allies for supporting both the physical heart and the emotional heart.
These plants offer powerful support for the cardiovascular system while also helping us navigate experiences such as grief, heartbreak, fear, boundary setting, and emotional resilience.
During this class, participants will meet each plant through multiple senses. The session will include brief experiential “sits,” during which participants may choose to hold a piece of plant material or take a drop dose preparation to deepen their felt sense of each plant's medicine.
Through this direct experience, participants will explore how these plants support both physiological heart health and emotional healing.
Brady Wilson
Wildcrafter and Mushroom Enthusiast
Born and raised in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, Brady Wilson is an herbal medicine maker, wild forager, mushroom vendor, yoga teacher, special events DJ, and sacred space creator.Often found barefoot in the forest, singing with birds and brooks, Brady’s lifelong devotion to the earth informs everything he teaches. His work spans movement, music, mantra, spoken word, plant medicine, and community building — all expressions of his commitment to regenerative living.Brady believes deeply in the innate regenerative capacity of both human beings and ecosystems. His presence at the gathering invites embodied connection — not just learning about plants, but living with them.
Offerings:
Wild Mushroom Medicine – Marija and Brady
With Marija's biological expertise and Brady's outlaw foraging tactics, this dynamic duo offers a unique synthesis of perspective on some of earth's most mysterious beings.
In this workshop, we’ll dive into the medicine of a few of our favorite locally wild-foraged mushrooms (Red Belted Polypore, Artist's Conk, Wood Ear, and Chanterelle among them) — how to identify them, how to prepare them, their energetics, nutritional and medicinal values, and their most widespread uses. As a group, we’ll discuss and demonstrate a couple of tried and true medicine making techniques and recommended applications with hands-on opportunity for all.
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Dr. Aaylah Wellspring ND
Naturopathic Doctor/ Herbalist
Dr. Aaylah Wellspring has known from a young age that her path is one of service to Mother Earth and the preservation of plant wisdom. Her life’s mission is to reconnect people — and animals — to their plant relatives and to steward the transmission of herbal knowledge for future generations.A Naturopathic Doctor since 2017, Aaylah specializes in gastrointestinal disorders, chronic fatigue, and hormonal balance. Through her clinical practice at Wellspring Naturopathic Medicine, she focuses on coaching, lifestyle transformation, diet, and botanical medicine to facilitate whole-body healing.She is also the founder and CEO of Wild Fed, an organic herbal supplement company for horses, born during her naturopathic training. Her passion for plant education across species led her to establish the Botanical Studies Institute in 2024.The Wisdom of Herbs Gathering is a living expression of her devotion to land-based learning, community, and the preservation of ancestral plant knowledge.
Offerings:
Plant Spirit Meditation & Forest Bathing
Forest bathing has been practiced for centuries in Japan and offers simple yet powerful techniques to reground and regulate the nervous system. Known as shinrin-yoku, it is the practice of mindfully immersing oneself in nature to promote physical and psychological well-being.
This class will begin with forest bathing to ground and reset the nervous system. From this open, receptive, clear-headed space, Dr. Wellspring will teach the art of plant divination — using your intuition and senses to explore the medicinal qualities of a plant without relying on prior knowledge. This practice invites you to draw on your own sensory awareness, much like traditional healers have done for generations.
During the meditation, each participant will be offered an unlabeled herbal tea. You will be guided into a short meditation with sound to help you drop in, then spend time quietly observing any sensations, emotions, or shifts you notice in your body as you sit with the plant.
After the meditation, the plant will be revealed and Dr. Wellspring will share what is known about its traditional uses and medicinal properties.
This class offers a unique opportunity to deepen your relationship with herbs and to practice trusting your intuition.
Formulating the Perfect Cup: Herbal Energetics and Flavor
In this hands-on class, Dr. Aaylah Wellspring will introduce the energetics and flavor profiles of herbs and how these qualities guide the art of herbal formulation. Participants will learn how herbalists think about balancing taste, energetics, and therapeutic action when creating medicinal teas.
Using a variety of dried herbs — many of which we will have spent the weekend getting to know — you will learn how to formulate a constitutional tea blend that supports your unique body while still tasting good enough to enjoy daily.
Together we will explore how bitter, sweet, aromatic, and pungent herbs can be combined to create balanced, effective, and enjoyable medicinal teas.
Each participant will create and take home their own 1-ounce custom tea blend, along with the knowledge of how to formulate herbal teas that are both supportive and delicious.