Each new episode follows the warp and weft of the local ecology as it unfolds through the seasons. At its heart is the spirit of Chinese landscape poetry — that ancient practice of training your senses to notice the unnoticed:

the drifting plum blossom,

the hidden spring fed by moonlight,

small ferns uncurling in the broken hands of cliffs.

Whether you call 833-ECO-POEM from a rotary phone in a tuft of moss underneath a sequoia sempervirens, or you listen to the archive on this site whilst eye-gazing with your favorite mountain, you are invited to contribute a field note by leaving a message on the hotline voicemail.

The voice at the end of the telephone line belongs to me - Carolyn Barron. I’m a Chinese Medicine Physician, poet, and ecological storyteller in private practice in the wilds of LA. My work is for those who long to end the corporate co-optation of the body, know and embrace their unique inner ecosystem, and re-wild medicine for full aliveness.

This project was seeded in the crucible of the LA wildfires, and it’s a love letter to the strange magic of this numinous boundaryland that’s half wild, half urban, and all panache. During our wildfires, it became more clear to me than ever that this elusive thing we call wellness stems from a connection to place. Wellness begins and ends with our connection to the procreative web of life surrounding us, and stems from a reverential awareness of our elemental teachers, our human and more-than-human neighbors, and the cosmic processes we are all embroiled in together. 

True wellness isn’t a product.

It’s a practice.

Through poems, stories, and small acts of attention, The Botanarchy Hotline invites you to walk yourself back into intimacy with the living world. You’ll find yourself wandering and meandering, not toward an endpoint, but toward a way of being.

These aren’t just stories about wilderness, they are wilderness.
You can slip into them like a robe woven from fig leaves and wisteria vines, trail your fingers along their sediment-rich riverbeds, and follow them — like Li Po — back toward the source. 

Dial 833-ECO-POEM.

Forget what time it is.

The mountains are calling,  but this time listen closer... it’s the unseen, the unrushed, the quietly blooming that reply.