The Botanarchy Hotline is updated every two weeks, following the warp and weft of the local ecology as it unfolds through the seasons. Each hotline episode invites you to explore inner and outer landscapes in new and novel ways through Chinese landscape poetry, the wisdom of the ancient sages, and ecological embodiment exercises. 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 833-Eco-Poem 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 birthed 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.

Through this storytelling project, you’ll come to find that these sonic transmissions aren’t just about meadows and mountains, they are meadows and mountains, and you can wrap yourself around them like a gossamer fog, amble up and down them in your birch hat and bark clogs collecting rare roots from their sediment-rich riverbeds. So don your robe of fig leaves and sash of wisteria, dial 833-Eco-Poem, make like my favorite poet Li Po, and follow the creek back towards its source.