Greetings! My name is Arthur Haines and I’ve been helping people explore human ecology for over 20 years. I’ve done this with the mission of developing deep awareness of and connection to nature, promoting individual health, and fostering self-reliance. Wild food is a passion of mine, and through this, I offer a glimpse of our past and a new picture of our future. Numerous independent studies attest to the health benefits of wild plants that were consumed by indigenous people around the world. These foods are documented as both the most nutrient-dense plants available and having the greatest concentrations of beneficial phytochemicals, which offer protection against premature aging and insults to health. Wild plants offer a magnificent gateway to real food and wild living. Through this knowledge, and many other facets of our shared ancestral lifeways, we can awaken a rewilding of our body, mind, and heart.
I believe we are at an important crossroads in our existence, one where domestication of the human species has led to an inability for most to nourish, heal, and care for themselves. This process has created profound blindness to the consequences of modern industry and the illnesses associated with nature disconnection. It is critically important to recognize that this point in history, where conversion of the remaining wild lands to intensively managed landscapes and urban areas, is where each person’s unique inherited potential is becoming more difficult to achieve. That is, there is a diminishing opportunity to live up to our full genetic capability.
Despite this awareness, I remain positive and hopeful for my family, my students, and my extended community. It is the very skills I practice (i.e., the skills I live)—foraging, wildcrafting medicine, tracking, and many other aspects of wild living—that provide me with grounding and peacefulness in these times. These ancestral technologies provide a reliable means to attain health, become self-reliant, and disenthrall people from the wage slavery that suppresses their true selves. I propose that any solutions that are offered must come from the understanding that we are infused with seven million years of hominid history that has shaped our physical bodies, patterned our ways of thinking, and created nutritional, social, and spiritual needs that must be satisfied. Likewise, I consider nutrition to be of prime importance (i.e., a starting place) because the health of the physical body so strongly affects many other aspects of our living. This belief is reflected in my daily life through the gathering and consumption of wild foods (and sharing this bounty with guests).
My goal as a teacher and mentor is to share my experience and offer real solutions to individuals and families at all stages of life. Examining modern scientific research through the lens of historical evidence provides a unique perspective with which to filter the numerous and often conflicting studies that serve to confuse people and paralyze them with inaction. I endeavor to share knowledge garnered from this perspective, one that merges the material knowledge of present-day people with the ecological knowledge of ancestral people. I sincerely hope our paths cross, and I offer best wishes to everyone seeking an alternative to the current paradigm of living.
