While some people may be naturally born with heightened senses, most of us must hone and practice these skills throughout our lifetime, and particularly when we are children.

During my years of mentoring in environmental nature immersion, I’ve seen countless children develop “super senses” (hear, see, feel, smell, intuit) that astounds their parents. I love stories like the one when a father was flabbergasted by his seven-year-old daughter. “She could hear the sound of an owl hooting way off in the distance,” he excitedly said, “long before I even could sense it and her observation skills are through the roof – I can’t keep up!”

I am a self-proclaimed coffee lover. Unfortunately, however, stimulants don’t work well for me. I can have a 12-ounce cup of coffee at 10 a.m. and still be wide awake at 10 p.m. Over the years, I have gone back and forth between regular coffee and decaf, but then I discovered the enjoyable benefits of herbal coffee substitutes and found a new warm beverage to love–chicory and dandelion root coffee!

A few years ago, my friend gave me the oddest gift. As she handed it to me, she sheepishly said, “I’m not sure how you will like this, but I use them at my house, and I hope you’ll have a use for them too!” Inside the neatly wrapped brown paper package was a roll of cloth squares. I admitted that I was confused by the gift and jokingly asked if it was toilet paper. Turns out I wasn’t too far off – it was a roll of Unpaper® Towels! It turned out her “odd” gift inspired me and seeded my passion to look at my home in a new way, to ask myself, “How sustainable are my household habits?” 

Looking for holiday gift ideas and activities for at-home kids? Me too! As a mother of a five-year-old I am constantly on the prowl for engaging, fun, and educational activities. After years of teaching nature education, I have found some useful tips to engage kids of all ages, abilities, and group sizes! 

In our modern western culture, caffeine makes our world go round. There is nothing quite like waking up to the gurgling aroma of coffee percolating in a machine while my mouth waters and my brain begs for that bitter taste to fully wake me up. One of my pleasures in working at Mountain Rose Herbs has been finding alternative ways of getting those caffeine boosts, including our organic black, organic white, and green teas, yaupon (the only North American plant to contain caffeine), and organic yerba mate. However, there is one plant that surpasses all of these in its stimulating abilities – guarana seed.

I sat tucked beneath the juniper tree, my head resting on the pillow of her fibrous bark. I was absently twisting and wrapping the aromatic leaves of a sagebrush around my fingers, each crush igniting fragrant oils into the air. My eyes gazed out across the vast stark white lakebed of the Alvord Desert. The air had begun to cool as the sun migrated closer to the mountain’s edge, preparing for the freezing starlit night. It was here on my very first solo camping trip that I began to contemplate what it means to ‘belong’ and to question why I felt so inextricably disconnected and foreign sitting upon the Earth.