Imparting Hope for the Future
Chama, New Mexico · By Rosemary Logan and Peter Friederici
As you come over the hills into Chama, the land takes on a fresh, spring green color. 
It’s not just the irrigated pastures of alfalfa along the river, but also the oaks and aspens and grasses that cover the steep slopes around the village. At nearly 8,000 feet in elevation, Chama is a well-watered highland oasis and a splendid place to grow a wide variety of herbs and other medicinal plants.
It’s a long way from Santa Barbara, but still this small northern New Mexico town is an unsurprising destination for Melissa and Bob Porter, former Californians who a few decades ago were looking for a place to raise their children close to the land. They had enjoyed living near the beach on the California coast – Bob was an avid surfer – but gradually found the
place too expensive, too crowded, too confining. They disembarked in Chama, a long way from the ocean, and haven’t had any regrets.
Chama has only about 2,000 residents. It takes creativity and ingenuity to make a living here. When the Porters first arrived Bob got a job thinning trees for the Forest Service, and the couple used some of those logs to build the first part of their house – a log cabin – on six acres a couple miles outside town. They had two children, and worked odd jobs for years to pay for the house and the additions they later put on. Melissa was a librarian in town, and Bob ran a trash collection service. They raised goats and made cheese and milk for a while. Bob helped other people build houses and learned how to make furniture for sale.
Bob and Melissa learned how to keep bees. They began selling fresh produce and canned jams and jellies at local markets. They discovered many of the tricks required to garden successfully at high elevation: using row covers to protect tender plants from frost, placing shade covers over leafy greens to shield them from strong sunlight, applying chopped dead flowers and grasses as mulch, even keeping trays full of new seedlings warm in the winter by placing them atop their water bed (during those weeks the couple sleeps in another bed). They added on to the house a few times; it now includes a sun room/greenhouse, a second story, and a stone addition. In winter they rent cross-country skis and boots to area visitors.
A significant part of their livelihood, though, is Melissa’s wildcrafting business. She collects and dries about fifty types of plants and sells these to a couple of stores and at a farmers market, as well as at the ski shop. It’s a passion that began back in California. “It all started in 1970,” Melissa explains. “A friend pointed out some lambsquarters. I was in awe. Here was this weed that was so common, and so 
delicious.”
Once in New Mexico, Melissa began recognizing the local plants one at a time, without formal instruction. She learned to identify and collect everything from mint to mullein to yarrow, from snake broom to rose hips to echinacea. She and Bob developed a yearly collection cycle that begins in May with wild parsley, peaks during the summer rainy season in July and August, and tapers off in October when they dig for osha roots up in the mountains. She also began to plant her favorites close by.
Today the Porters’ house is surrounded by thriving gardens full of herbs and flowers where Melissa does much of her collecting. “I gather the plants by hand,” she says, “then tie them in bundles and let them dry. Things dry fast around here. Then I strip the leaves off the stalk and store them in glass jars in a cool, dark, dry area. A lot of the herbs you buy in the store have been cut and sifted, but I try to keep them intact. The more you handle them, the more you lose.” Because glass jars are expensive she sells her wares in plastic bags, but encourages customers to transfer the herbs back to jars whenever possible for better preservation. Many herbs have strong medicinal properties and may interact with prescription drugs. For that reason, Melissa doesn’t prescribe uses for the herbs she gathers, but rather encourages people to do their own research about their workings.
Melissa shares her knowledge with others by conducting identification walks for a variety of audiences, from girl scouts to tourists to local folks. “Some are people from the community who never paid attention until their grandma passed away, and then they noticed there was a lot they never learned,” she says. “Some are health professionals. Some are kids. One woman just wanted to know what was growing in her yard, and she was amazed. It was just a little yard, but there were so many plants there that she could eat or make tea from. People get excited about this.”
For Melissa, wildcrafting carries a spiritual aspect that is very much in keeping with old traditions of stewardship. She likes the work of gathering and drying herbs, but she also likes knowing that she is contributing both to her community and to her place. “It’s part of sharing,” she says. “The human family is here to take care of the earth. It’s not just gathering and selling, it’s a whole educational process, teaching the responsibility to take care of the planet, teaching respect for the plants and for each other, and imparting the hope that the Bible imparts for the future.” The quiet town of Chama, and the practice of wildcrafting, are for her the living embodiment of one of her favorite verses from Psalms 37:11: “But the meek ones themselves will possess the earth, and they will indeed find their exquisite delight in the abundance of peace.”
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