Rooted in this Land

We planted five new witch hazel trees on the farm this summer and it felt like exactly the right thing to be doing. The land here has always been part of our program, not a backdrop for it. This season we leaned into that more deeply than ever, foraging, planting, making, and learning from what grows right outside our back door. Nature is not just where we hold our retreats. It is one of our most powerful teachers. And caring for it is some of the most meaningful work we do.

There is a reason we chose this land.

Thirty acres at the edge of the Nantahala National Forest in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Trails that wind into old growth woods. A creek that runs cold and clear. Witch hazel and lemon balm growing along the hillside. Black cohosh in the hollows. Goldenrod blooming yellow in the heat of summer. This is not scenery. This is medicine.

But medicine does not tend itself.

Running a farm of this size is real, constant, unglamorous work. It is early mornings and late evenings. It is fencing and mucking and mowing and hauling. It is watching the weather, managing the herd, maintaining the glamping tents and the barn and the trails and the bath house and every inch of infrastructure that makes a healing retreat possible. It is planting and pruning and pulling invasives and making sure that what grows here has room to thrive. It is checking on the animals, every horse, every creature that calls this mountain home, and making sure they are healthy, comfortable, and cared for.

We are not just retreat hosts. We are stewards of this land.

And we take that responsibility seriously. Because the land is not separate from our mission. It is the foundation of it. Every family that comes through our gates is healed in part by the health of what surrounds them. A well-tended trail. A clean, quiet barn. A pasture that smells like grass and summer and something older than any of us. These things matter. They do the work before we ever say a word.

This summer we have been improving the farm in ways both visible and invisible. New plantings along the property line to support the wildlife corridors that connect our land to the national forest. Continued work on our trails to make them accessible and beautiful for the families who walk them. Ongoing care for the horses, the dogs, the chickens, and every wild thing that passes through, the deer and the birds whose songs are part of every morning here.

We think of ourselves as neighbors to all of it. To the creek and the holler and the old trees and the young ones. To the medicinal plants coming up in the same places they came up a hundred years ago. To the animals who were here long before us and will be here long after.

At the Special Liberty Project we believe that nature immersion is one of the most underutilized tools available to the veterans and military families we serve. Research consistently shows that time spent in natural environments lowers cortisol levels, reduces inflammation, regulates the nervous system, and supports the brain in forming new neural pathways. For people carrying chronic stress, grief, and the invisible weight of military life, those are not small things. They are the whole thing.

When we bring our participants out of the retreat space and into the woods, something shifts. The nervous system, which has often been running on high alert for years, starts to find a different rhythm. The breath slows. The shoulders drop. The mind quiets just enough to let something new come in.

And when we pair that with hands-on learning from the land itself, the effect deepens.

This season our families foraged wild plants along the forest edge, learning to identify wood sorrel, milky oats, yarrow, and spicebush, plants that have been used for centuries by healers and everyday people to support the body and calm the mind. They learned why these plants work, what they do in the body, how to harvest them with care and intention. And then they made things.

Custom herbal tea blends chosen intuitively, each woman selecting the herbs that spoke to what her body needed in that moment. Natural bug and tick repellent using witch hazel as a base. Skin tinctures. Simple, real, useful things made with their own hands from plants harvested from the ground they were standing on.

There is profound healing in that act. In making something from scratch. In learning that the land around you is generous and that you have the capacity to receive what it offers. Hands-on creative work in natural settings activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest response, and stimulates the production of dopamine and serotonin. It builds new neural connections. It tells the brain, in a language older than words, that you are safe. That you can create. That you belong to this earth.

For veterans and military family members who have spent years in survival mode, that message is revolutionary.

And then we planted five witch hazel trees.

We planted them because this land is part of our long-term vision for healing. Because we want the families who come here ten years from now to walk past trees that were planted with intention. Because witch hazel is one of the most versatile healing plants in these mountains, an anti-inflammatory, a natural remedy for bug and tick repellent, a plant we will teach from in workshops for years to come.

We planted them because healing is not an event. It is a practice. It grows slowly, puts down deep roots, and eventually offers something back to everyone who tends it.

That is what this land does. That is what we are building here. A farm that heals the people who visit it, and that we in turn heal by showing up for it every single day, with our hands in the dirt and our hearts in the work and our eyes on something long and good and growing.

Come walk these trails with us sometime. The forest is waiting.