Our Numinous Nature

Jim McDowell, aka "The Black Potter," is a gallery-level, outsider artist in Weaverville, North Carolina working in the ceramic tradition of face jugs inspired by his enslaved African ancestors. In this passionate & electric episode we learn about what pottery was like in colonial & slave times: the spiritual side of African & voodoo pottery; utilitarian vessels on the planta...

Anh Stanley is a folk herbalist, magick practitioner, & owner of PYRAMID: Appalachian Magick + Remedies in Waynesboro, Virginia. This spiritual smorgasbord of an episode begins with an exploration of the Greek god, Pan. Then it's off to the occult races as Anh speaks about the simplicity of rural folk magic, a brush with suicide, Buddhist wisdom, Jungian psychology, the tarot, the fae, pr...

Tim Duff is a maple syrup producer, farmer, flintlock gunsmith, powder horn-maker, & former sheriff in Highland County, Virginia [the southernmost commercial syrup producing region in America]. At his charming Fair Lawn Farms, Tim does everything the old way! In this episode he describes tapping trees & boiling syrup like it's the mid-1800's: wooden spiles, fire, cast iron kettle...

Alexander ter Weele is a Dutch-American outdoorsman, author, poet, & uncle to me, your podcast host. Born in Holland & having traveled to over 100 countries, the theme of this episode seems to be communication between vastly differing cultures: from hunting snipe with an Ethiopian village to sharing a meal with a Greek shepherd, all culminating in a harrowing childhood encounter at a Nazi...

John Gibson is a world-traveled river outfitter on Virginia's bucolic Shenandoah River where thousands come to tube each summer. While her waters are shallow, her history runs deep. Between readings of the valley as a frontier, the great flood of 1870, & a legend of the river’s origin, John tells the Shenandoah’s journey through human habitation. He begins chronologically with a 10,000-ye...

Linda Cassada is a paranormal investigator with VAPI: Virginia Paranormal Investigations out of Hampton, VA on the Chesapeake Bay. With her grounded & unique Christian approach, we get straight to the brass tacks of residential paranormal investigation: fake ghost reality-TV; the equipment; folks reaching out for help; theories for what ghosts are; & how 90% of cases have natural & mun...

Les O'Dell is a West Virginia paranormal investigator & curator of all things strange with a focus on Mountain State cryptids: an animal or creature that is claimed to exist, but never proven. We get right into hearing both popular legends & locals' accounts from Les' interviews about the likes of: The Wampus Cat; Snarly Yow the devil dog; Mothman; Ogua the giant-snapping tu...

Jonathan Kruk is a Hudson River Valley author, folklorist & master storyteller best known for his solo performances of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in the historic, 17th-century church that inspired Washington Irving's Halloween classic.  In his whimsical & hypnotic style, our guest bard recounts a slew of history & regional lore: a Native American Hudson River creation myth; a wat...

Vin Tabone is the New York film producer of a PBS-aired, two-part documentary on The Hudson River School: a genre of dramatic, mid-19th century landscape paintings depicting the grandeur & the divine in America's wildernesses. We learn about: the main artists in the movement starting with founder Thomas Cole; the reception from New York City critics; their adventuresome travels to jungles...

Daniel "Firehawk" Abbott of the Eastern Shore's Nanticoke tribe is a prehistoric technologist & the Native American interpreter for Historic Jamestowne. In this extensive & endlessly engaging episode, Daniel paints a picture of what Chesapeake Bay life would have been like, pre-&-early European contact . We hear of: virgin forests; Nanticoke merchants & trade items;...

Jay Meredith of Maryland's Eastern shore is the owner & tour guide of the historic Bucktown general store, as well as the founder of Blackwater Adventures kayak & bicycle rentals. Living within the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, and with his own American roots dating back to 1668, Jay has become something of an unofficial local historian & folklorist...

Captain Wade H. Murphy, Jr is a 5th-generation Tilghman Islander who oyster dredges from a national historic landmark, a skipjack named the Rebecca T. Ruark built in 1886. Being America's oldest commercial sailboat in operation & hearing from her ol' time waterman captain, makes this episode a slice of Chesapeake Bay living history.  We begin with family - his grandfather having fall...

Tom Horton is an environmental columnist, nature writer, documentary filmmaker, and teacher of writing & environmental studies at Salisbury University on Maryland's Eastern Shore. With the soul of an early 20th-century poet & a lifetime spent on the Chesapeake Bay, Tom gets right to covering a handful of its many wonders & predicaments: the primordial horseshoe crab spawn; the ben...

The podcast is one year old! In this anniversary bonus episode we go over some highlights from the past year while reflecting on lessons learned and forecast a list of topics to cover in the following year. Then it's reading time, I relate various texts to themes brought up throughout the 24 episodes of the podcast: regarding hunting & pelts, a 17th-century fable about selling a bear skin...

Alpheus Chewning is a Virginia Beach author, folklorist, ghost-walk guide, and living historian with a focus on Chesapeake Bay pirates, the Civil War, & regional hauntings. In this episode we get a taste of what it would have been like aboard a pirate ship during the Golden Age of Piracy [1680 - 1730]. We learn about their egalitarian ethics, ship contracts & recruitment; what they ate; ho...

Paul Murdoch is an amateur paleontologist, fossil hunting guide, ghost hunter, and certified Chesapeake Bay Storyteller operating out of Calvert County, Maryland on the bay's western shore. A highly engaging educator, Paul teaches us about the comet impact that formed the bay [35 million years ago] and why the Calvert Cliffs region is renowned for fossils of the Miocene epoch [8-22 million ye...

Teresa Boardwine is a registered herbalist with the American Herbalist Guild, as well as a teacher and the founder of Green Comfort School of Herbal Medicine in Washington, Virginia. In this fluid & truly magical episode we take a metaphorical [& metaphysical] walk down to the river behind Teresa's home for a glimpse into wild medicinal plants, history, and spirit. We learn about wild...

Ron Boehme is a sporting dog enthusiast, breeder, wingshooter, & host of the popular The Hunting Dog Podcast. While a resident of Michigan, Ron has a 2nd-home in the Shenandoah Valley where I was able to catch him passing through for a fascinating & passionate episode about the bond between hunter and dog. We begin with a rundown on hounds, pointers, and retrievers - the three categories o...

Caroline Seitz - aka Cobra Caroline - is a Northern Virginia wildlife educator specializing in reptiles & amphibians. While her vocation is to teach kids to love nature, this fun & educational & infectiously joyous episode is for all ages. We begin by covering the timely news on "herpetological spring": salamander migrations, spring peepers, vernal pools, gorging snakes, regi...

Greg McCoy is a Virginia caver specializing in vertical caving [similar to rock-climbing rappelling but into a black hole...]. In this educational episode we get an introduction to all things caving: the difference between a spelunker & a caver; horizontal & vertical caving; white nose syndrome  [a fungus devastating to bats]; pouring dye into cave streams to test ground water; what sorts...

Frank Escalona is a Chilean-born avid outdoorsman - backpacker, fisherman, hunter, adventurer - whose outdoor life has stretched from Patagonia, to Washington's Cascade Range, and now Virginia's Blue Ridge. The themes of this episode are adventure, mentorship, and facing dangerous megafauna. Pre-interview I read a lesson from a 19th-century mentor to his mentee: a shikari's [an Indi...

Susan Leopold, PhD of Linden, Virginia is an ethnobotanist, plant advocate, and the executive director of United Plant Savers [a non-profit focused on the conservation of medicinal plants]. The theme of this episode is history: a post-civil war connection to Susan's property, her Patawomeck ancestry [including the Pocahontas controversy], and the centuries-old ginseng trade which is currently...

Having no guest for this episode, we spend a rainy, snowy early winter morning reading stories by the fire. First we start locally, with two short folk tales from my mountains about spirit dogs and 'jack-ma-lanterns' read from  Virginia Folk Legends edited by Thomas E. Barden .  Next, I find the answer to my question about otter edibility in Norse mythology through a misadventure of Odin...

Donna La Pré of Washington, Virginia is a Biodynamic gardener, artist, herbalist, small-batch skin care producer, natural dyer, and perfumer - all under the umbrella of her home business, Tender Flower. Seated outside the charming potting shed in her autumnal garden, we begin by hearing about Donna's ancestry followed by how the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner [anthroposophy] clicked on a deep l...

Katie McMillan Crutchfield is the chef & owner of The Dancing Bear Cafe: a renovated chicken hatchery nestled in the corn fields of Corder, Missouri amongst her old farm house, 2 AirBnB rentals, 13 peacocks, 5 horses, 5 cats, 7 dogs, a multitude of chickens & ducks, one pig & a pony. And then there’s the wildlife…orphaned raccoons, killer foxes, and leaderless coyotes. In this fun and...