We’re standing in the middle of a forest in Canada’s Banff National Park, when Jordan Ede, an Indigenous guide with Mahikan Trails, swipes a finger across the trunk of an aspen tree. “The whiter bark has a powder that can be used for sunscreen,” he says. “The powder is yeast, and you can use it for bread or beer.” Perhaps most impressively, he explains, it contains salicylic acid, the anti-inflammatory ingredient in aspirin. He then points out rose hips, high in vitamin C, and moss, which in the past would have been used to line baby-carriers; their antiseptic and absorbent properties acted as diapers and prevented rashes. And over there is a member of the nightshade family that could sedate injured warriors—or kill them if used incorrectly.
Many hikers in these parts keep their eyes tilted upward, toward the snow-capped Canadian Rockies or the abundant wildlife, but this “medicine walk” recenters our focus down toward the earth, on blades of grass, patches of moss, wildflowers, and weeds. Our small-group tour began solemnly a few minutes earlier in a clearing at Cascade Ponds, with Ede leaving behind a small offering of tobacco—one of four sacred plants, alongside sage, red cedar, and sweetgrass. “You give tobacco when you’re taking anything,” he says, “and we’re taking knowledge.”
Mahikan Trails is one of a growing number of tour companies and hotels offering foraging experiences that focus on identifying plants not for how delicious they taste but for their medicinal properties. Known by different names such as medicine walks or herbal walks, these experiences aren’t the wellness space’s first foray into the woods. Recent years have seen the popularization of forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, the Japanese practice of finding mental, physical, and spiritual well-being by simply setting off among the trees. Medicine walks take the healing power of nature a step further: Beyond passively letting plants work their magic, guests take an active role in learning to identify them and their various uses.
Forests, it turns out, can be grocery stores and farmers’ markets, but they can also be pharmacies and first-aid kits—and scientific research is now very often proving exactly what people have known for generations.
“There are plants that can help you to sleep, help people to manage tooth pain, deal with migraine and all sorts of pain, plants that can help someone who is having anaphylaxis, heart attack, and many more,” says Brenda Holder, the Cree and Iroquois Métis entrepreneur—and Ede’s mother—behind Mahikan Trails. In the 1990s, she and her husband, a British army veteran, began taking Canadian and British soldiers out into the wilderness to teach them adventure and survival skills, and by 2000, she shifted her focus toward tourism and traditional plant medicine. Now, in her role as a “knowledge keeper,” she’s often called upon to teach these widely forgotten skills to fellow members of her Indigenous community.
“It is such a great bridge-builder between people,” says Holder, who also serves as vice-chair of the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada. “It is a wonderful way to teach people to really respect the land, which is very important to us. . . . It is a great way for non-Indigenous people to learn about truth and reconciliation.”
Through his company Walkabout Cultural Adventures, Aboriginal tour operator Juan Walker introduces the healing plants of the Daintree Rainforest to guests.
Photo by James Fisher/Tourism Australia
In fact, these medicine walks can be a subtly political act, as Indigenous communities around the world relearn knowledge that colonizing forces had long ago regulated or even prohibited. In Australia, Aboriginal tour operator Juan Walker, of the Kuku Yalanji people, has been guiding in Queensland’s Daintree Rainforest for two decades, and through his company Walkabout Cultural Adventures, he now shares his skills with guests at the luxurious Silky Oaks Lodge.
“Quite a lot has been lost due to forced assimilation and bans on practicing culture during the transitional period from the mid-1800s until the 1970s,” Walker says, referring to a period during which the Australian government and church organizations forcibly removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders from their families. “We still practice as much as possible and teach the next generation.” Community members continue to innovate new usages for the medicines they find: Green ants, for instance, are rich in vitamins C and B12, zinc, and magnesium and are a traditional cough-suppressing remedy, which made them a popular way to treat COVID-19 symptoms.
“I think that people are blown away that nature can give you what you need, and the medicine normally grows where you need it,” he says. “[Plants that act as] eye drops on the coastal environments for when you get sand in the eye, or flowers to keep you hydrated where there is no fresh water. If you understand the land, what you need is right there.” Medicine walks have become an increasingly popular way to commune with Australian nature across the continent, including in Tasmania (the wukalina Walk is a guided four-day hike owned and operated by the Palawa people) and the Northern Territory (Maruku Arts offers bush medicine experiences with female Anangu elders).
And it’s not only Indigenous communities who are reconnecting with the ancient wisdom of plant medicine. Greeks and Romans catalogued hundreds of species of plants that could do everything from act as birth control to treat wild dog bites, and readers of Shakespeare will recall Romeo and Juliet’s Friar Lawrence turning to herbs to help the young lovers.
At Rosewood Schloss Fuschl outside of Salzburg, herbalist Martina Egger, leads guests on plant-focused Alpine strolls. Whatever they forage can later be used in spa treatments.
Courtesy Rosewood
At such European hotels as the Fife Arms in the Scottish Highlands and Cervo Mountain Resort in Zermatt, Switzerland, guests can join in walks to learn about the bounty surrounding them. Rosewood Schloss Fuschl, which opened in summer 2024 in a 15th-century royal hunting lodge outside of Salzburg, Austria, connects guests with local herbalist Martina Egger, who leads guests on plant-focused Alpine strolls. She traces the rise of such tours to what she calls “people’s growing longing for nature,” or Natursehnsucht. While we’ve always intuitively known that nature can relax us, she says, “Science is now continuously providing more evidence to support it.”
An avid climber and hiker, Egger discovered the health benefits of these plants after originally foraging for culinary purposes. “I find Hippocrates’ famous saying, ‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food,’ to be particularly relevant when it comes to wild plants,” she says. Egger explains that wild garlic, for instance, is a detoxifier that strengthens blood vessels and lowers blood pressure, while ribwort plantain can relieve pain, heal wounds, and treat coughs (no wonder it appears in that ultimate Alpine health product, Ricola). Particularly abundant in the Fuschlsee region are bitter plants that aid with metabolism, curb sugar cravings, and stimulate digestion, such as gentian, masterwort root, bloodroot, and dandelion.
Upon returning from their walk, guests can join Egger in a workshop, during which they learn how to turn these herbs into tinctures, salves, and teas. Or they can simply enjoy the benefits of the foraged herbs at the on-site Asaya Spa, where they’re applied during massages, infused into oils, and added to the sauna as a form of aromatherapy. For Egger, there’s an additional bonus: Learning about and finding your own healing ingredients instills a sense of self-sufficiency. “Through active, nature-based experiences,” she says, “I want to help people discover the inspiration and strength that nature offers.”
