Spru-Seal® (to feel the spruce heal!) was crafted to bring the healing powers of the Forest into our everyday modern life. But all along, we didn’t only want to bring the Forest to the People; we also wanted to bring the People back into the Forest, our ancestral homeland.
The Circle of Spruce Healing was inspired by the mushroom and its mostly unseen, yet crucial, role in the Ecosystem's renewal and rejuvenation, and it was finally completed this summer, shortly after committing to be an official part of the 2023 Telluride Mushroom Festival!
Over the past 5 years, the more time we spent out foraging in the Forest, the clearer it became that People used to play a key role in the Forest ecosystem, as if it was our home, or at least our farm, to be tended and cherished and stewarded for posterity as the land of great abundance that it is.
For many thousands of years, the Human Beings living in the mountains every summertime would collect "ladder fuel" as fuel for cooking and for extra warmth on those crisp summer and autumn alpine nights. These nomadic Native Peoples are known to have set their seasonally settled areas ablaze as they left with the new season, knowing that upon their return there would be a renewal of greater abundance than if they had left the land unattended, wild & unruly.
After only 100 years of hands-off forest management policy, the scope of simply clearing the millions of acres of flammable, compostable, nearly impassable, dead lower branches, known to wildland firefighters as "ladder fuels" and felling all the dead-standing, beetle-killed trees to the ground to reduce chances of wildfire ignitions by lightning strikes along with the risk of canopy-sweeping, uncontrollable blazes is worthy of an entire Army of Fire Mitigators.
Currently, there are only 30,000 US Forest Service employees managing millions of acres of Forest. There are currently some 20,000 homeless Veterans in the United States, who are already trained for and somewhat used to and might even prefer the outdoor lifestyle.
See where this is going?
On July 3rd, 2023, Spru-Seal® and the Forage It! Brandship established the Spruce Healing Initiative 501(c)-3 as the final missing puzzle piece in the Circle of Spruce Healing, with its intention being to end Veteran homelessness and far exceed the number of Foraging Fire Mitigators that we bring back to the Forest, beyond what our production of Spru-Seal & the Forage It! Brands can feasibly sustain on our own, towards a healthier Forest & a more resilient Society for USAll to enjoy and share with our posterity.
Via the Spruce Healing Initiative, we’ll be able to provide quality camping gear & foodstuffs from local outdoor retailers along with regular burritos, burgers & sandwiches donated from local restaurants, all on top of being able to pay People for their valuable, lightly physical, focused, therapeutic labor of clearing the Forest of its natural wildfire hazards alongside other warrior spirits in the camaraderie of a group setting, fulfilling their true purpose as soldiers, guarding the edges of the Civilized World, right here at home.
