A VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM FOUNDER BENJAMIN SCOTT CLARK

American Wilderness Botanicals

American Wilderness Botanicals is going through a massive transition.  We have been doing business in and from Jackson Hole, Wyoming since our founding in 2014.  The land and the Healing Barn have been an integral part of this great business.  The land including the house and barn were in a trust and sadly the high expense of doing business in Teton County, Wyoming, along with exorbitant property taxes forced us to put the property up for sale.  The property sold in June and American Wilderness Botanicals has been relocated to Lander, Wyoming area along the southeastern foothills of the great Wind River Mountains where the Wyoming desert/prairie meets the alpine region.  This location is even more rural than our previous location.  We look forward to putting everything back together piece by piece and in the coming months look forward to doing business with you our fantastic customers.  Thank you for your patience with us and please do not hesitate at all to contact me, Ben Scott Clark at (307) 690-8155, with any questions whatsoever you may have.  Please note that our spa and massage offerings will be discontinued through the foreseeable future.  Thank you again.

American Wilderness Botanicals is the premiere company of its kind in the Jackson Hole, Wyoming and greater Yellowstone region including the Grand Teton range, Wind River Range and the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming.  We wildcraft (wild harvest) virtually all of our botanicals from various places in and surrounding the valley such as remote forest areas and some private ranches (through permission of landowners) that are protected conservation easements.  All of our products are used for their aromatic value, for personal care and they are also used for their medicinal properties.

Connecting You To The Healing Powers of Wilderness.  We hold a variety of workshops focusing on plant medicine, workshops the cover the historic Native American use of indigenous plants for food and for healing.  We raise a deep and holistic awareness of the natural world.  Our workshops are hands on educational experiences that teach people how they can forage for food and plant medicine.  We also support Native American Food Sovereignty.  Through colonization of Europeans to North America over the past 200 plus years most of the Native people eventually lost their historic and spiritual relationship to their food sources.  Today many Native American people are suffering with debilitating diseases like diabetes, cancer and heart disease.  There is ample evidence that when they return to indigenous food sources (what Sean Sherman calls "Food Sovereignty") they heal from these debilitating diseases and reconnect with the healing power of nature.  Native American Food Sovereignty is about restoring Native American people to their indigenous food sources.  All of us can benefit greatly from this knowledge.

https://missoulian.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/native-americans-turn-to-decolonized-diet-to-fight-diabetes-more/article_ed9d61ee-37ca-11e4-98a1-0019bb2963f4.html

The Red Desert Tour is an amazing experience that we started last year in the midst of Wyoming's vast Red Desert region covering an area larger than the state of Connecticut.  John Mionczynski (ethnobotanist and biologist) has a vast amount of knowledge about this region of Wyoming.  John takes participants on a journey into the untouched American West across parts of the Oregon Trail, Overland Stage and Pony Express trails.  His knowledge and teaching is comprehensive about American history, Native history, geology, paleontology, ethnobotany and so much more.  His charisma and experience have enthralled many.

The History of American Wilderness Botanicals

American Wilderness Botanicals was established in the spring of 2014 though our research and development goes back as far as the Fall of 2008.  Our premiere product line is “IanBotanique.”  The name IanBotanique is the combination of two separate words from two different languages.  The word “Ian” means "wild" in the native Shoshone language and “Botanique” is of course the French word for "plants."  Hence the meaning of the name combination of IanBotanique is wild plants.

The native Shoshone and Crow tribes traded their goods including herbs, seeds and other botanical knowledge they had with the French mountain men and fur traders who had begun to arrive in Shoshone territory (part of which included the valley of the Grand Teton mountains) during the early 19th century.  The French in turn shared their knowledge of European botany and European herbal remedies such as the art of herbal infusion (steeping herbs in alcohol, oil or water in order to create medicines) with the Native people and other native tribes of the region.

IanBotanique reflects the sharing of the Shoshone and French traditions.  The French advanced and perfected the art of botanical distillation in the process of making perfume, personal care and medicinal products.  They originally used the hydrosols (herbal hydrophilic distillates) and also used the essential oils obtained from the distillation process for everything from skincare, medicines to their world famous perfumes and colognes. Hydrosols or “Herbal distillates” are also called "floral waters" and are made by distilling leaves, flowers, fruits, tree bark and other plant parts. Hydrosols have similar therapeutic properties as essential oils.  These distilled botanical waters have a similar aroma to the essential oil from the same plant but typically more subtle.  This is because the water soluble constituents are only present in the hydrosol and not in the essential oil.  These herbal distillates have uses as flavorings, medicine and skincare.  Herbal distillates go by many other names including floral water, hydrosol, hydrolate, herbal water and essential water.” (Source: Wikipedia).

LEWIS & CLARK, SACAJAWEA, NC WYETH. Classic painting by N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945)

 
American Wilderness Botanicals
P.O. Box 457
Lander, WY  82520