FRESH FACES: Return to the Wild with Sasha Emoniee
Commune began as a dream of rewilding - a path back to the rhythms of nature and a belief in reciprocity between people and the earth. For its founder, Sasha Emoniee, Commune is both a personal practice and a community offering, bridging the gap between urban life and the wildness that surrounds us.
“I wanted to get to know the nature already in front of me,” she explains. “To witness how an ecosystem creates and sustains itself, and to let plants guide the way.” At its core, Commune is about inviting more wildness into our paved-over world, honoring the cycles of life, and giving space for people—and plants—to be fully themselves.
Through Commune, Sasha shares truly local medicinal herbs, native plants grown in her garden, and multisensory experiences that bring together food, tea, and ritual. She curates edible landscapes, creates plant installations, and leads guided hikes that reconnect people with the magic that’s been here all along. “When we witness a plant or person through all of life’s cycles, we can really appreciate the energy it takes to bloom,” she says.
Herbivore: Tell us a bit about your story, how did you start Commune?
Sasha: Commune began as a path of rewilding, a dream of a return to natures rhythm, and as a value of reciprocity. Nature is wherever we are and it's up to each of us to tune in and find ways we can each tend our relationship with it and Commune is one of the ways I stay in connection. Commune is a way to bridge the space between people and nature, especially those who live within city limits and feel that their connection has been severed.
When Commune came to life, it was rooted in a desire to get to know the nature that was already right in front of me, to be a witness to how an ecosystem is created and maintained through its own wildness, and how allowing the plants (and animals!) to lead will always guide us back to “the way”. I’m just a believer in letting more wildness into our neat, regimented, paved over world and know that the deepest way to get to know earth, each other, and ourselves is by witnessing each other in our full cycles and allowing each other the space to be wild. When we witness plant or person through life cycles, we can really appreciate the energy required to produce a single bloom!
Through Commune I’m able to offer truly local medicinal herbs, wildflowers, native plants grown in my garden to the people in my community; multi sensory experiences that bring together plants, food, tea, and ritual; edible landscapes, plant installations that highlight plants I’ve grown and foraged; guided trail walks and plant id hikes that bring people back to the magic that’s been right in front of us the whole time; most of all Commune is a space created to bring us back to earth and the earth ways.
Herbivore: Where do your passions for herbs/gardening originate?
Sasha: I’ve grown up in nature- spending time in the forests, coasts, creeks, and canyons of California and there’s this thought that we have to leave our home or leave the city to be with nature, but I prescribe to the belief that we are always in nature and have the opportunity to allow more nature in and help our native ecosystem along by tending spaces where it can thrive. Gardening feels like a natural extension of valuing connection with nature and I’ve been tending small gardens or beds throughout my life but really in the last 8 years or so its revealed to be a true devotional offering that I can bring into my community. Tending land is an ancestral path for me, as it is honestly for most humans, I think each of us has it in us to create beautiful ecosystems and I think that every person on earth would have a passion for gardening if they were offered the resources. Witnessing a flower bloom, pulling a carrot out of the soil, or laying in a bed of chamomile will change your life.
Herbivore: What grounds you in the environment you live in specifically? (we'd love to know more about the nature that surrounds you!)
Sasha: California is so magical, I’ve lived here my whole life and feel like I am still discovering, exploring, and expanding my perspective of it. Just this month, I spent time with a beautiful, serene redwood forest that I had never gotten to know before now and it was such a reminder that there truly is always beauty and wonder when you’re open and keep a curious spirit.
I live in Los Angeles and i find that people are often shocked at the existence of all of the beautiful nature in and around it. LA may be known as a cityscape but I think of it as a huge nature space that happens to have an abundant city in the middle of it. In LA, we are surrounded by the most diverse array of mountain ranges, forests, desert, rivers, and ocean. We even have a huge urban wilderness right in the city at Griffith Park which is where i spend almost every day in winter and spring walking the fragrant canyons, spending time in the trees. In the summer i spend all my time sitting in every creek I come across in the mountains, I always say that if i was a body of water, I would be a creek.
Herbivore: What is the product (or products!) on the top of your Herbivore wishlist?
Sasha: Since I’m outside in a very dry climate everyday, I’m always looking for deeply moisturizing and protective care so the Coconut Cloud body cream and the Tremella Hydration Gel Cream are so nourishing. I especially love the gel cream layered over the NOVA brightening serum, it feels like it helps capture all the California sun I’m soaking up.
Herbivore: Show us one of your favorite herbs/plants and tell us why you love it!
Sasha: I simply love any plant that chooses to come across my path, my favorite is fully dependent on the season and what’s decided to show up in my garden. Right now, the last of the roses are blooming and developing into bright red rose hips, I can smell the native sage fragrant with white and purple flowers, the golden rod is tall and sunny, and the violets are spreading their little green heart shaped leaves preparing for their cold weather blooms. Each of them brings so much healing to us and their power is not only found in their medicine but in their beauty!
Herbivore: What is the life mantra you live by?
Sasha: The Beauty Way
Photos provided by Sasha Emoniee
Learn more about Sasha : https://www.instagram.com/sashaemoniee/
