Lyrra Magda is a folk botanist, hide tanner, and teacher based in the Southeast & Mid-Atlantic regions. She studies the plants and animals of these landscapes through the simple immersion of living close to them— cutting wood, carrying water, living in simple structures like tents and cabins, cultivating wild and domestic plants into a blur that erases their distinctions, raising animals, and processing roadkill.

She has taught nature based classes since 2014, and has facilitated plant walks since 2009. She mainly teaches adults, in both public & private classes, both indoors & outdoors. Lyrra’s special focuses include resilient, bio-regionally sensible plant foods, an animistic approach to animal dismemberment that involves using nearly all the parts of the body, bioregional hide tanning, and fiber crafts.

Lyrra is also a spinner, writer, primitive tattooer, occasional goatherd, herbalist, and lover of walking. She is driven by a bottomless love for the plants and creatures of the Southeast, as well as a profound urgency to help human communities to reweave relationships with the land—in order to envision village life, and to act in resistance to systems of exploitation.

I met Lyrra a number of years ago when I attended my first ever plant walk which she led, and I was blown away by the depth of knowledge and connection Lyrra clearly had with plants. In our conversation Lyrra shares how her intimacy with plants, animals, and the land is essential to her survival and well-being. An important part of that intimacy for Lyrra is processing wild animals for food and other products. This involves working with all the parts of the animal including the ones most humans today may find revolting. We also reflect on the shadows and limitations of many spiritual and land based communities we have encountered, and how we can learn from these experiences.

Link to Lyrra’s fall class schedule: https://www.stormsofdaylight.com/fall-fiber-series
Follow Lyrra on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/heymagdamagda/
Learn more about Jake Ifshin and the Four Gardens at https://www.fourgardenspodcast.com/
Follow Ari Rubens at https://www.arirubens.com/
Stick around to the end for a health tip from Ari