The Arctos School is Missy Rohs and a wide, wild community of students and alumni and guest instructors and friends in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

The seeds of Arctos were planted in 2005 when Missy met Gradey Proctor while volunteering for Bark, an organization dedicated to protecting the Mt. Hood National Forest outside of Portland, Oregon. Gradey and Missy quickly realized that they shared a intensely nerdy love of plants, with complimentary perspectives: that of an ecologist/botanist and an herbalist/healer. It didn’t take long for them to realize that they both enjoy teaching, too: At that point, Gradey was already moonlighting as a botany instructor, while Missy had been leading radical first aid and civil rights trainings for years.

By the following year, Portland plant medicine classes were few and far between. Local herbal community leaders like Cascade Anderson Geller, Colette Gardiner, and Krista Olson were on hiatus, in retirement, or had moved out of town. Missy and Gradey decided to step up to fill that gap, offering plant walks and herbal hikes. The community response was resounding! By the time 2007 rolled around, the Arctos School was in full swing.

Since that first year of offering a community herbalism program (originally titled Herbalism & Ecosystems), the Arctos School has grown and developed. Missy’s offerings are more in-depth than ever before, and she brings decades of lived experience with medicinal plants to the classroom. Gradey has stepped back to focus on his green thumb; while he still participates in Arctos as a guest instructor, his main role is at Medicine Garden, an independent plant nursery. Through it all, the enthusiasm for plant healing has continued to grow in Oregon. Arctos is thrilled to be a part of this local and continent-wide renaissance of plant wisdom, nature connection, ethical foraging, community support, and do-it-ourselves culture.