Katrina Blair, founder of Durango's Turtle Lake Refuge, will speak from 6 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 13 at the Pine iver Public Library. Turtle Lake Refuge is a wild-harvested, locally grown and living foods cafe and education center for the community.
The program will feature a lecture, wild food tasting, and question-and-answer session. Attendees can sample amaranth flax seed crackers with dandelion pesto and a wild berry cobbler.
Blair began studying wild plants in her teens when she camped out alone for a summer to focus on eating wild foods. She later wrote "The Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants of the San Juan Mountains" for her senior project at Colorado College.
In 1997, she completed her master's degree in holistic health education at John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, Calif.
She founded Turtle Lake Refuge in 1998. The non-profit's mission is connect personal health and wild lands. Blair teaches sustainable living practices and wild edible and medicinal classes locally and globally.
She also is the author of "Local Wild Life - Turtle Lake Refuge's Recipes for Living Deep" and "The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival."
Blair's talk is the second installment of the library's food-themed "Amazing Authors" series. The third and final installment of the Amazing Authors Series will feature Denver food journalist and microbrew blogger Ed Sealover speaking on May 8. For more information, call the library at 884-2222.
