On Becoming Hoary

Appearing on the side of the path like an apparition, the almost ghostly white flowers and upper leaves of this singular plant stood almost three feet tall. Amid a sea of blue American bellflowers, late boneset, brown mullein stalks and the yellow of spotted St. John’s wort, this plant was calling me. Each flower cluster was held up to the sky, composed of a bouquet of small delicate flowers taking turns blooming, so that the effect was of a burst of furry white and light green petals offering themselves to their pollinators. Captivatingly, while the lower leaves on the plant remained deeply green, the leaves nearest the flower clusters had turned a silvery grayish green.

Hoary mountain mint, my phone app told me, was their name. Hoary is an old word with roots in Old English, meaning gray or white, often used to describe white frost or someone or something extremely old and worthy of respect. And that fit, as I felt this plant was a wise crone, a matriarch, an elder, who had something to share with me.

She seemed to be calling me, beckoning me. And I say she, even though I rarely use gendered pronouns for my flowers, because I had a powerful feeling that she was an embodiment of our Mother Earth—a life-giving mother who hold us and always brings forth new life. I also had an immediate sense of the Lady who came to me in my artwork twelve years ago, holding out her hands, offering me her gifts and asking me to accept them.

I had gone on a hike to this spot—a meadow created by a powerline cut through the forest—hoping to find a huge stand of pokeweed like I had seen here in previous years. But of course, the flowers had other ideas of what I needed that day. Standing tall and regal, the mountain mint radiated like a beacon for a sanctuary I hadn’t realized I was looking for. Her silvery white flowers and leaves formed a crown of wisdom above her deep green leaves as she stood waiting for me.

Somewhat inexplicably, she reminded me of an experience I had on my Mary Magdalene pilgrimage last fall. When I stood by the Mediterranean Sea, at the mouth of the Rhone River, I could sense her standing on that unknown shore, surrounded by nothing she knew, having arrived in a rudderless boat after a treacherous journey. Yet still, she stood strong and sure of herself, knowing she was exactly where she was meant to be.

And now I felt this same presence in the mountain mint standing strong and wise before me. This flower—even though she was the only one of her kind in the whole meadow—was surrounded by community who seemed to give her all the space and respect she was worthy of, whether she was a newcomer or a returning ancestor.

She was stately, sure of her place, of her calling to me, and of her message. I felt like I had always known this flower, or the spirit of this flower, from one life to another.

Hoary mountain mint said to me, “Here we are, right beside you. Even when you can’t see us, we are with you. It’s always been this way—this love story that we share, life after life. You can hear our voices on the wind. You can feel us in your wide-open heart. You can see us in the beauty all around you. When you touch our flowers, we are connected. Know that you are never alone.”

And she was not only telling me I am always surrounded by beloved community. Much like my experience with Mary Magdalene, I knew she was also telling me to step boldly into my own hoariness—my elder years—to treasure them, to feel my crone wisdom settle into my bones, and to lean into my strength. I am flowering more than ever, feeding pollinators, participating in community, and bringing forth life.

Not too long before I met this mountain flower, I had read Perdita Finn’s new book Mothers of Magic for the second time. Standing in that meadow, I had the strongest sense that this flower was not only a guide there for me, but a mother. That in fact, all flowers are mothers. And I was reminded of this passage from her book:

“We can call upon river mothers and mountain mothers. We can call on the flowers as our mothers. We can call upon the stones. Look up at the sky and know that it is the mantle of one of our mother’s vibrant cloaks. Look down at our feet and know that the ground is our mother’s body. Drink water from a spring and know this life-giving water is flowing from the bosom of our mother. Know that every tree and every mountain and every river is also our mother. Remember that the whole Earth is our mother.”

I walked into this meadow looking for pokeweed and instead met a new friend who gave me a deeper sense of belonging, of community, and who invited me to become hoary with her— deepening my understanding that our silvering, our hoariness, is not the end of our flowering at all, but really only the beginning.

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An Invitation to Ripen Together

This encounter with hoary mountain mint is at the heart of the work I want to explore with you this autumn: what becomes possible when we begin to meet flowers not simply as beautiful beings we admire, but as elders, allies, and teachers?

At a time when so much in our world feels uncertain, the flowers offer us another way of being. They have lived through extraordinary change for more than 100 million years. They know how to belong, how to adapt, how to nourish community—and how to ripen and bring forth new life even as the season turns toward darkness.

RIPENING: A Flower Conversation for Uncertain Times is an invitation to enter more deeply into conversation with them. In this cultural time saturated with noise and fear, relating to these wise beings offers us a radically different way of understanding how we might live in our world. Their intelligence is relational; their strength communal. And they want to share it with us.

Tuesdays, 7:00–8:30 pm Eastern, September 15–October 13, 2026. To learn more about this five-week workshop, click HERE.

Mary Porter Kerns is the author of the forthcoming book, The Flowers Are Speaking: Listening to Nature’s Ancient Wisdom (Tarcher-Penguin Group, April 2027) that is an intimate journey into the entwined evolution of flowers and human beings—weaving together science, history, stories, and earth-based mysticism to offer a radical vision of how we can best reconnect with the intelligence of plants and the ancient guidance of the earth. In fall of 2022 she self-published the first edition of her oracle cards, also called The Flowers Are Speaking, that sold out in three months.

Her highly acclaimed workshops teach participants how to experience the flowers as she does through their own senses, intuition and imagination.

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