Many people ask us, ‘Why Blue Otter?’ We spent a good deal of time thinking of a name as we were envisioning our school. Since the heart of the school comes from the Native American teachings Karyn was raised with, we included one of her family plants, blue cohosh, into the name. Besides being a beautiful and elegant plant, blue cohosh is deer medicine; heart medicine. The energy of the otter brings a grace, gentleness, playfulness and generosity to the school that we also felt was key to the learning environment we were creating.
We had been teaching for many years prior to the creation of this school, but this was a new level of immersion into the world of plants that we wanted to create for our students. We moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to the mountains of far, Northern California and opened the doors of the Blue Otter School of Herbal Medicine in 2003.