The Local Wild Life Café is open every "Turtle Tuesday" and "Frog Friday" from 11:11 am until 2:22 pm. A plate of flaxseed crackers is set before me by one of Katrina Blair’s interns, a full-headed beauty, with dreadlocks to her waist, and a clean white apron. I‘ve been to the café many times. I’ve become addicted to the crackers, to the fresh raw foods that show up on the white lunch plate twice a week.

Today for lunch they serve a minted wheatgrass drink, followed by a zingy cold carrot soup with sprouted beans and ginger. The main course is alfalfa sprouts with chopped nuts topped with a light green goddess dressing. Next comes zucchini and yellow squash lasagna. And finally, for dessert— apricot cobbler. All the ingredients come from Katrina’s backyard garden.

Katrina’s house is located in Hidden Valley, an overgrown valley less than 5 miles from town, close to the beginning of the Colorado Trail. It has a cold cellar to store vegetables and several decks

On one of the decks two young interns harvest a pile of recently picked kale. There are two more interns in the kitchen trying to figure out how to use the cheese wheels from the malo plants. The one from Guatemala decides that they will pickle them. "They are a delicacy."

Across the road from the main house there’s more land, a windmill, organic fruit trees and a dozen beehives.

Katrina Blair: When I was eighteen, I camped out in the woods for a summer, by myself eating mostly wild foods. I brought flaxseeds, buckwheat and sunflower seeds and soaked them in the morning for breakfast. I ate greens, berries and roots from the wild. I worked in town with Parks and Recreation and would bike back and forth, stashing my bike in the woods before retreating to my camp. Sometimes if my students didn’t finish their lunches, I would ask "You don’t want that?" and eat their leftovers. At one point, I stayed in the woods for two weeks without coming to town. I remember thinking— "I need to talk to someone!"

In the beginning, when I first started camping out in the woods, I was a little nervous about being alone. Not scared of animals, but humans. So I slept with the little wooden hatchet that I used for making fires next to my pillow for a week. Nothing happened of course. The fear went away and never returned. My camp was very well hidden. Even my father couldn’t find me.

I realized I wanted to follow my calling for sustainable living in more depth. I went to graduate school in Orinda, California at John F. Kennedy University for Holistic Health Education. There I met like-minded people who wanted to expand their consciousness. I was blessed to live on the edge of Redwood Regional Park where the wild plants were abundant, delicious and just outside my door. Online at: Turtle Lake Refuge.org