I’ve watched Chetna shape a slow life in the Dolomites, where her work as a chef is inseparable from her devotion to the wild.

Her reverence for ingredients reaches far beyond cooking—into forests, meadows, and the quiet places where they first take root.

Foraging has become her way of weaving food with memory, medicine, and belonging.

In this conversation, Chetna reflects on how foraging is less about gathering plants and more about attunement—listening, remembering, and discovering one’s place within the living world.

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‍Q How did you start foraging- how do you view your relationship with the mountains?

The Dolomites are jagged, ancient limestone peaks, softened by forests and alpine meadows, alive with seasonal rhythms. I live in Belluno, where foraging is a tradition carried through memory and practice.

I’ve been living and foraging here for over seven years, but my true relationship with it began during COVID. In that uncertain time, I turned to the forest—and found more than I was seeking: a rhythm I could trust. Walking beneath the canopy, breathing in damp earth and pine, I felt myself recalibrating toward equilibrium.

Foraging became less about gathering plants and more about listening—to the land, and to myself. To me, the forest is a living presence, a companion I return to again and again.

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Q Is there a particular plant that mirrors a lesson you've been learning in your life?

We don’t forage Stella Alpina- it is sacred, meant to be witnessed, not possessed. Blooming in the harshest terrains of the Dolomites, it embodies resilience and grace. I’ve been blessed by its presence while hiking through the high mountains. The flower is star-shaped and silvery-white as if dusted with moonlight. It belongs wholly to its place, never demanding attention yet unforgettable once seen. Like the essence of the divine feminine—quiet, enduring, attuned.

Q Are there any small rituals or sensory moments that anchor you during foraging - seasonal sights & smells or how you prepare your tools?

True presence even on a simple forest walk is a ritual. The forest will speak in textures, scents, shifts in light. Each season will reveal its own treasures, if you’re paying attention. A flicker of green where nettles push through, the honeyed scent of acacia on a warm breeze, a rustle that might mean mushrooms are tucked beneath leaf litter.

I often forage with a small basket and a cloth, never plastic. My tools are simple: a knife I’ve carried for years, a linen pouch, my hands. But the real preparation is inward—a softening, a tuning in.

What anchors me most is reverence towards the land. The forest is both a temple and a teacher, when entered with respect, you’ll most often be met with generosity.

Q Do you ever feel that certain plants find you, not the other way around? Have any become companions or guides in your foraging life?

Each plant has arrived like a marker in my life, carrying its own lesson or energy. They’ve been guides, companions and messengers from the living world.

Like nature’s calendar, their appearance can mirror inner seasons. I remember a spring of grief, when the first elderflowers opened—soft, fragrant, fleeting—whispering that this, too, would pass. And a summer when nettles rose in abundance, just as I was learning to draw boundaries—their sting and nourishment intertwined.

Pay close attention, and you’ll see: these plants are not beside the path, they are the path.

They mark where you are in the cycle, and hint at what comes next. Delicate elderflowers ripening into dark, potent elderberries showed me that transformation is gentle, and sweetness comes not from striving, but from surrender.

Each plant carries its own spirit. Wild garlic grows abundant with its exuberance and fire. Acacia blossoms are like love songs you must lean in to hear. Mugwort is lunar and dreamlike, opening the gates of intuition.

Each arrival is a lesson in rhythm, change, and transformation.

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Q How do you practice reciprocity with the land? Are there gestures, pauses, or offerings that are part of how you gather?

It’s intuitive—but always with the belief that the forest sees us—our energy, our intention—more clearly than we see ourselves.

Reciprocity is a way of saying: I see you too. For me, gathering is never just taking—it’s an exchange. Before or after I forage, I offer something back to the forest. Sometimes it’s cacao beans, sometimes tobacco. Often, I light an incense and say a gratitude prayer.

Q Are there any ancestral memories or family traditions tied to foraging, food, or medicine-making that have made their way into your days?

One of the most enduring gifts I’ve received from these mountains is St. John’s Wort oil, Herba di San Giovanni. My friend Valentina makes it the old way, following her great-grandmother’s handwritten recipe—bottling tinctures: by season, by sun, by instinct.

“Hypericum perforatum blossoms gathered at the summer solstice are left to steep in Olive or Almond oil until they turn a deep crimson—the colour of fire, blood, and light. More than a balm, it feels enchanted, carrying the healing intelligence of the sun itself.”

Now a part of my home apothecary, each time I use it—for burns, cuts, bruises—I feel connected not just to the plant, but to the lineage of women who have worked with it before me. Here in the Dolomites, remedies like this are passed quietly, through hands and stories. I see it as inheritance that carries medicinal knowledge and memory.

Q How do you feel your identity and roots shape the way you approach land, plants, and nourishment?

Growing up in India, within Hindu philosophy, we are taught to see the divine in all of nature—trees, rivers, stones, animals—each held as sacred. That reverence shaped my inner world, even if living in Delhi kept me distant from the wilderness itself. I still believed in nature’s sanctity, but rarely felt the connection.

That shifted when I came to the Dolomites. Surrounded by mountains and ancient forests, this belief turned into relationship. My roots have given me reverence. The Dolomites, a connection.

“True nourishment goes beyond food—it is presence. It is walking with humility and awe through a living world, where the divine is everywhere, waiting to be seen.”

Q How do you balance the joy of foraging with the responsibility of not taking too much? What ethical or ecological principles guide you?

Foraging brings deep joy, but it’s rooted in responsibility. I never take more than needed—leaving plenty for the ecosystem and for others–human or wild. One of the ways I protect these places is by keeping them secret. I don’t share exact locations or geotag them online. Some places aren’t meant to become destinations—they’re meant to be discovered, stay sacred and alive.

“To love a place is also to shield it. The forest gives generously, but it’s not infinite. Ethical foraging begins with restraint and reverence, and the wisdom to know when not to pick.”

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Q For someone new to foraging, what’s one thing you’d want them to understand before they step into the woods?

‍Enter with reverence. The forest, like the mountains or the sea, is a living presence—not a place to conquer, but to connect with. Before you begin, pause and ask permission. Leave your ego behind. Foraging isn’t just about taking—it’s about listening, respecting, and remembering that you’re stepping into something ancient. Walk slowly. Offer your attention. Let the land decide what it’s ready to share.

Q Is there a particular plant that has appeared at a turning point in your life? What did it show you?

Yes—psilocybin. I know it might sound cliché in today’s context, but for me it was not about a “trip.” It was an initiation—deep, embodied, undeniable. And it didn’t happen in a living room in London or a club in Berlin. It happened here, in the mountains, among the wild. These mushrooms weren’t bought—they were found. Or perhaps, they found me.

It became one of the most awakening moments of my life: eating wild psilocybin under an open sky, as the sun was setting and the forest exhaled all around me.

What opened wasn’t hallucination—it was a tenderness I had never known. A deep, almost aching empathy for the living world. The boundary between body and land seemed to dissolve. Every stone, stream, and blade of grass felt alive—communicating gently, endlessly.

It came to me as a teacher. As Terence McKenna once said, “it was not about escaping reality, but meeting it more fully.” That night felt like a soft cosmic embrace—subtle yet irrevocable. A quiet but profound shift in how I see nature, life, and myself within it.

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Q Lastly, if the Dolomites could whisper something to everyone reading this - a message from the land itself - what do you imagine they’d say?

‍Trekking through these sharp limestone ridges and wind-carved summits demands complete presence. Every step on their rocky spine is a kind of meditation—no room for distraction, no space for ego. The Dolomites have taught me that the only way to truly belong here is to be fully awake in the moment. Not ahead, not behind. Just here. They have always whispered the same thing to me: Slow down. Be where your feet are.

"Everything you need is already here."

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‍Note: What you’ve read is part of Chetna’s personal journey—an intimate account of her own path. It is not shared as guidance or recommendation. At the time of her experience, psilocybin was taken in a place where its recreational use is legal. These reflections belong to her alone.

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