Janice M. Juliano MSW LCSW

10/24/2025

High atop the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming, more than 9,600 feet above sea level, lies one of North America’s most mysterious and enduring ancient monuments — the Bighorn Medicine Wheel. Measuring 80 feet across and built from rough limestone, the wheel is made up of a central cairn surrounded by an outer ring connected by 28 spokes of stone. More than 100 similar circular stone structures have been found across the Rocky Mountains, but none are as large, well-preserved, or spiritually significant as this one.

Archaeologists believe the Bighorn Medicine Wheel was constructed between 300 and 800 years ago, though its origins may be far older, tied to generations of Indigenous peoples whose knowledge of the sky and seasons guided its design. The wheel is not random — its cairns and spokes align precisely with the summer solstice sunrise and sunset, as well as the rising points of certain bright stars, including Aldebaran, Rigel, and Sirius.

For the Crow, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Shoshone nations, the site remains sacred — a place for prayer, vision quests, and ceremonial gatherings. The circle, representing life, balance, and the interconnectedness of the universe, reflects beliefs that stretch back millennia.

Even today, visitors who make the long hike to the mountaintop often describe a quiet, humbling energy that feels timeless — as if the stones themselves are keeping watch over both earth and sky.

10/22/2025

10/20/2025

Plants are food and medicine.

10/09/2025

During a solar eclipse, trees in Italy synchronized their electrical signals, hinting at a collective forest intelligence.

In a remarkable discovery, scientists have found that trees may act as a "living collective," synchronizing their internal electrical signals in anticipation of a solar eclipse.

During the 2022 eclipse over Italy’s Dolomites, researchers recorded spruce trees aligning their bioelectrical activity hours before the event began.

This suggests that trees don’t just passively experience environmental changes—they anticipate and respond to them as interconnected organisms. The older the tree, the stronger its anticipatory signals, pointing to a potential transmission of ecological awareness across the forest.

Using custom sensors on living trees and even old stumps, the international team observed coordinated changes in voltage within cells, known as bioelectrical potentials. These signals, driven by ion flows across membranes, indicate trees might communicate and adapt collectively.

The findings lend strong support to the idea that forests are not merely clusters of individual plants, but interdependent systems where ancient trees play a key role in resilience and ecosystem intelligence. The study adds weight to growing calls to preserve old-growth forests for their unseen but vital ecological wisdom.