Returning.

9/1/12 -

Over two months have passed since we held the "Radical Joy for Hard Times" ceremony down in the woods where the logging occurred.  Ceremonies were held all over the planet on that day, June 23rd, and I felt deeply honored and blessed to welcome people here, old friends, and new friends alike, to both remember and renew a profound love for this embattled place.

Around 10 of us came that day with open hearts (and raincoats) and such willingness to love the land again, after all that has happened here.  We sat in circle and spoke of the losses, the knowledge that clear-cuts continue all over the planet, and of our desire to help heal and remember those places as sacred still.  I have often thought of those of us who are survivors of assaults, how none of us are any less beautiful, any less lovable and loved, after these episodes.  I still care for this land as passionately as ever, maybe even more-so now, and know that I am one of the people, one of the many spirits, who will help it heal.  There is great beauty in that.

"Radical Joy" is about celebrating the earth, what was here, what is left, and what will come again.  We cried, we laughed, we talked and prayed and sang to this piece of scarred hillside, to the spirits still lingering after their tall green bodies have left the land.  Each of us went off on our own from the circle, some planting seedlings, some walking the landscape, each of us a prayer, each of us a calling to a Creator that sees beyond this place to a wider sky, and endless knowing.

One dear old friend, Julie Woodward, spoke of the give-a-way inherent in this taking of the trees.  Native people around the world have understood that lives are sometimes sacrificed for a larger good, and I have come to learn again that we do not always know the purpose, the reason for what looks horrific on one plane, yet may be causing ripples out in directions we may not ever fathom.  I pray to understand what I can, and to accept what I may never know.

"Radical Joy for Hard Times" has a bird as its logo, and wherever their ceremonies take place they make a bird on the land.  One member of our group, Jan, made a bird out of tree limbs and scraps left by the logging.  Here is part of our bird now, 2 months later.  I stop and pray here each time I come down onto the logging site, remembering the day the bird was made and the love and kindness that  resides and resonates here, still present for all of us.

Recently they started logging off the land adjacent to this first clear cut.   I heard the chainsaws start up over a week ago and saw a clear space opening up in the woods behind another neighbor's home.  As I walk nearby and witness beautiful trees falling once again, I know the prayers and songs and tears from our "Radical Joy" group were meant for all of the lives here and beyond, echoing down this valley to the ones leaving now, and around the planet wherever the earth is harmed.

I see the land stripped bare again.  Sadly, I hear century trees thunder into the ground, yet this time I know, beyond a doubt, that the earth is resilient, that she heals herself while we help love her back to life.  I believe this, I have to believe this as more magnificent trees are leaving.

I have walked down into the initial logging next door and found signs of this resiliency everywhere.

                                   Small little maple trees have already grown several feet high.......

A multitude of green and growing plants have returned with the help of spring rains and summer sun.  They are not the tall giants living here before, but they are a new beginning.....

Even the tracks left by gigantic machines are filling in with hearty grass and vines.  A single blade of grass looms large to a tiny insect crawling beneath its own green forest, and who am I to say this is any less a marvel than tall old firs and waving maples?

                                     What new life will come from the trunk of an old friend?

Who will come to rest and nest in the heart of fallen trees, as this decades old nurse stump still nurtures life in new daylight after the logging?

This old sentry and I will watch and listen as the trees fall again nearby.  We will shudder and pray and hold on to the belief, the knowing, that the earth we stand on, the one who holds us, roots us, revives us, will once again grow well.  Whether we are here in body to see it is unknown, but a new earthen face will emerge, one of many over eons, and the tree and I will love her always.

Thank you to Judy Todd and the women who came onto the land for "Radical Joy."  You have helped my own heart heal, you have loved the land and I am forever grateful.

I've been ill for a month, getting over pneumonia, and have not been able to walk down into the woods.  I miss the feel of the land, even the wounded land, especially the wounded land.  It is essential to pray and continue loving the place where so much has happened, like loving the wounded after a war.  I am re-discovering again that what we love and who we love does not change over distance and time if we stay connected at heart.  I will always be connected here, long after my ashes are scattered among the trees I have loved for 22 years, as well as while I sit up here at home, reading books, waiting for tired lungs to mend and recover.

We will be doing ceremony here soon, a gathering of the people involved in "Radical Joy for Hard Times."  Twenty to thirty people will come onto the land with prayer flags, drums, shovels and songs.  My dear sister-friend, Judy Todd, is a member of this group and is organizing the day, and I am grateful.  It has been hard to be alone sometimes in this vigil for the trees - alone as they fell, alone in the devastation of landscape and habitat, the aftermath.  Then I remember that I have never been truly alone, that Spirit has witnessed every falling fir, the crash of every maple in the valley coming down to earth.  I have prayed my heart out, and I know those prayers have been heard, by the Spirits of the ones who are gone now, animal and plant, and by the ancestors and guardians of this land.  It will be good to have human companions here as we drum and pray, as we plant some of the pine trees I was given on my 60th birthday, as we share a love of the land and all its inhabitants.

Judy came out one day with me this winter after the logging was over.  She has been a true "woods witness" for decades, loving the land in many places, in many countries.  I feel honored to bring more people here who share this love and commitment to ending clear cuts, to restoring forests and wildlife sanctuaries.  I know each person coming keenly feels the losses any time a forest is leveled.  Their willingness to come here, to help heal this land, my homeland, is deeply touching.  Aho my friends.

2/9 -

More writing and photos from a week ago.

This blue striped sentry stands watch over the clear cut.  This was one of the trees saved from the devastation.

                                 



                                          This one didn't survive the cutting.

                              I find bits of blue bark scattered among the branches, reminders of who was here and
                              where they have gone.

               This is the cover of a card sent by a young friend of the family who knew nothing of the logging.  She has known my love of trees for years, maybe this is the intuitive way we can all relate when we care deeply about the land, about each other.  The card was perfect.


More writing from last week:
"Timber Management" it says on the sign that marks the start of the massacre.  It begins with calling living trees "timber," as if their only purpose here was to serve as income crops.  It ends with bare hillsides waiting for winter landslides, brown and gold salamanders smashed into the muddy tracks of men and machines who do not care who is killed, who lies buried under the wreckage left behind.

One day three small little birds chirped sporadically as they foraged into the blanket of branches now covering the ground.  They used to sing from trees, flying from branch to branch.  What has happened to their world?

Farther down the road, around the corner, an orange diamond sign warns of trucks entering the road - trucks, dozens and dozens of trucks and trees have been leaving for weeks.  It is a warning beyond the roadway, a call for something deeper, a call to serve others who live on this land.  The four-leggeds, the winged-ones, the ones who crawl above and below the ground.  What if we cared for the land with their welfare foremost in our thoughts.  What has happened to us, the guardians, that we value the money a forest can bring over the way we feel when we walk among their magnificence, sunlight shining through in God-rays?

Trampled ferns were the green of summer mornings, mossy branches inviting tender touch, softened lace pressed into skin, speaking of dew and rain and the nature of hiding spiders.

A whole ecosystem lies in the shambles of "Timber Management."  We lie in pieces too, those who decide a forest is expendable and the ones who wield the chainsaws, the ones who come to sudden, violent ends, the ones who grieve and mourn the loss.

2/9 -

I spend hours down in the clear cut, sitting at the base of a storm-topped tree, in the midst of the ruins of a forest.  "Come back to the trees" the Mother says, as I struggle to love them more than I hold anger at the losses, at the people who have done this.  Healing will come from love, and I still treasure this land, fiercely.












What to do with the horror of what has happened here.  Grief is palpable as mangled limbs and bark are left lying in the mud, half-burried in the giant tracks of machines and human indifference.

I walk down into the bare valley and come up to two huge old growth stumps, remembered well from walks down in the woods years ago, in search of the creek at the bottom of the valley, finding much more.  I used to lay on their wide table-top trunks, 7 - 8' across, such presence still.  Today their red insides crumble in my hands, their age exposed, a century of seasons going back into a patient earth who waits for life and time, seedlings sure to come with the grace of birds and scattered seeds.

I find a tiny hemlock halfway up the hillside. 3' tall and miraculously intact.  I pray that this little one becomes part of a forest here again.

And later, back home at the great Grandfather tree, I pray again for healing here, for peace in my own sad heart...then in the middle of a prayer, in the middle of a day and the woods I vow to protect, an owl flies across in front of Him, silent, sure.  Death medicine in Native American beliefs, I think she has come as a reminder that there is still life here - all of us flying, singing, crawling, running across the land that has endured for centuries.

I am relieved to see her.  In the death of the trees, I am learning how to hold love above all else, I am learning to trust the resilience of the Mother.  I smile and remember the army of us, the "Keepers of the Trees" in Ann Linnea's book, the friends I know who work to save our forests.  I pray that we some day outnumber the loggers, that we convince them trees are more valuable standing, providing beauty and refuge for all, that there is a balance between we humans in our wooden homes, and the great old soul trees left for our grandchildren.

I will welcome the days when the new seedlings are planted, by the workers, by the grace of birds and the miracle of seeds, all of them the future, each of them exquisite.

2/01 (cont.) -

I can see across the valley now, to the trees that were re-planted 10 years ago after another clear cut.  It is a mono-culture that will be clear cut again in another 30 years, as if trees were rows of corn to be harvested, as if they held no other meaning for us than their monetary value.

The machines have left huge footprints....

...digging deep into dark brown loamy earth, made rich by layers of trees.

Having technical difficulties, will try again later to finish this day of observations.

2/01/12 -

A reflection, what is lost, what still remains.

It was quiet yesterday, for the first time in many long weeks.  No machines, no familiar cutting, limbing, stacking sounds, no log trucks pulling away with the trees of this forest, only the silence of a clear cut.

The last time I walked down here the trees were down, waiting to be hauled uphill and off to the lumber mill in Molalla.  The standing maples left beside their fallen family sing to them, as I do, arms raised in prayer, thanking them for their many years of beauty here on the land.

A couple days of snow silenced the machines for the moment, but no white blanket covers up what has happened here.

                                                               

The hillside down below lies littered with the lives of hundreds of maples, scattered tall fir sentries hide in their midst.  I watched them fall from this very place, and I sing once again in their passing, gratitude in every note, every word, every sound a prayer for the spirits who remain.

I came down the trail yesterday, feeling the deep green shelter of the trees on "my" land, preparing to see what is left where the trees of my neighbors have stood, the hollow, empty space of a vanished forest.

How does anyone call this "thinning?"

This is no trail for roaming coyotes and deer.  No cougars walk through open land like this.  The natural habitat for animals, for all of us here, will never be the same again.












                                                             

1/21 –

Sweet memory of trees.

I raised my hand in prayer as I drove home by the clear cut tonight, light shining through the trees, the sillouettes of straggling survivors along the road, and the eery light of clear cut land where a forest used to be.

I thought of my neighbors, the people I have been trying to find compassion for, the ones I trusted to steward the beautiful land of our homes, the people who destroyed it.

The words “They have lost their way” came to me in a song, my heart softened, and I can say that for the first time in this month-long siege, I began to feel an empathy, a sense of what must lie heavy on their hearts and minds, the sheer weight they carry from the havoc they have wrought here.

I stood out on the deck, facing the clear cut and the decimated path I used to walk and sing my way down, unrecognizable now, a war zone.  I prayed once again for the spirits of the trees and animals taken, and, setting my anger and deep, deep sadness aside, I prayed for my neighbors, freely, at long last.  I sensed their sorrow on some level, and offered prayers for the ones who must live with this decision, the wanton destruction of habitat and home.

I came inside and began to listen to my voice mail messages.  The first voice was my neighbor’s, full of shock and remorse.  We have not spoken since it began.  “I feel like I have harmed something very sacred, that I defiled it,” he said, and he has.  He apologized for how “horrifying” it looks, hoping for re-growth in the spring, deep regret filling every word, every pause, as he struggled to convey his recognition of the devastation he has caused.

I will meet him there tomorrow, where the trees once stood.  I will tell him the truth of my experience since the logging began, how truly agonizing and heart wrenching this horror has been.

And I will listen for a greater God, a guide, to bring two deeply saddened spirits into some accord, some understanding of this nightmare and all its implications, some way to find a resting place at the ending of the storm.

I have made horrible choices in my life before and hurt the ones I loved.  None of us are immune in this human state.  How interesting it is that he called tonight, the night I began to find forgiveness, the night he came asking for it.

1/16 -

Everywhere I go these days, the trees are never far from my heart.  This is a poem I wrote last night after seeing two painted owls up on the walls as we were eating lunch in town at a restaurant.  I know I won't see the owls again, here in the woods where we have all nested.

Lost

  

Two painted white owls spread snowy wings 

in the center of black plates hanging at the restaurant –

and I remember the great brown soul

who sat, still, high up in the branches

and watched me pass, staying as I stopped

to see him fully, fully seen.  They will come

no more, for there are no trees, all of us

blinded in the broad bright expanse

where earthen pilgrims stood, silent-winged.

1/14 -

Here, in the midst of mud and machines, lies a forest.

I went into Molalla yesterday for a William Stafford reading.  He is perhaps Oregon's most famous poet laureate, writing much about nature, and beautiful daily ways to see the world.  I loved his poems.  My friend Kate read one of his and a terrific poem of her own, and Paulann Peterson, Oregon's current poet laureate, spoke eloquently about Stafford while sharing his work and her poetry as well.  Local folks read their own works, bringing up their notebooks of sacred poems to the podium, each person clearly moved by words and wanting so to say it, to share it.  They also brought personal artwork and related it to Stafford poems.  It was quite a gathering.

Here is a poem I wrote after two people spoke and shared their art about logging in the Molalla area, how they see it as what has built this entire community.  I see it as something different.

A William Stafford Reading – Nan Collie

 She has painted a solitary ice skater, under a lemon moon, on a saw.

She tells us all about the feel of ice droplets freezing in mid air,

landing on the hardened pond, turning skaters into gliding light-winged fairies.

Then she tells us of the saw, the history of this region,

proud of logging heritage, the foundation of community,

speaking in such reverence.  She has painted on a saw.

Another man has printed Stafford poems on his photos,

beautiful shots of the Grand Canyon, and a baby blue jay

he has nursed, fallen from its nest, now ready to fly. 

Clearly touched by nature, his last piece is an old logging photo,

men posed and proud, perched on piles of logs, a legacy, all that is left

of old growth forests.  He has printed Stafford on the logging of a hillside.

They speak of generational footsteps here on the land.  I recognize

that I am foreign, moving here two decades ago to be among the trees.

I have no wish to take their lives and level landscapes.  

How does pure blue sky live on the blade of a “hard working” saw?

How does a sepia snapshot of destruction sit in the same conversation

next to the golden mile-high walls of a carving Colorado river?

I am baffled, I ache.  I see the same scene here at home, the trees all taken,

leaving only spirits, the trampled remains of squirrels and birds and ferns.

Nothing proud here in my eyes, no skating on the saws that have taken down my friends.

1/9 -

Vertical to horizontal.

1/9 –   

A small redheaded woodpecker darts

overhead, zig-zagging across to perch

on the edge of the clear cut.

He squawks and talks and swears at them

like I do, complaining loudly

to the thieves of the forest.

And I wonder, do birds know sorrow?

There was still a man with a chainsaw working all week-end, when I had longed for quiet and a break from the logging.  In a little over a week he has felled his way clear across the valley down below my neighbor’s, and is cutting the maples and fir below “my” land today. 

I vow not to stay down there this time, it breaks my heart too much, but I have also promised to stand by the trees through all of this.  You do not leave your comrades in the middle of a war. 

Startled once again as the trees come down, I yell and swear at the logger, drowned out by the chainsaw and the ever-present droning of the machines.  I feel such anger, and ultimately, such powerlessness to make it stop.  Then the tears come and I am so deeply saddened by this continual loss of loved ones.

I pray to the trees, lying down below, leaving this valley forever.  A century tree came down today, as I was walking down my path nearby.  I prayed during the cutting, I wept when it fell.  Huge old maples shattered as they hit the ground, and the man with the chainsaw moved on, to the next one, as if they meant nothing. 

I say “Namaste” to each one as they come down and know they mean everything.

And where do the deer go now... 

...when the earth is mangled beyond recognition?

The gazebo before...

...and now.

Remembering the trees in happier times.

1/6 -

My friend, Kate, says "You sound sad," and I say "I am."  After hanging up the phone I realize again that my friends are dying every day.  I am sad.

It was quiet yesterday, but they are back at it again today, clear cutting some towering firs and many, many maples.  They are almost downy in the winter, soft and thick from a distance, a blanket of light brown branches covering this side of the valley.  They nestle all around such wonderfully tall, straight firs, rising above it all, sentries of the forest.  They will be all gone by the end of next week.

I drive out to meet my poet friends for a rehearsal, practicing for our poetry/photography program coming in a month.  There are many beautiful stands of trees along the way - I see them, falling.  I am, indeed, sad.

1/5/12 -

I have added photos to the blog (thank you for your help Erin).  I have taken them while still shocked in disbelief that this is really happening, here, on the land I love so dearly.  If "A picture is worth a thousand words," may these photos say all there is of raping the land and taking life so thoughtlessly, so ruthlessly.

All of these shots were taken during the week before the logging started, and in the time since the devastation began.  I will remember their great beauty, in pictures, in my heart always.

Walking the woods in the weeks leading up to the logging, it was hard to imagine what would come, how the landscape would truly be demolished.  I shot their pictures, blue stripes signifying they would be taken, and sang and prayed to warn them of the coming destruction.  I honor them now, the blue striped warriors of the woods, I will never forget what has happened here.

1/3 -

I light candles and hope to remember what is pure and good, in the midst of what is not.

They are continuing to clear cut all the trees down below today.  I know the sound now of maples splintering, broken branches shattering as they land upon their brothers and sisters.  I know when it is a fir or hemlock coming down, each wide, wrinkled trunk smashing into a grieving mother earth.

I talked with my friend, Judy, yesterday, another woman who loves nature and walks among the trees with grace and reverence.  She has stayed here, in my home, on the land, and I realized that there are many others who are saddened by the onslaught here.  Several friends have come to camp in the summer, singing songs in the meadow, serenading the trees with sweet marimba music, hiking on the trails.  I am not alone in this.

I’m used to tending things myself here, and have tried to be an ally, a witness for the woods as the beautiful trees come down.  Judy and my friend, Terri, have offered to come hold ceremony here, in support of the tree spirits, standing and fallen, in support of me in these days of sorrow, this leveling of a forest.

I spoke with Judy about my neighbor’s honest belief that he is “taking care of his family” by logging the land.  She pointed out that he has forgotten that he is part of a bigger family, the family of all living beings on the planet.  It is a spiritual issue, and in our arrogance, our perceived need of more and more, we plunder the earth and believe these to be OUR resources, forgetting that we share the land with many, many more, each needing food and shelter, each in need of home.

What do we teach our children in the taking of the trees?  That this is the way we build up bank accounts, killing off the beauty of the very land that has held and nurtured us?  That when the money is gone we rob the mother?  As a people we simply cannot go on stealing finite oil and coal, water and forest resources forever.

I have been poor.  I have made bad financial choices.  I bought a shiny new car and got strapped for payments.  I’ve enjoyed “things” and worried later when the VISA bill came due.  I drive a car and burn up fossil fuels.  I heat my home with propane and electricity, and yes, the occasional wood stove fire.  I write these words out first before they find the computer, enjoying the feel of pen and ink sliding over paper.  I consume.

Each of us must ask the question of ourselves:  What is essential, and what is the cost, in energy, in resources?  Watching the trees fall is pause for thought - I am part of the consumption, I must be part of the consciousness that cares for the land, that thinks about these things.

I will fly to Ashley’s (my partner’s kind and thoughtful daughter) graduation this spring in Indiana.  I will fly again to DC in June to be with another bright-light daughter and her family, I have to see those cutie-pie grand daughters!  We can’t undo the progress of airplanes, and I am happy to get to go see them, but again, what is the cost?  I won’t see the oil wells that feed this plane, the pipelines that run through land that used to sit pristine and undisturbed.  Seat belted in, I will anticipate joyful reunions with this family I love.  For now, I wonder at my part.

When I return home, flying in over the checkerboard patchwork of forests left in the hills and mountains of Oregon, my Oregon, the place where I was born and have lived all of my 60 years, I will know the story of each bird and frog and ferret.  I know the cost close-up, here on the land I call home.  I have seen it for 2 weeks now; the trees come down one by one, the earth shudders, and I cry inside for all our losses. 

1/1/12 -
I am going back through my blog, deleting the names of my neighbors who have logged the land here, the forests of home.

With time, and a couple days of break from the constant sound of falling trees, I have realized that this writing is not truly meant to be a vendetta against my neighbors.  It is about a much bigger picture, and my hopes that there is some illumination in these words that brings the disconnect between people and the earth home in a deep and honest way.

It is cause for concern, whether it is the rain forests of Brazil or the forests of Beavercreek, our willingness as a people to level whole breathing entities without regards to the great gorillas, smooth black satin panthers, or the tiniest brown and gold salamanders wriggling through fir needles after a good spring rain.  We are destroying habitat for animals as we are destroying the wild in ourselves.

These places live in us when we take our children hiking, camping, introducing them to the beauty of nature, the wonder of trees.  We smile as they see their first take-your-breath-away waterfall buried deep in a forest, or the stunning leaps of dark red salmon spawning upriver in a right of passage as old and ancient as the trees, all of us, going home to some deep calling.

Native peoples speak of "The Seventh Generation," and how we must consider the children of the future, seven generations from now, as we make decisions affecting the land, the waters, the air and earth we share with so many.  I had looked forward to the day I might take my partner's grandchildren for long walks in the woods when they came to visit, the woods that now lie stripped and naked.  They will never know how beautiful it was here and what has been lost.  It is gone forever.

The planet is in peril, global warming and carbon emissions a fact, proven over and over to all but the most entrenched deniers of science.  If we watch the trees fall silently, are we not accomplices to this great imbalance?  If we do not ache when a forest is cleared, we have lost our most basic connection to the earth, the sea water in our veins that bleeds black oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the barely breathable air that hovers gray and dense as fog over Peking, Mexico City and Los Angeles.

Children sit in front of screens all day and only know of towering redwoods from calendars and post cards, never witnessing the astonishing miracle, their centuries old splendor reaching clear into the sky.  You must walk among them to truly know their magnificence.  You must rise up early in the woods to hear the first sweet birdsong of waking mornings.  You must sit still among them, nearly dry in the rain under a canopy of woven branches to feel and trust the nature of their shelter.

This is what I weep for, this is what I pray for.  May these words land where they are needed, may we all become keepers of the forests, recognizing every tree as holy.  Whether it stands budding between city streets, some small vestige of the great forests, or rises among the tall cedars, fir and pine, each one a gift that brings us back to the earth, the roots of where we come from.

Blessings on the trees, the ones who breathe us still, the ones who now lie in the mill yards.  May we love the tall green friends who live near and in each of us.  In loving them, we become holy ourselves.