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.