When I left Minneapolis back in 2002, I said good bye to all the trees in my yard. There were only a few, but I felt a certain sense of guilt leaving them. I suppose the same anonymous hater troll that recently told me to use 'my big brain' and admit that my mother can not be a bird [because "God" wouldn't do that...good God, that's all I could think] will tell me trees don't feel or have any problem with us leaving them.
In that sense, I agree-but I do think trees feel and emit feelings.
Back in Minneapolis, the healer that I was working with to work out some issues, heard my lament-that I was sad to leave all the nature in my own backyard-and she said,
"Trees are a clan, they are connected all over the world."
I could visualize this, their roots creating intricate systems below us, communicating with each other, and perhaps soaking in our feelings as we walk above those roots, or touch their trunks. Now that we are leaving this Apifera for the Maine version soon, I am not afraid to say good-bye to the nature here, because it is connected to the Nature there. I suppose its just like talking to my mother through a tulip or a bird. It's an innate language. It's all one. While each tree is unique and has it's own resonance with my individual encounter with it, the trees here will be happy without me. That's all I want, for them to be okay and live out their time.
The old Doug Fir behind the house is the first thing I see when I wake up, unless Big Tony is sitting on my head, which is often the case. I love that tree. It has helped me through sad mornings when I awake to a hurt heart from memories that came in a dream, or it enlivens me on a spring dawn when the windows are open and the birds are dancing from one branch to the next. With the river song in the background, and a wind blowing, its boughs and the water create a beautiful symphony. In wind storms I've laid in bed, hoping it does not lose its power to bend in the gust. And when we worked in the hot months in the then young lavender fields, I anticipated the shade she would give me. I love that shadow and am always amazed at how long it's shadow is cast in the field.
I caught this photo the other day of the donkeys walking with the shadow of my tree friend. Somewhere in Maine the shadows are responding, or they are busy reacting to the sun there.
