When Trees Talk

Reminder from Mano: Speak to the trees as you walk; touch them and tell them they are beautiful. Your speaking and expecting an answer is of enormous assistance in helping the nature spirits relate with a conscious human being.

From Mary Jane

In the February 2017 blog, Moving Beyond Mind, I wrote about an experience with Clare Dubois, founder of TreeSisters, in which she led a film festival “coffee talk” group to a high energy space of heart. I have held that guided meditation as an example; “This is the kind of space we need to enter to change the world” I have said often enough, with enthusiasm. So I joined a local group of TreeSisters (“a global network of women who donate monthly to fund the restoration of our tropical forests as a collective expression of planetary care” its website says). Now Clare has moved to our Nevada City community and we are having a tree walk for Arbor Day.

The tree I chose to communicate with, in preparation for the group walk, is a gnarled and towering London plane tree on the patio of a little coffee house downtown. Since my grandson was two, we have been going to sit under that tree and share a breakfast burrito, sheltered and nurtured, sinking deeply into peace. Now Alder is 5, and he has been sharing some of my communication sessions. We each have our way of greeting the tree, and, he says, “I have a way of talking with it in my mind.” One day he decorated it with a few camellias from a nearby bush and then asked if the tree was pleased. It said, “Yes, and also think about the flowers and whether they’re all right with being picked.”

I try and emulate the sweetness of Alder’s child seriousness and purity.  The tree seems like one with a special mission, overarching so many people (dogs too) every day, witnessing conversations, and also being in the midst of conversations about it. Trees have a subtle, pervasive influence on their environments, and now, as Barbara says so often, it is time for us to relate more intimately and directly with them. I think the childlike “seriousness and purity” of communication is something she does really well. In the Amphitheater, the tree she touches in with upon each arrival is the Mother Tree, a giant redwood. One day I watched her give the tree a brief greeting, pull away, and then return to it. The Mother, she laughed, had asked her to connect more solidly and heartfully—to pay attention to her greeting and not do it in a perfunctory way. “Consciousness” is so often the request from the nature and spirit worlds!

From Barbara

One morning in the Amphitheater I recorded, “I love you and am so grateful for my opportunity to be present with you on a daily basis. Today I am feeling the presence of the mature redwoods and madrone trees. They are so majestic, so strong. I feel silent blessing flowing to me.” A reply formed in my mind: “I would like to speak. I want you to know it is your daily coming this past month that has helped to awaken our sleeping energies. To have you, a person, come and just stay here with us over and over, tuning in to the Mother Tree and sometimes actually melding into her presence means more than you can know. When you do this for one tree it goes out to all of us.What we are creating here is an example of how nature and a human can spend time together, just as it was in the beginning. There is much for you to gain in consciousness about our connection, and what you do know is enough for now.”  I thanked the tree being and added, “I have the feeling the voice I hear is all of the trees, not just one spokesperson.”  It replied, “Yes, we speak, live, and breathe as one.”

Another day as I entered the Amphitheater and greeted the Mother Tree, she said, “Sit down, my dear, and talk with me.” I felt so much love flowing to her, and I moved into gratitude for the information and gifts given in my daily summer journey visits. “I love you dear mother. I am so grateful for the clarity that has come during this summer journey.” The Mother Tree responded: “My desire, as you come to be with me and with those who live here and are learning to relate with you (‘their human’), is for you to sit with your heart open and your mind clear, tuning in to any information or sightings you might perceive.”

I took my nap at the base of the Mother Tree and woke feeling a circle of 12 master gnomes around me. Behind them were tall flame beings. I did a drawing with a stick that I found in the bark of the Mother Tree. It had very light lines that dropped dots of ink, and the drawing ended up with an eye in the center. In gratitude I said, “I feel so expanded, deep and soft. I send blessings and gratitude to all who live here and all who visit. Out of my heart flame I send the threefold flames of love, wisdom, and power up, through, and out—out and out to all of nature and the forces of the elements.”

The trees remind me to trust my inner visions and feelings of the subtle world I live within. “When you see a face in the bark or leaves of a tree, open your heart and say ‘hello’. Ask if it wants to speak to you. Ask what you can do for it,” they say. Once, while sitting in the car waiting for Jim, I spoke to a face I saw in a tree. The elemental said he was an elf. He was so excited to be talking with a human, he ran to get other elves to come and see for themselves and participate in the experience. This incident implies that the trees and the elementals have an intimate, intertwined relationship. It seems to be so.

During my daily time in the Amphitheater during the summer of 2014 (what I called my first “summer journey”), I recorded the following story of meeting up with a tree whom I did not know. There is a small circle of trees across the road from the outhouse. Years ago someone put a shower in that little circle. One morning as I drove Betsy, my off-road vehicle, to the Amphitheater, a fallen tree blocked the road. I was prepared to spend a longer time tuning in and decided to eat my lunch, connect, and take my nap in this little place. I opened my heart to the spirits, sent love, and said, “I greet you in love. The tree at my back is gnarly, and I am not comfortable. I need to shift to a more comfortable position.” To myself I said, “That’s better. Not quite perfect but better.”

Then I heard a strong voice say, “Don’t complain. You are an intruder.”

I had a negative reaction: “Not so. I own this land. I serve Mother Earth. I have walked and driven to the Amphitheater thousands of times.”

He said, “That has no connection with me.”

 I responded, “I once had an art show in your circle and created a place with tires for children to play on. Others have lived here and created a shower. I always think of you as special.”

“And you are right, I am special; I do not pay much attention to you.”

I continued trying to claim my space and told him, “Today a tree fell across the road and I arrived on your doorstep. I greet you in love.”

I then turned to Mano, who said, “Leave him alone; he is not used to having people speak to him.” So I closed the conversation with, “Bless you and thank you again. I will call hello as I drive by.”

Once when I was doing a pencil drawing of a face I saw in the bark of an old redwood tree, the face kept changing. I drew the next face that appeared, the next, and the next, until the light shifted. Mano explained that when the elementals making up the tree realized I was drawing them, each lined up for a chance to be seen. I was pleased to be able to give them an opportunity to be acknowledged by a human. They hunger and yearn to return to the old times when people interacted daily with the elementals, in their houses, yards, and neighborhoods. Mano often tells me that a simple hello helps to restore what has been lost.