Weaving the Broken into the Whole

 

Chaos.  Destruction.  I could feel it in my body.  My skin tightened and my heart hurt.  I had been warned and was somewhat prepared.  But, when I walked through the forest that had been “thinned” by the county loggers, I felt my shields, my protective energy trying to rise around my whole body, especially my eyes.  I felt physical pain in my body as I looked around me at the broken trunks, limbs and branches that lay strewn on the forest floor as if a giant had clumped through the trees.

What was left behind by the loggers as "waste".

My colonized brain broke in with rationality.  This forest is owned by the county and in fact was planted by the county one hundred years ago to repair the total deforestation that the earlier settlers “accomplished.”  The animals left and many of the people left when the sandy soil that was no good for farming, started to blow away.  Then, the largest urban forest in Ontario was re-planted in the 1920's to mitigate the harm.  Some might call it a plantation as many of the Red and White Pine trees are planted in furrowed rows like a battalion of soldiers.  But over time, it has become a forest.

This Simcoe County Forest still logs the scattered plots to pay for more land purchases.  And the Ash trees in the mixed hardwood area of the Sturgeon River Forest where I walk, has been infected with the Emerald Ash Borer.  This introduced insect will kill the Ash trees and they will fall over eventually.  So, it looks like the county cut them down to sell the wood before the trees died.  And the old Poplars which they also cut would probably die soon and fall over.  So says my left brain, my rational brain, my colonized brain.

Neatly stacked Ash logs waiting for pick-up.

Hundreds of logs are stacked at the forest entrance, near the road, for easy pick-up by log transport trucks.  The logs are stacked neatly, with precision.  After all, they are valuable to the county which makes over a million dollars every year from “timber sales”. From my pandemic weary perspective, from my right brain, they look like bodies stacked up.  I think of the seniors that died by the dozens in a local nursing home.  I try not to think of the bodies from countries that ran out of resources to handle the virus.

The county cut the trees down in February when the land was still frozen and the spring plants that would later emerge were still safely tucked under the surface of the forest floor.  The logging area was cordoned off so we couldn’t see what was going on.  We stayed away for six weeks and only ventured back recently.  The yellow caution tape and the “No Entry” signs were gone so we walked into the “Logging Zone” with trepidation.  We knew that the canopy of still bare branches would be punched through with space.  The new sunlight will afford excellent growing conditions for the Balsam Fir, Beech and Maple saplings down below.  We knew that the crew wouldn’t take the smaller branches out, but would leave them on the forest floor to eventually become humus again, returning their nutrients to their source.  But, what we didn’t expect were large logs, thick branches and small trunks with torn, ragged edges.  “War zone,” were the words that came to my mind.  I wanted to close my eyes, to run away, to pretend it wasn’t there.  But instead, we walked through.  My colonized left brain tried to make it okay.  But, my intuitive right brain screamed, “What is the matter with humans?”

We continued into the slashed area.  This was not a clear cut.  Selected trees (Ash and Poplar) had been “harvested.”  I could only tell where the trees had stood by looking at the hole in the canopy and by looking at the stumps on the ground and by looking at the piles of logs and branches that could not be sold and were therefore “of no value”.  This area of the forest has a rich and thriving understory.  In the spring, these forest floor dwellers pop up from under the leaf litter.  Wild Leeks, Trilliums, Trout Lilies, Sharp-lobed Hepatica, Giant Blue Cohosh are the plants that I identified there last spring.  How are they going to grow through thick logs that may take decades to decompose?  Since we have an early spring this year, the Wild Leeks were there to greet us, in small green patches between the logs and branches.  We moved wood off of the more obvious patches like a rescue crew after an earthquake.  But the job was too big for two seniors with no tools.

My friend from Tree Sisters who I speak with on-line, had recently been inspired to ask the other Tree Sisters to create ceremonies to ask trees for forgiveness.  Not only for how we treat them, but for making weapons of war out of their tree bodies.  I like this idea and it was most timely as I surveyed the chaos before my eyes.  I sat on a stump and did just this, asked the trees to forgive humans for being so blind.  Why, I wondered, did the forest crew not think about the forest floor?  Perhaps they have never been there in the spring and the snow that covered the Earth while they were cutting blinded them to what lay beneath.

I continued to wrestle with these ideas on subsequent visits to the forest.  I felt under it all, helpless.  I knew that with the lockdowns, people are doing more home projects and the demand and price for lumber has gone up.  Where were these trees headed?  What would they become?  But, my rational mind did not convince my intuitive mind and my body that this was all okay.  It still felt “wrong” to my skin which tightened when I entered the zone.  It felt disrespectful.  A worldview that advised one to not waste any part of a being that gives its life to you was not evident before my eyes.  It was like shooting a deer and taking just the legs, said my right brain.  What would a worldview that respected the lives given or taken suggest?  Perhaps firewood for people who heat their homes with wood, perhaps wood chips for mulch.  I struggled with the notion.

Some of the piles of branches and logs will no doubt provide homes for small creatures like rabbits, said my left brain.  Yes, nature will figure this out in time but what was my responsibility as a human who loved this forest?  If there was no pandemic, I could easily walk elsewhere and ignore this zone.  But, the other trails are full of people from the city who are automatically suspect due to their lack of social distancing.  And, we did not want to abandon the forest just because it was painful for us.

I was on a call for Liberating Our Creative Voices for Earth, a course from Tree Sisters and was still pondering this situation.  As the leader guided us through a meditation, an idea began to emerge.  What if the wood was respected and used to create something else?  We don’t have the equipment to turn it into firewood and haul it out.  What if we rearranged it to create in situ?  As a writer, I imagined turning the logs into letters and writing a message such as “LOVE” or “RESPECT” or “PEACE” or "ASH WAS HERE".  Or perhaps, a symbol, I thought, still with a two dimension mind set.  A peace sign, a heart?  As the meditation was nearing an end, the 3D image of a huge basket woven from branches emerged.  Yes, that was it. 

The axe is in the stump that was part of the base

The image of a woven basket has been an important one to me recently.  As I open space for people to co-create, I imagine a basket being woven with all the interactions, the interconnections.  This helps me to see every comment and response as roots and branches in the basket that is the invisible container for co-creative energy.  Some sort of container seems to be critical to curb our individualistic tendencies that are a critical part of a colonizing worldview.  This worldview allows us to take whatever we need for ourselves and to take more than we need to amass wealth.  It teaches us to compete and to “go it alone” if the “going gets tough.”  Instead of finding ways to work together, we are more likely to break ties and turn our backs on people that have different ideas from us.  And so, creating a visible basket seemed to be a good symbol for the co-creative energy that needs to be learned and practiced by humans.

We started off with 7 upright staves.

We headed into the forest with hand tools; axe, loppers and saw.  We cut small trunks into four-foot lengths and sharpened one end before driving them into the forest floor in a circle that encompassed a large fresh stump.  These became the basket’s staves.  Then we used the lopper and the saw to cut long branches that were somewhat flexible to weave around the staves.  Ash wood is strong and flexible.  It is used for gunwales on boats.  Indigenous people used and still use Black Ash wood to weave baskets.

After a while, the forest floor around the staves became clear as we cut branches and weaved them between the staves.  The basket grew taller.  We had to add some more staves to strengthen it.  The wood was teaching us how to work with it.  Once the horizontal weaving was complete, many thin, short branches were inserted in a vertical fashion at the rim of the finished basket, an echo of how their parent trees stood in the forest. 

Less than one day after seeing the image in my imagination, the finished basket sat before us.  Looking at it, changed how I felt, besides being tired.  The curving sides, the “empty space” within, the base formed by the top of the stump all spoke to my right brain.  It felt respectful to reshape these broken pieces into something whole.  A space for co-creativity was made co-creatively with two humans weaving and the trees advising.  It felt like a small act of asking for forgiveness, of penitence.

We returned to the basket the next day with a socially distanced friend.  As we got close to it on the path, our eyes searched the piles of discarded wood for the round shape.  Our hearts leapt when our eyes identified it from afar and our steps quickened.  Our eyes now focused on the curve of the woven branches, on the way that many had become one.  The basket was a magnet, a symbol of hope, and a non-verbal message that we can create beauty.  Ugliness is not a given and we should not get good at living with ugliness.  Not when we are creatives that can enact creation over and over again.

Slab of wood in front of the basket.  What does it look like to you?

Now, my eyes are scanning other piles, soft focused and open for another possibility to “appear” in my mind’s eyes.  My partner found thin slabs of trunks and leaned them against the bottom of the basket like shields. In the grain of the wood and stained patterns I saw birds and faces.  What if I brought water based paints and added colour?  On the round sawed off ends of three logs, I suddenly saw the images of Monarch butterflies getting smaller as the logs were successively farther away from the viewer.

The logged forest looks like our world these days.  Things are missing, things look broken and other things are growing.  And yet, here we are in the midst of it all, trying to make sense of it, searching for a response.  What can we create from what is left?  How can we create beauty and healing?  And how can we do this together, co-creating our future world? I do know that we will learn how to do this as we begin and that there is good advise to be had from our other than human relations.