Anna could hear the river before she could see it. Following the trail along the top of the
ridge, the burbling sound of the water cascading over time smoothed stones
brought a smile to her face. She was
almost there. The winter temperature had
been up and down passing the freezing mark many times in the last few weeks. The packed snow of the trail had become icy
but the temperature kept the ice a bit soft.
She had cleats strapped to her winter boots and two walking poles to
keep her from falling. These were well
appreciated as she made her way slowly down the hill to the river. Luckily, the sand on the trail had partially covered the snow and ice and she
made it to the bottom without falling. Anna
was of an age where falling was not advised.
She could see the river now through the green screen of cedars
and yews. The water was a continually
changing pattern of grey and black shapes reflecting the overcast winter
sky. White splashes of water sprayed up as
the riverwater bounced off of the rocks.
And along the riverbank before her were the trees she had come to visit
this New Year’s Day.
The ancient Celts used the first alphabet in Europe, the
Ogham script to encode the wisdom of the land that was understood to be the
goddess and therefore sacred. Each
letter in the Ogham script was represented by a tree or plant that became a
mnemonic device for this ancient knowledge.
Each month was represented by a letter and its corresponding tree. On this first day of the new year, Anna had
come to visit the Alder trees which were symbolized by the letter F or Fearn and
represented the month of January.
The water loving Alders clung to the soil of the riverbank,
stabilizing the shore with their roots.
Their speckled trunks leaned over the river, away from the shade of the
cedars in an effort to find sunlight.
The bare branches held only the tiny cones from the past fall. The long showy male catkins and rounded
female catkins that grew on the same tree had long ago come together, pollinating
with the aid of wind and bees. The
female catkins had turned into tiny little cones which eventually opened up,
dropping the seeds into the river. Each
little oily seed case had air pockets that made it buoyant allowing the river
to carry it to new shores where it would be washed up and hopefully put down
new roots.
The melting snow now hung as tiny drops of water on the small
branches. Anna noticed that closed leaf
buds were at the ends of each branch, waiting for spring’s warmth. The river was higher with the recent melt and
the trunks of the Alders were in the water.
This was no problem for the Celtic “King of the Water” as the oily wood
was water resistant. This is why its
wood had been used to make bridges, roads in wet areas, pilings for buildings
in Venice and even butter churns. Alder
wood had even been used to make wooden clogs because of its waterproof
nature. Anna’s Great-great-grandfather
had been a Master Cloger in Lancashire, England as was noted in the census of 1881. This cheap and durable footwear was worn by
the cotton mill workers from whom Anna was descended. Alder bark contains salicin which is
turned into salicyclic acid in the body thus giving pain relief. In fact, people used to put Alder leaves into
their shoes to help relieve sore feet.
Part of Anna’s family was Irish and she knew that Irish
mythology told that the first man was born from an Alder trees while the first
woman was born from the Rowan. The Alder
tree was associated with the Irish God, Bran whose name means “raven”, one of
Anna’s favourite birds. Legend had it
that after being killed in battle, Bran’s head was brought to Tower Hill in
London and buried there to be a protector of the land until King Arthur later
removed it. However, Bran’s birds, the
ravens are still kept at the Tower of London because of a prophecy that
predicts the fall of the kingdom if the birds leave the Tower.
Even though Anna stood on another continent across a great
ocean, the ancient stories stirred her genetic memory. The Indigenous people from the land where she
lived had used the local species, Tag, Speckled or Grey Alder to make a decoction
from the bark to relieve the pain of scalds and burns. In the Celtic world, a decoction of bark and
mature green leaves was used externally for painful joints and a spring tonic
tea of the bark and immature leaves was drunk in the spring. The Druids regarded Alder as a sacred tree
that was a guardian of the water which was also sacred.
Remembering this, Anna made an offering to the river and
then sang a song to honour the life-giving water. In fact, this very water ran into the bay where
her own drinking water came from.
Somehow the thousands of years and miles disappeared as the ancient
knowing mingled like the drops of water in the river.
Anna had learned that the name Alder comes from a word
meaning red. When the White Alder is
cut, the wood turns red, like blood. For
this reason, Celtic warriors wanted shields of Alder. The Celts believed that Alder would assist in
facing obstacles or issues with courage as it lent strength and endurance in finding
a way forward. Anna carefully cut a
small branch from one of the Alders to take home. She had many new challenges to face and the
twig would remind her to ask for help.
She knew that Alder had masculine fire energy and feminine water energy
and that she would need to balance those energies within herself. She could rely on Alder to teach her about
when to take action and when to find stillness.
The old ways of navigating the world were falling away and Anna wanted
to reach to the ancient wisdom from within her genetic memory and from those
Indigenous to the land where she lived to find new ways of moving forward.
Looking down at the snowy earth, Anna remembered that Alder
has a symbiotic relationship with a bacterium that lives in the root nodules. This Frankia alni bacterium can absorb
nitrogen from the air while the Alder cannot.
The bacterium share the nitrogen with the tree in exchange for sugars
produced by the Alder leaves through photosynthesis. As Alder is one of the first trees to grow in
disturbed soil, it not only stabilizes the soil but also enriches it with
nitrogen. This reminded Anna about the
importance of focusing on the needs of the earth, not just her own personal
needs.
She closed her eyes and pictured her little human self as a
part of all of life. She imagined that
she could see with a raven’s eye as it flew high over the forest and how small
she would look from up there. And then suddenly,
she was seeing with the raven’s eyes. From
her Raven’s point of view, the tree branches intertwined with each other and so
did the roots. Everything was connected
by a light shimmering web. She could see
the water moving in the stream, evaporating into the air and condensing on the
branches. Everything was in motion. She could see the oxygen being released by
the conifer trees and moving into the lungs of her tiny human self down below
and then carbon dioxide coming from her nose into the air and back to the
cedars. Movement in and out, stillness
and action, female and male in balance. She
could see nitrogen being absorbed by the tiny bacterium in Alder’s roots and
then being shared with the tree in exchange for glucose.
Everything started to get larger to her Raven eyes as the
bird dropped down to land on the top of the largest Alder beside her human
self. The tree swayed under its weight
and Anna as though disembarking from an airplane was once again in her own body,
looking out from human eyes. With a load
groak, the raven lifted from the branch and flapped away over the forest. Anna listened to its call until it drifted
off into the distance.
New ways of seeing, new ways of being and living, braiding
the old, the new and the possible were emerging all around her. It was a lot for an older brain to comprehend
but perhaps that was not so important.
What was important was how Anna felt now; grounded and nurtured. What was important was she could see in her
imagination the connections and the possibilities. And most importantly, Anna was learning that
strength came from asking for help from all of life instead of thinking she had
to accomplish everything on her own.
That was a big change but life was teaching her and the Alder twig would
be her reminder.
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