Timeless Winter Moments of Mindfulness

 

We pulled out of the driveway quickly one February morning because the sidewalk snow plow was moving towards us at a fair clip and we didn’t want to jump the snowdrift that it would leave.  This sturdy little machine was being used to widen the sidewalk and it’s auger cut into the three foot bank sending snow flying out of the chute.  Escaping just in time, we crested the hill and were passed by a man on a snowmobile.  I guessed that he was heading out onto the ice to do some ice fishing.  Snowmobiles drive on the roads in this tiny village just like cars and trucks and at the beach, they easily drive onto the white expanse of the frozen bay. 

Next, we passed a man carrying four Tim Horton’s cups in a cardboard tray.  He looked old enough to live at the Senior’s residence that we had just passed.  He was walking on the road instead of the icy sidewalk which is also quite common since the roads are sanded..  The Horton’s was about a five minute walk from where he was.  I wondered who he was bringing hot coffee or tea or chocolate to.  I wondered if this was part of his morning ritual.  I chuckled at the very common winter scenes that I had just passed.  It was like a Tim Horton’s TV commercial playing out before my eyes.

We passed the post office with masked people lined up outside, waiting to get their mail.  Just two people at a time were allowed in and the people waited patiently, making small talk as they did.  And then we were on the highway heading towards the Wildlife Centre to cross country ski.  The weather was finally warm enough to ski and we wanted to get out early enough before the rising temperatures made the snow sticky.  December was too warm for good snow and January was too cold to ski so this was my first time out skiing this winter. 

My legs and arms remembered what to do and we set out on the trail.  There was a fine snow falling that melted instantly on my face.  My skis had trouble gliding and I could feel them sticking to the snow.  Our best efforts had not resulted in great snow but we continued on nevertheless.  The trick was to stay in motion.  If we stopped, then the snow would stick in great clods like mud to boots.  All my attention was on the feel of the glide of my skis.  My attention was on feeling the intersection between the bottom of my skis and the snow.  Every now and then, I could glide easily and then like putting the brakes on, I would hit a sticky patch and then I had to push myself along with muscles and poles. 

We came to a part of the forest where a lot of Chickadees live.  These bold little birds will eat sunflower seeds right out of your hand.  I could hear them calling softly at first and then with more volume.  They fluttered along beside us insistently calling.  “I hear you, but we can’t stop,” I apologized.  We continued along the two and a half kilometer trail getting warmer and warmer.  My total focus was on the feel of my skis and the sound of my measured breath.  Every now and then, I would look up and greet the trees and then turn my attention back to the snow, my muscles and breath. 

It wasn’t until I was back at the car and cooling down that I realized that the whole ski was a kind of mindfulness exercise.  In addition to this, I realized that I was using distance perception to gather information about the snow through the feelings in my body.  My thoughts were interrupted as we drive out of the parking lot and a sensor began beeping.  I got out of the car, opened up the back hatch, slammed it shut and got back into the car.  The beeping continued so I repeated the task, this time pushing my skis a little further into the car.  This time the beeping stopped.  I realized that we listen to and interact with all kinds of things all the time, snow conditions, car sensors, chickadees, our own bodies, blood and breath as well as the people in our lives.  Often I do this on auto-pilot but today I was aware of the dynamic of the web that we are all a part of.

Later that week, the temperature was too cold to ski but perfect for walking through the forest on the crunchy well packed snow.  The sky was a cloudless blue and the sun shone brightly through the trees.  We came to a grove of Eastern Hemlocks on the forest trail.  They always bid me to stop and visit and so I did their bidding. 

I faced the sun and felt it’s February rays warm my skyward angled face.  There had been a small snowfall the night before which now adorned the trees, green coniferous and bare brown deciduous alike.  Little gusts of wind blew the snow from their branches.  Tiny ice crystals from the snow were carried by the wind towards me, twinkling rainbow colours in the sunshine.  It felt like travelling in space with stars whizzing by me or like driving in a snowstorm with the high beams on.  I knew I was standing still, but it felt as if I was moving forward.

I watched the tiny little “stars” until the wind changed direction.  Now they were moving past me from my right to my left.  I let out a big sigh and the cloud of water vapour from my mouth partially obscured the stars for a moment before it dissolved into the air.  It seemed to me that the trees were exhaling water as solid ice crystals and I was exhaling water as a gas.  The gaseous and solid water that were back-lit by the sun, danced before my child-like eyes.  I stood there for a time and eventually the wind died down, breaking the spell and allowing me to continue along my way forever changed.

Building Community at the Edge of the Precipice

 

The Sturgeon River has been carving the gorge out for a long time, longer than a human life time.  That is for sure.  The flowing water bubbles over smoothed river rocks forming deep pools in the serpentine curves. And in winter, snow and ice cover most of the river which continues to flow out to Georgian Bay in Lake Huron.  A few days ago, I stood on the edge of the gorge about a hundred feet above the river, listening to it gurgling under the ice.  I had one hand on the trunk of a large Eastern Hemlock tree to keep my balance.  Its huge roots broke through the cliff face in a few places as the soil was gradually eroded by rain and wind.

 “What a precarious place to grow,” I thought.  Perhaps there had been more soil on the cliff’s edge when the tree began its life as a sapling.  Across the gorge, I could see a few trees that had fallen from the far bank into the river.  I wondered if one day, this Hemlock would also tumble down the steep bank.  I closed my eyes and imagined the whole root structure of the tree that I was touching.  Instead of the imminent disaster that I had just "seen",  my imaginal eyes could see instead how the roots held the soil of the cliff in place.  

 I have a fascination with the roots of Eastern Hemlock trees.  They speak to me and teach me about building community.  Last year, they showed me how communities were like baskets or nests, woven one root, one fibre, one conversation at a time.  They had taught me how the strength of the basket, the nest or the community allowed work to be done in its centre, in the space protected by the woven edge.  Now, I wondered what this tree clinging to the edge of the cliff had to teach me.  The tree was indeed clinging to the soil, but it was also containing and anchoring the soil.  The Hemlock was preventing erosion.  It was rooted here at the precipice, at the place where everything dropped off, maintaining the integrity of the cliff’s edge and protecting the forest behind it.

Many people are feeling as though they are living at the edge of their own precipices brought on by climate change, a global pandemic, loss, change and uncertainty.  What is keeping them from falling in?  One thing that being separated from each other has taught us is the importance of social interactions for one’s mental health.  Perhaps, it could be community that holds people from falling into the abyss.  “And so,” whispered the Hemlocks, “ what better place is there than the edge of a precipice to weave roots, relationships and responsibilities into a community, into a nest?”

 

Wattled with Willow

 

The land along the shoreline of the bay was saturated with the snow that was melting.  Anna walked on the raised trail that ran alongside this wetland searching for one of her favourite trees.  She was in the midst of her spring ritual of renewing her relationship with Willow.  When Anna was a young girl, a man at a tree nursery had taught her how to cut Pussywillow branches and put them in water until they rooted.  He had told her that if she planted those three rooted stems, a Pussywillow bush would grow from it.  He had taught her this after Anna’s father had refused her request to buy this tree that she had fallen in love with at first sight.  She had followed the man’s instructions and the branches did magically send out long white roots into the jar of water she had placed them in.  Her father had let her plant them in the garden and they had indeed grown into a Pussywillow bush that was twenty feet high by the time she herself had grown up.  This was Anna’s first experience of co-creating with nature and it set the tone for her whole life.

As a young mother, Anna’s family had moved frequently to accommodate the growing number of children.  She returned to her parents’ home frequently and visited the Pussywillow which had the usual ups and downs of trees; leaves eaten by insects, older branches rotting and falling off and occasionally catastrophic damage from winter storms. The Pussywillow had always bounced back, growing new stems, branches and leaves.  It loved it in the yard which flooded every spring.  Willows love water.  The Ancient Celts named Willow the Queen of the Water because of that and this tree was associated with the Moon and Feminine qualities as well.

Each spring, Anna, as an adult would cut three stems from the tree and take them home to root just like she had as a child.  She planted those Pussywillows in every place that she lived.  As a mother, she cared for her children and she cared for her willows.  The Pussywillow that she had planted as a girl was a male tree.  It only produced male catkins, those soft, silvery “pussies” that gave the tree it’s name.  Not only did the stems root in the water, but the male catkins went on to produce golden pollen that soon covered the grey fuzzy kittens.  It wasn’t until Anna was an older woman that she saw her first female pussywillow tree.  The female catkins had raised green stalks that contained the ovaries.  Once pollinated by wind or the bees that used the pollen as early spring food, the seeds would form and seed pods would cover the catkin.  Anna had learned that these seeds would fly in the wind along with the fluff from the catkin and so they needed to be light.  They contained no endosperm, so they had to land in wet soil and take root immediately.  Willows also had a fibrous root structure that would send up shoots easily and this was the more successful form of procreation.

In fact, Willows were so good at sending up new shoots, even from cut trunks and branches that Anna’s ancestors had practiced coppicing or cutting the branches off regularly on certain trees so that there was a constant supply of building materials.  They had used flexible willow branches in wattling or weaving the stems to build baskets, furniture, walls for buildings, boats and fences.

The Weeping Willow variety was brought from China to the United Kingdom roughly three hundred years ago and subsequently to North America were Anna lived.  Anna had grown up with a Weeping Willow as well in her backyard.  She loved the graceful dance of the long stems in the wind and as a child she liked to sit inside the ring of branches and leaves that swept the grass and formed a moving wall as well as a “secret hiding spot.”  As the tree grew, so did Anna and there came a time when she wanted to climb it.  But, she didn’t like heights.  She felt the force pulling her up and the fear anchoring her to the ground.  Somehow, she felt the Weeping Willow urge her to climb up into its branches and sit awhile.  The idea came to her that if she did that, she might get over the fear of being there.  As an adult, Anna learned that desensitizing is one way to heal phobias but she didn’t know that as a child.  Anna felt that the Willow had whispered that to her child self.  And so, Anna did spend time sitting in the willow.  She did get used to being there with the fear and she never fell out of the tree.  The Willow held her like a mother.  And Anna learned that fear can be present but it didn’t have to stop her following the urgings of life, not with the Willow Mother to hold her, not with Mother Earth to hold her.

Anna didn’t know that her ancestors, the Celts had understood that Willow can help with letting feelings flow and that it’s gift was tears.  She didn’t know that this tree was believed to strengthen intuition, inspiration and imagination.  She didn’t know that her ancestors made harps out of willow so that the tree could sing.  But she did know how to listen to this tree and follow its urgings.

Lost in her thoughts and memories Anna had stopped walking. Suddenly, she snapped back to the present moment and looked around her.  There, in the wet land beside the trail was a large Pussywillow bush covered in soft silvery catkins.  She took a sharp inbreath in surprise and then burst out laughing.  Her body had found the tree while her mind was miles and years away.  Anna took out a little penknife from her pocket and after receiving permission from the tree to take three branches, she cut them and placed the cut ends in a plastic bag to keep the ends moist.  She rubbed the soft catkins on the side of her face like a cat and smiled at the feeling of her old friends.  Her child self and crone self were present together in that moment.

Since the weather was warm and spring was pulsing under her feet, Anna kept on walking.  There were pussywillows everywhere and the catkins were shining in the spring sun.  She came across some female catkins and stopped to examine their interesting structure.  The ovaries looked like antennae to her and she couldn’t believe that she had spent so much of her life only seeing male catkins.  Now that she knew what female catkins looked like and she paid closer attention, she could see them here and there.  “She was not too old to learn a few new things she thought,” as she chuckled to herself.

After a few minutes, Anna came to where a huge old Weeping Willow grew.  Some of its giant branches had grown sideways and some rested on the earth.  Some had rotted and snapped off.  They lay strewn about the base of the tree like old bones.  Hundreds of new yellow shoots grew out of the scars left by the fallen branches, like hackles on a cat.  The crone tree’s life story was told in the branches and stems and bones.  And yet she radiated strength and resilience.  Anna could see how Willow represented the three aspects of women.  Willow had the flexibility of the maiden, the nurturing and strong procreative ability of the mother and the strength of the crone.

Anna climbed down the embankment and made her way to the old Willow.  She placed her hands on the warm bark and felt the energy of moving water.  She knew that Willow was cleansing the water she took in from her roots from pollution and that she would expire clean water out through her leaves.  As she rested there, Anna became aware of the sadness that she was keeping under the surface.  Sadness from so much change, loss and uncertainty.  She breathed into that sadness and it flooded up within her all the way to her tear ducts. She let the feelings flow as she kept her hands on Willow, the comforting Grandmother who had seen it all before.  After a time, the feelings floated away and Anna took a deep cleansing breath.  She felt ready to make her way home.  But, before she left, she once again took out her knife and after getting permission from the tree, she cut one long waving stem. 

After walking for a few more minutes, Anna once again climbed down to the wetland and she planted the stem into the wet earth.  She knew that she was taking part in the procreative cycle of Willow and at the same time, creating a symbol for her ability to reimagine her life and to create something new.  Anna’s life story was woven through with Willow.  They were wattled together just as her ancestors’ from across the ocean had been.  She imagined a woven willow basket with coloured wool and thread added to it.  She imagined the basket filled with co-creations. And she knew that this was her life story.

Métissage: Weaving our Differences

 

“With each word we write, we open up to new worlds erupting and evicting us from our old selves,”  So write authors Erika Hasebe-Ludt, Cynthia Chambers and Carl Leggo in Life Writing and Literary Métissage as an Ethos for Our Times.  While the introduction to this book is written in academic language, the braided life writing that follows is anything but.

The authors explain that, “the word métissage is derived from the Latin mixticius, meaning the weaving of a cloth from different fibres (p 35).  The cover of the book shows a detail of a woven Métis sash that ends in braids as a wonderful illustration of this concept.  They go on to explain that,

“Métissage affirms, rather than polarizes, difference and calls those who practice métissage to create an aesthetic product that combines disparate elements without collapsing or erasing difference.  The act of creating new mixed forms, stronger and more resilient than the existing ones, gives métissage its generativity in the face of difference and thus the power to reconfigure the past, to transform the present and to imagine otherwise (p35).”

I found this idea of affirming difference instead of polarizing it very interesting.  Mainstream (White supremacist) culture affirms one right way, this or that and seeks to assimilate everything into the “norm” which is white.  The whole tragic history of Indian Residential Schools in the land we now call Canada is a good example of this.  So, the idea of weaving disparate elements into new mixed forms that are stronger than the existing ones makes sense.  It makes me think of the fragility of a monospecies-green suburban lawn which requires constant care and “weeding” to stay a monoculture versus ground cover made up of native species that take care of themselves.

As I read through the life writing part of the book and hear stories of growing up in British Columbia, Germany and Newfoundland, the fabric begins to appear.  The authors describe their work in this way:

We take métissage as a counternarrative to the grand narratives of our times, a site for writing and surviving in the interval between different cultures and languages, particularly in colonial contexts: a way of merging and blurring genres, texts and identities, an active literary stance, political strategy, and pedagogical praxis.  Our writing illustrates métissage as an artful research praxis that mixes binaries such as colonized with colonizer, local with global, East with West, North with South, particular with universal, feminine with masculine, vernacular with literate, and theory with practice.  We braid strands of place and space, memory and history, ancestry and (mixed) race, language and literacy, familiar and strange, with strands of tradition, ambiguity, becoming, *re)creation, and renewal into a métissage (p 9).

In imagining how this praxis could be used in everyday conversation and in storytelling, I am grateful for the visual image of the Métis sash.  I can imagine hearing the stories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people who are my friends and neighbours, weaving together as an expression of where we are now.  This praxis would change my listening to story.  Instead of listening for only what is the same or for only what is different from my story, this praxis of métissage would allow me to simply listen and understand.

The authors think that, ”… autobiographic work invites a recognition from others, not of who we are, and who we have always been, but who we are becoming in the encounter with the other (p33).”  Once again, I imagine the Métis sash on the cover of the book.  Colour theory tells us that yellow will look different if it is beside blue as opposed to red.  Our encounters change us.

“Postcolonial theorists have named this site a ‘third space’, a ‘hybrid place’ where colonial worlds are reconstructed into new ambivalent literary and political spaces (p37),” suggest the authors.  This space is available I believe to the people who live in the land now called Canada.  And the idea of métissage as an ethos for our times is compelling.

The authors state their goal clearly.  “Our aim is to go out into the world, to embrace it and love it fiercely, always returning home with the gifts of new knowledge, new hope that it is possible to live well in a particular place, at this time, with ourselves and with all our relations (p. 9).”

So, the next time you are reading ideas that are different from your own, or listening to someone describing a vignette from the story of their lives imagine it as weaving mysteriously with your own into a fabric that is strong and resilient.  See how that feels and see if it changes how you listen.

Hasebe-Ludt, Erika, Chambers, Cynthia M. and Leggo, Carl. (2009) Life Writing and Literary Métissage as an Ethos for Our Times.  New York: Peter Lang.

 

Apostle of Peace: Thich Nhat Hanh

 

Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh
 (https://plumvillage.org/articles/please-call-me-by-my-true-names-song-poem/)

Earlier today, Thich Nhat Hanh passed away in his hometown of Hue, Vietnam at the age of 95.  Thich Nhat Hanh was called an “Apostle of peace and non-violence” by Martin Luther King Jr. for his stance against the Vietnam War which led to his exile from Vietnam until recently.  He was an influential Zen Buddhist monk, poet and peace activist who brought Buddhist teachings to people in North America and Europe.  His teachings, particularly those on bringing mindfulness and compassion to everyday life will live on for generations.  He repeatedly taught people to “walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”

During his exile he founded the Plum Village monastery in France and other centres around the world where he taught until suffering a stroke in 2014.  In 2018 he was given permission to return to Hue, Vietnam, the place of his birth to live out his final years.

Thich Nhat Hanh was author of over a hundred books which were translated into dozens of languages around the world.  You can listen to him read one of his most famous poems Please Call Me by My True Names as well as an explanation of how he came to write this poem here.  

So, in honour of and with gratitude for Thich Nhat Hanh’s life and teachings, I will walk today in the forest as if I am kissing the Earth with my feet.  

Brilliant Mycelium

 

Beneath the surface of the forest floor is the “woodwide web” (so dubbed by German forester Peter Wohlleben). The mycorrhizal network of underground fungi filaments form this complex web of interconnection that allows trees to share resources and information with one another.  One of the people who has brought this knowledge forward is Canadian biologist Suzanne Simard.  She describes her journey of discovery in the book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (2021).

The mushrooms and fungi that we can see on rotting wood or emerging from the forest floor are the fruit of the fungi.  However,  most of the fungi lives underground in a vast network of mycelium that are interwoven and connected with tree roots.  The mycelium are very tiny threadlike structures that can wrap around or “bore into tree roots (National Forests.org ).  Altogether, they form the mycorrhizal network that is capable of transferring water, nitrogen, carbon and other minerals from plant to plant.

When I read Finding the Mother Tree, I was struck by a sentence in which Simard describes these mycelium as rainbow coloured.  I began picturing this in my imagination and a representative piece of art soon emerged.  In the public forest where my partner and I hike, we have been creating pieces of art from the debris left over from logging activities last winter.  This seemed to be the perfect place to visually represent the mycorrhizal network that is invisible to the human eye unless it is unearthed.  

I chose the stump of a recently felled tree and my partner drilled three holes into it.  I placed the ends of three branches into each of these holes to create the idea of “tree roots” that were upside down. I got this idea from “Seahenge”, a 4000 year old Bronze Age tree circle that was discovered in Norfolk, England in 1998.  Within a circle of Oak trunks is an inverted Oak stump with the roots pointing upside down( Seahenge ). 

Seahenge, Norfolk, UK (https://www.explorenorfolkuk.co.uk/seahenge.html)

Then, I took rainbow coloured wool and began to string it between the branches that represented roots.  I worked intuitively in the midst of the branches, imagining mycelium travelling through the soil in search of roots and then connecting to them by winding around or boring in.  I tied off the wool at each "root| I encountered to simulate this.  It wasn’t until it felt finished that I stepped back to view the work.

Branches placed in drilled holes in stump with rainbow wool mycelium.

One interesting thing about creating art in a forest is that the light is constantly changing as the sun moves, leaves grow or get eaten by caterpillars and then regrow.  There were times when the coloured wool shone and was highly visible and there were times when it was in shadow and a hiker might not even notice it.  The work flickered in and out of visibility which seemed quite appropriate.

After a number of weeks, the host stump started suckering up new sprouts from its roots.  It turned out, that this was a Maple stump and many new shoots emerged and shot up towards the sky in the midst of the rainbow coloured wool mycelium.  Nature was co-creating with me and I paid attention.  The shoots got taller and the leaves obscured some of the wool making it invisible once again.  The message for me was that if we pay attention to our interconnections, we will thrive.  You may get a different message from the co-creation. 

Maple shoots growing from the cut stump amidst the wool mycelium.

By fall, the Maple leaves began turning their famous red and orange adding more rainbow colours to the piece.  Eventually they fell off and the tiny trunks looked like more roots. 

The Maple leaves from the shoots turn yellow, orange and red amidst the wool mycelium.

And now everything is getting highlighted or obscured with snow.  The piece evolves and evolves, flickering in and our of visibility.  It informs me constantly as I visit the forest through all kinds of weather.

The Maple leaves have fallen and snow covers the bare shoots and wool mycelium.

Recently, I came across this lovely video called Brilliant Mycelium by Beautiful Chorus.  The video show simulated mycelium travelling through the earth and becoming visible to my eye.  I was very excited by this.  There is so much more to life than what meets the eye, so much magic, mystery and brilliance.  Check it out!

Anna and the Ancient Alders

 

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.