Page 77 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015
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Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION
newly found mother by my land and her trees? The idea seemed credible at the time and I
loving
attached myself to its hope like a barnacle.
Oddly, the dream of the two landscapes stayed vivid and clear often surfacing in my mind. But I was
troubled by the apprehension that flowed through me in its wake. I continued to comfort myself with the
thought that I could interrupt tree destruction by loving my land, and by honoring all trees.
It wasn’t until after spending prolonged periods at my camp, “elf house,” that I began to have strange
unsettling repetitive dreams about ‘my’ land and our future together. Most of these dreams involved
boundary violations. Trees were being cut on the back boundary of my property, thugs on machines
also entered from behind my camp. Aggressive neighbors built houses around me and they had guns.
These neighbors disliked me and wished me harm.
I felt fear, confusion, and dismay as I awakened from these dreams wondering what they could possibly
mean. This land and I were wed to one another; each bird, tree, flower and bush was sacred to me. I
experienced joy and gratitude on a daily basis. Why such dark and ominous dreams?
A few years passed before I first started to hear the whining sound of a chainsaw in the distance on a
regular basis. Most folks around here including myself heat with wood, so early in the fall whenever I
walked up the hill to the road I could hear my neighbors saw their wood for the coming winter, but
thankfully these sounds were drowned out around my camp by rushing water and the surrounding
forest. When the sound of the chainsaw first penetrated my little patch of wilderness I felt invaded by
something sinister. Just as disturbing was the way my body responded to the high - pitched chainsaw
whine: by going on high alert until the wail ceased for the day. I also experienced a peculiar buzzing
throughout my body. I was unable to calm myself.
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