Page 80 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

she had sheltered me for many years. If our local land trust conservation group logged our forests (for

their profit) and in exchange gained property that was already logged for recreational purposes there

was no hope.

I protested, was patronized, and ultimately dismissed by our local conservation group. Acquiring land

for wilderness’ sake was not a priority, while stripping the land of its trees and then opening it to four-

wheelers and other off road vehicles and for hunting--creating adult playgrounds—was supported with

great enthusiasm.

By this time I understood that my relationship with all trees was unusual. I had spent many thousands

of hours with trees, blessed and prayed for them in written ritual, talked to them, mourned their losses,

found shelter beneath them, listened with my heart opened by the light that I could sometimes feel

pulsing through their branches. I loved them and they knew it. At first I was unable to separate their

grief from my own and this confusion muddied conversation between us, which upset me a lot. The

trees had enough to deal with; they did not need the burden of my psychological projections.

I talked to a few of these tree mothers in my mind, asking them to help me discern. They answered by

creating what I can only describe as a light field around me, a field permeated with deep compassion.

While in this Presence, I attempted to feel my way through their grief and separate it from my own.

They had lost almost all their Elders and a multitude of children, experienced ongoing distress for their

remaining relatives. Despair was a given.

While writing a letter to protest logging parts of the White Mountain National Forest (supposedly

protected wilderness) last spring, I checked Global Watch and discovered that Maine had only sixteen –

eighteen percent of mature forest left in the state. Maine foresters suggest that a tree is mature at thirty

years old. Are they serious? No one mentions that nut-bearing trees like beech and oak don’t begin to

produce viable crops of nuts until they are much older. In Northern Maine the demise of the only nut-