A woman named Laura reports this dream from last night:
All the trees the whole world over had been bulldozed down. They were scattered into big piles on a ground of different shades of red and brown, and small fires and smoldering smoke drifting from the dirt dotted the landscape as well. I was driving slowly down a small back road surveying the destruction in disbelief.
Reality check: driven by greed, deaf to the voices of the trees and the speaking land, humans have already come far too close to fulfilling this terrifying vision of an arboreal apocalypse. Laura may be one of those who is being called by the trees, in dreaming, to renew the web of mutual connection and understanding.
I heard the cry of the trees at the end of a training I led in the Pacific Northwest. All that week, we had delighted in a world of green – frilly greens of the cedars, mossy greens hanging from high trunks and draping stumps and nurse logs, bottle-green shadows of the deep woods, juicy greens of berry bushes and young vines, splashy brown-greens of the beaver swamp.
–
On our last morning, preparing for an exercise in community visioning, I asked the members of our circle to join hands and imagine that we were creating a Dream Tree with our joined energies.
On our last morning, preparing for an exercise in community visioning, I asked the members of our circle to join hands and imagine that we were creating a Dream Tree with our joined energies.
–
When I started the drumming, the energy form of the One Tree emerged vividly. I could feel it, see it, smell it. It was unlike any previous tree of vision I have used. It was an immense elder of the rainforest, as wide and tall as a skyscraper. Its lower trunk was alive with creeping and slithering things, including thousands of snakes, hard to tell apart from the creepers and strangler vines until they darted out.
–
I moved gingerly to a shelf high above where a giant white heron was perched, looking out over vast distances. I was shot out from there, to meet one elder tree after another – a great Douglas fir, an ancient oak, a mighty poplar, a wide banyan rooting itself again and again from its branches. They showed me scenes of pain and destruction in the landscapes they inhabit. I was made to watch clear-cutting in the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest, and to be present during brutal deforestation in Brazil, with great machines rending the Earth, and the stink of smoke and the cries of dying trees everywhere. The grief of the trees entered my being. It was like being made to witness the rape and butchery of innocents. Choking and sobbing, I had difficulty sustaining the beat of the drum.
I moved gingerly to a shelf high above where a giant white heron was perched, looking out over vast distances. I was shot out from there, to meet one elder tree after another – a great Douglas fir, an ancient oak, a mighty poplar, a wide banyan rooting itself again and again from its branches. They showed me scenes of pain and destruction in the landscapes they inhabit. I was made to watch clear-cutting in the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest, and to be present during brutal deforestation in Brazil, with great machines rending the Earth, and the stink of smoke and the cries of dying trees everywhere. The grief of the trees entered my being. It was like being made to witness the rape and butchery of innocents. Choking and sobbing, I had difficulty sustaining the beat of the drum.
–
I heard the voices of the tree elders. Their message, in different accents, was the same.
I heard the voices of the tree elders. Their message, in different accents, was the same.
–
The trees need humans to dream with them.
The trees are dying through the ignorance and greed of men,
and with them your world.
We need Tree Speakers to speak for the green world.
We need Tree Speakers to speak for the green world.
It is your duty to find them and give them voice and vision.
–
I want to ask active dreamers, once again, to dream consciously with the trees and take on the calling of the Tree Speaker.
I want to ask active dreamers, once again, to dream consciously with the trees and take on the calling of the Tree Speaker.
Photo of clear-cutting by Tero Laakso via Flickr
Read Previous Post
