Tales from the book of lost tree wisdom.
One day while sitting under my favorite pine tree, I met the Wood Mother. The day was exceedingly hot, so I took off my cloths that I might feel the cool pleasures of air stirring green kindness upon my body. I sit watching rays of sunlight shine through the forest canopy creating multi fields of color and shade. I squint my eyes until everything blurs into one and slowly open them several times, each time, I see the world anew. I sit for what seems a short time when I hear some large creature coming toward, I heed it not, thinking it’s some wandering deer and I remain carefree. I stretch out upon a bed of pine, cradled between two roots and slowly doze off to sleep. But lo, I hear someone say my name, I leap to my feet and standing before me is the shape of a woman, naked as I.
“Fear not my son, for I am a friend.”
I stare at the woman in silence, somewhat stricken with shock, piercing green eyes, twinkling with life, staring back at me. Fresh pine is woven throughout her brown hair which flows down over fair skinned breasts, a garland of fresh pine surrounds her waist, a small wand in her hand, she’s neither young nor old, the most, lovely woman I have ever seen. I begin to relax and smile at her. “You are not fearsome to look upon.”
The wood woman laughs, “Are we not friends then, here in the pine wood, as two children of the forest?”
“Yeah, “I would be your friend, mother. Will you sit here with me under the shade of my favorite tree?”
“Yeah, sweet son, shall we play a game?”
“Game, what game?”
“Tell me how I look to you, and I, will tell you how you look to me.”
The wood woman’s ageless beauty seems strangely familiar. “I have seen your likeness before, in my dreams.”
“And I have seen you in my dreams. You will call me mother and I shall call you son and I will teach you what wisdom I know.”
I feel a positive sense of being emanating all around me, the earth and the great weather move me, fill my inward parts with joy.
“I have longed for one such as you to be my mother.” I cry.
“Oh, sweet son, I too have longed to be your mother!” She draws me to her, hugging and kissing me lovingly. “Let the forest be our raiment awhile longer as we sit down under the Guardian Tree, and I will tell you some of who I am.”
“The Chippewa call my people Michilamackinawaygoes,
I am the last remnant of a race that originated from lands across the sea. The Iroquois of New York attacked my people more than five hundred years ago and annihilated them except for two lovers who hid in caves on Mackinaw Island. Disgusted with human nature, we crossed the ice, shunned other humans and lived by ourselves in the wildest parts of the country. I am that same woman and my lover, and I dwell together here among the wild wood. I would pass what wisdom I know to someone such as you, one who already knows the truth through their embodiment with it. I can teach you skills for discovering what it is that which you already know and care about.”
I learn much wisdom from my Earth Mother.
“Through the realization of God in individual consciousness; that is how we heal each other. There is only one life, one consciousness, one soul, but that one consciousness is the consciousness of you and the conscious of me, and the consciousness of all life. When we are open to this conscious oneness, we become so much a part of one another, that what one is thinking about, the other is hearing, but no transference of thought is involved. We are just one with all that is.” The whole world whether seen as human beings, animals, or plants, is God manifest. This is vitally important, because it is on this premise that all spiritual healing is based.”
Here ends the first translation from the Lost Book of Tree Wisdom. Many sections are still missing, others too damaged to decipher. However, I will continue deciphering and searching, meditating and dreaming. I will report any new findings, here.
Your obedient servant,
J.D. Caldwell