My property has many young oak trees. Oaks have been known to live for a thousand years, there are some trees that have lived over five thousand years and the known worlds current Oldest Living Tree is 9,950 years old! Some of the oak trees I live with are the ancestors of trees born as the glacial Lake Agassiz receeded north. Seeds arriving on the wind or released from the depths?
Think for a moment; trees are life that experience childhoods that last centuries. Their lives outlive all the generations of modern man. Canada is younger than most of the trees remaining in her old growth forests, forests now scarred and bereft. These forests that lived since the eve of the last ice age, imagine what sights they have seen; the birth of stars and the death of comets and the ever changing story of life.
Then along came we, the intelligent, the enlightened, the dominant. We celebrate the tree, yes we do. We build fine furniture and proudly sell it as solid oak or mahogany and to prove our awe of the magesty of the mighty, life giving tree; we bore a hole through her bowels and drive our cars through. O grandmother. We rape and pillage you and your young then build houses and fences to protect ourselves from you.
We the dominant species - the survivors in the contest to see who is fittest. We have earned a good spanking, just like naughty children, we act impulsively, sheepishly and against our own best interest in spite of every indicator we are wrong. Just like days of old?
Why do we have to believe that we either evolved through evolution or we were created for and evicted from the Garden of Eden? If we don't sit on one or the other of those extremes, then we probably don't give the question much thought at all. Doesn't that seem a bit limiting a concept for the great We? So either we imagine we have existed only since the earth recovered from the destruction that saw the loss of the dinosaur. And that somehow, apes transformed over time and one extremely smart version evolved into us; the great We. Or the other absurd theory that suddenly into the midst of an age that saw the great wholly mammoth, some 2-3 million years ago God decides to plop man? I mean where do you think they went after they were evicted from the Garden? Motel 8? Or some desert hut complete with instruction manuals how to forage, prepare and store foods, then promptly set up shop writing down our history?
No matter which side you are one, one thing is certain, is still took us maybe one and a half million years to discover fire. How did we survive? We must have been stupid to live for over a million years without fire, thus without meat. Or perhaps we lived like our Brother the tree, in communion with our Mother, faithful that our Mother would support us, She the giver of life.
Living tree. Forests where the young can thrive and grow for centuries, the elders for millennium in joy. Never divergent from your faith, baring your arms, stretching them high as the fall winds blow over you. Faith that the Mother has provided you the sustanance you need and faith you will hear springs song called on the wings of a bird. Roots reaching deep into the Mothers breast, toes stretched out like the neurons, communicating, stretched forth in comfort and support, communing for all the generations of man.
Why don't you think on this question? How come man ended up living in a cave again? Living in small family groups, telling stories, passing on tradition. stories about great beasts: horned, winged, flying, gigantic, colorful, eclectic beasts! Beasts and peoples, creatures that take place on other worlds and in other times.
It is my guess is that we ended up in caves last time, just the same way we seem to be headed for them again. And we are not stopping our shopping long enought to ask ourselves some very important questions. Why don't we change in light of all the scientific certainty that this planet and the life on in are in dire consequences? If the predictions are right what does that mean to my future and that of my family? Think on it; here in Manitoba we are passing a law to allow a corporation take over the stewardship of our water! A corporation is like a virus and lives only to survive and now water is a comodity? Water should be understood as a gift of life meant for all to share. What does that mean to you as we continue to pollute our lakes and rivers, producing all the stuff we need to generate all the stuff to shop for?
My Brother the tree, hail unto thee. You live in harmony with your mother and your brothers, you know that always a seed will survive, the day will come and you will live again. O smart and wise tree who understands from where life comes. who trusts our Earthly Mother to provide long life. I see you retreat everyday from man's intrusion, you prepare, you dig underground.
Now think for a moment, that somewhere a pocket of safety exists and a seed of humanity will survive. They will live in caves and tell stories of great flying machines, famous men, wars and wonderous beasts, they will try to warn the future through parables, warn of the dangers that lurk in the hearts of man and warn of the death that comes from living outside the Law. We are the Children of an Earthly Mother and everything we do to her, we do to ourselves also, her death will be our death. For her breath is my breath, her blood my blood.
I wonder did Nostradamus dream of the future or remember a past? A past before we ended up in caves again. While our Brother the Tree keeps watch.
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