Lessons from Trees

[Robienne]

Lessons from Trees ( I don't know who wrote this)


1. It's important to have roots.
2. In today's complex world, it pays to branch out.
3. If you really believe in something, don't be afraid to go out on a
limb.
4. Be flexible so you don't break when a harsh wind blows.
5. Sometimes you have to shed your old bark in order to grow.
6. If you want to maintain accurate records, keep a log.
7. It's okay to be a late bloomer.
8. Avoid people who would like to cut you down.
9. As you approach the autumn of your life, you will show your true
colors.
10. You could be Brilliant! in other words "bloom where you are
planted."

[Artemisia]

Looks like it was someone called Ron Carter:
http://www.excelwithus.com/BoEN/pro/xl73.htm
Cheers, Rachel

[desertmedicinewoman]

Here's something more about trees, from school of the seasons. Tree HUGGING!

Living in Season: Confessions of a Tree Hugger
===================================
I always feel faintly guilty when I hug a tree, furtive,
embarrassed. Perhaps this is because the tree I usually
hug is right outside the building where I teach writing
classes on the University of Washington campus. What
would my students think if they walked by and saw their
teacher, her arms wrapped around the slender trunk, her
nose pressed into the bark, her eyes closed in bliss?
Maybe they'd see a tree-hugger, an epithet usually
delivered with such scorn that even I cringe under the
burden of feebleminded anthropomorphism.

Yet, since a tree is alive, passionately, vividly alive
even in winter when its branches are bare, it should be
obvious that hugging a tree brings the same benefits to
the hugger as hugging a dog or a friend. I recently read
a section on hugs in the book Passionate Marriage by
David Scharch. He discusses the subtle ramifications
of hugs, like the hug that goes on longer than you
intended and makes you wonder about its meaning,
the jolt that signals one person is ready to withdraw
from a hug, or the melting into the hug hug.

No tree ever jolts or tries to withdraw when I hug it.
Usually the greatest problem I experience is my slowing
down to match the tempo of the tree. Sometimes I can't
do it and turn away, disappointed. But most often, especially
if I can get over my fear of being caught, I can relax. I close
my eyes and sniff the delicate aroma of the bark, press my
body against the trunk and try to sense within myself the slow
rise of the sap. I breathe in and out slowly, imagining sinking
roots deep into the ground with each inhale and branches
reaching for the sky on each exhale.When the wind is stirring
the branches of the tree I'm hugging, I can feel that movement
shivering through the trunk. Despite being rooted to the ground,
trees are in constant movement.

Tree-hugging opens the heart. When I've quieted to the place
where I can feel the life force in the tree, the thrill of the sap,
the quivering of the wind in the branches, I become aware of
the pounding of my own heart and a feeling of love envelopes
me, as if the tree wraps a spell of comfort around me. Sometimes
I step away, shaken, as if awakening from a trance of green life
reaching out for the stars at night.

I came to tree-hugging rather late in my life. I had a magic tree as
a child, an old gnarled tree that grew beside the foundations of an
abandoned house, and I used to touch the tree for luck on my way
to grade school. Later, during the most miserable year in my life,
my first year away from home attending Reed College, I adopted
a slender birch sapling that grew beside the path between my dorm
and the classrooms. Every time I passed, I pressed my fingers to its
cool bark, deriving some obscure comfort from this contact.

I'll never forget the jolt I experienced the afternoon I touched the
same tree while very stoned. The tree was alive! I pulled my
fingers back as if burnt but reached out to touch it again, my cells
lighting up with pleasure as I sensed the subtle flow of the sap
under the cool bark. That was the first tree I ever hugged.

Since then I have hugged many trees. I still prefer birches but my
favorite tree on the UW campus is a black locust. I was happy to
learn, when a friend finally identified it for me, that black locusts
are considered magical by the local indigenous people. My other
revelatory tree encounter occurred with an apple tree during a
solitary retreat at the Whidbey Institute. I had always heard that
apples were the trees of love, but to me this was an intellectual
concept, until I walked into the garden and into the radius of this
old apple tree. Suddenly I was surrounded by a delicious feeling
of joy and lightness that was irresistible. Ellen Evert Hopman in
her book on Tree Magic writes that apples "thrive on human
companionship and feel their best when petted and pruned."
I certainly felt that with this apple tree, that had been lovingly
tended for decades. The same could not be said for the malevolent
crab-apple tree that grew in the backyard of my childhood home.

After reading an early draft of this essay to my writing group,
I discovered that many people have never hugged a tree. So here
are a few instructions if you are interested in trying.

1) If you are at all self-conscious, pick a tree and a place where
you will not be observed. Choose a tree that you can wrap your
arms around comfortably.
2) Inspect the bark carefully, for leaking sap and insects.
3) Put your arms around the trunk and press your body against the
tree, particularly along the left side, where your heart is.
4) Sniff the bark delicately, the way you would your lover's neck.
5) Close your eyes.
6) Breathe slowly and deeply. If you like, imagine sinking roots
into the ground and pressing branches up into the sky.
7) Continue until you sense the life in the tree. It may come as
an awareness of the sap rising or a sense that your heartbeat
is being met by another, as when lying with a lover.
If this doesn't work, open your eyes, and look up at the
branches. Allow your vision to take you along those branches
and feel the energy of the tree reaching up into the sky.

For those of you who are veteran tree-huggers, I'd be curious to
hear which trees you prefer to hug, and how hugs differ from
tree to tree.

Resources:
Schnarch, David, Passionate Marriage, Henry Holt 1998

[Willow]

Robienne,
Thank you for posting the Lessons from Trees! I went to the web site to make sure who the author was, then I included it in Woodlawn's newsletter which is coming out around the Spring equinox.
Peace and Green Blessings,
WillowW~

[Anonymous]

Hello all,

Now that is what I'm talking about. I love it and thank you Robienne for bringing that ray of light into the jungle. LOL

[whitefeather treewicca]

I'm PROUD to be a tree hugger, and i'm sure my trees are all the happier for it!!
I love the way when you press your ear to a tree on a windy day, you can hear the sap running. When i first did that i couldn't believe how noisy it was! I love that tinkly watery sound. My kids hug trees too, and find it really weird that not everyone does! I find them encouraging their friends to listen to the trees too.
I must get me a copy of that book, sounds magic!

J

[Little White Dove]

Being Taught by Trees

I have always loved trees. As a child in a chaotic and abusive home I would seek the sactuary of the high limbs of a cottonwood tree and in summer would eat the lush purple berries of a mullberry tree until I could eat no more. I would read books and create stories in the small grove of apple trees that stood in the far corner of the field behind our house. In winter I would marvel at the birds eating bright red berries off of the trees in our front yard and delight each spring at the sounds of baby birds nestled deep inside the thick prickly cedar tree that stood to one side.

As I grew older and lost touch with some parts of myself I had forgotted my deep affiliation with trees. After a severe ice storm, my husband decided to fell a number of pine trees that stood in our yard. He and the tree slayer walked around spraying paint on the ones to be felled. In my stupidity I chose one that was very close to our house. When the felling began, I was the one at home. My dog and I were horrified by what was happening but still I did nothing.

When the slaughter was done, the guilt and remorse that I felt was overwhelming. I was newly initiated into Usui Reiki II and so I stood in the place of the tree I had chosen felled and sent Reiki to heal the tree of the violent circumstances of its death. Too my great surprise the spirit of the tree gave to me instead. Sweeping me up in its presence and imbuing me with knowings that trees know. My gifts were increased by magnitudes and I felt one with the tree and the whole of the earth.

The trees everywhere began speaking to me. They told me that it had been a long time since any two leggers in this place knew how to talk with them and I feel grateful. They named my dog, Tame Wolf. One old tree with many trunks and the scarrs of knife carvings telling of love and named, One Who Heals Pain, befriended me and when I hike to that part of the woods by the river, as I turn the bend in the path some 70 yards from the tree I can feel One Who Heals Pain reach out to greet me and I hug the tree and lean against the healer and journey under its canopy.

Lessons from trees reconnected me to the ability to sense the life in all things, connection to devas of the elements, the animal, plant and mineral world and the life force created when mankind takes these resources and create all manner of things combining the energies in compositions inspired. Connecting me to the spirit world and the underworld teaching me to BE A TREE.

Little White Dove

[dogscribe]

I LOVE trees. I have this quote too:

Advice From a Tree
By Ilan Shamir

Dear Friend,

Stand tall and proud
Sink your roots deeply into the Earth
Reflect the light of a greater source
Think long term
Go out on a limb
Remember your place among all living beings
Embrace with joy the changing seasons
For each yields its own abundance
The energy and birth of Spring
The growth and contentment of Summer
The wisdom to let go of leaves in the Fall
The rest and quiet renewal of Winter

Feel the wind and the sun
And delight in their presence
Look up at the moon that shines down upon you
And the mystery of the stars at night
Seek nourishment from the good things in life
Simple pleasures
Earth, fresh air, light

Be content with your natural beauty
Drink plenty of water
Let your limbs sway and dance in the breezes
Be flexible
Remember your roots

Enjoy the view!

[Sandwalker]

For those of you who are veteran tree-huggers, I'd be curious to hear which trees you prefer to hug, and how hugs differ from tree to tree.

I definitely preferr to hug Sugar Maples, they seem more sensitive to what is going on around them or what touches them than other ones, and seem almost to conform to your shape as you conform to theirs.. Or perhaps I am simply very compatible with them. hehe
Hard Maple has become a very important tree to me, over the years. He has been a lover, protector, teacher, healer, and familiar to me, as well as something of a spirit guide, more recently

It is interesting how to hug one tree is different than hugging another, like people.. I find Oaks to be very rigid, rather the opposite of Maples, perhaps it is the differences in barks, or personalities.. I don't quite know. They are, as they are.

Sweeping me up in its presence and imbuing me with knowings that trees know.

I have also found this.. Some of the things that my favorite, most-hugged tree (a sugar maple, gee..) has taught me have been easily condesible into sentances, and some of the things, well, I don't think I'll ever get them to a point where I can make them understandable. Hee

I find this topic somewhat of a coincidence, as my family has decided to do a bunch of research on trees, and their magical (and sometimes not as magical) attributes.
There is a lot out there on European and Celtic trees, what with the Celtic tree alphabet, and old texts surviving in other areas long civilized (with writing, that is..).. But we can't seem to find anything on American trees.

So, we have decided to trance journey to the trees ourselves, and ask *them* whether they are sacred/magical trees, and what their attributes/correspondences are. We'd love to find magical/spiritual attributes the Native Americans gave them, but can't seem to find anything.. I read once long ago, somewhere, that they considered the Maple the leader of the trees, because of generosity, i.e. it has so many different uses.. I think that was the gist of it, but I can't find the site anymore, or the little ditty buiried in a long article.. In any case, that is our project. We just tranced on Sassafras this nite, seemed to go alright, but I am not sure about trying to go to the trees in the winter when they are asleep.. She seemed a bit grumpy!

Sooo.. ummm.. Anyone have any american tree folklore or other interesting bits, right off hand?