An idea taken from:
WALDEN
~ by Henry David Thoreau
“Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees...
the black birch;
the hornbeam;
the false elm...
These were the shrines I visited both summer and winter.”
Here is a grand idea, an ancient idea, and one that I have fallen in love with:
To visit the trees.
I made a date with this particularly ancient olive tree. We met in the mountains of Montenegro, where the old olive tree had put down roots, over two-thousand years ago.
When you visit a tree, you must listen - deeply and openly, to hear what wisdom the tree offers. Slow your mind and body, thinking of the rhythm and cycle of the tree - it's lifespan is long, often longer than our own. Our days may feel like minutes to a tree, just as our weeks could feel like years to a butterfly. In that slow space, we might come to understand more of the wise whispers of trees...
🌿 🌿 🌿
THE MUSINGS OF TREEBEARD
“‘I am not going to tell you my name, not yet at any rate.’
A queer half-knowing, half-humorous look came with a green flicker into his eyes. ‘For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time saying anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.’”
WHISPERS
~ by Ayla Nereo
“To receive your whispers
tender breath-keepers
givers of life to these lungs
may I open my ears and
surrender
what can you tell me
how can I tend you
how can I tend to the ones
who pour life through these lungs…”
