Several years ago I cut, cleared, sawed, and mowed a path through the woods around the house. One day while walking this path I heard a strange singing sound, kind of eerie, unrecognizable. A sort of vibration. The wind was blowing that day and I thought maybe it was some distant sound traveling on the wings on the wind, but not so. Behind me was a tree whose branch had grown right up against the branch of another tree and as the wind caused the branches to rub against one another the friction made a distinct, musical sound. Over time this friction between the branches had formed a sort of tree wound, a place where the bark and more had worn away completely. I called it the singing tree and would go and sit under it and simply listen to the extraordinary sound. Recently I've tried to find it again and I can't. Today I realized that it is no longer there because the trees have grown and the unique contact between the branches is gone, the singing tree wound has healed and is no longer. I'm bummed about the pulled muscle in my back, and that I can't do asanas for a while, but it was suggested I take walks. Just as the lament of the wounded singing branches of the trees have healed and grown, so will my pulled muscle. I used to be afraid to walk in the woods but now I feel no fear, but rather at ease, and welcomed. Sometimes I see animal faces in the plants, in the dead decaying pieces of wood, in the unique rock formations. Gray writes that "spirit is not limited to human beings. Rocks, animals, the earth, and so on are seen as having spirits...in indigenous cultures, spirit can be directly engaged and used as a source for healing."
Kabat-Zinn writes: "The old fairy tales, we are told by their modern interpreters...are ancient maps offering their own guidance for the development of full human beings. The wisdom of these tales comes down to our day from a time before writing, having been told in twilight and darkness around fires for thousands of years...they are emblematic of the dramas we encounter as we seek wholeness, happiness, and peace. The kings, queens, princes and princesses, dwarfs and witches are not mere personages out there. We know them intuitively as aspects of our own psyches, strands of our own being, groping toward fulfillment. We house the ogre and the witch, and they have to be faced and honored or they will consume us. Fairy tales are ancient guidance, containing a wisdom, distilled through millennia of telling, for our instinctual survival, growth, and integration in the face of inner and outer demons and dragons, dark woods and wastelands...It is worth while to seek the altar where our own fragmented and isolated being-strands can find each other and marry, bringing new levels of harmony and understanding to our lives, to the point where we might actually live happily ever after, which really means in the timeless here and now."
The singing tree is gone, but the musical notes resonate with healing when I meditate upon them, allow the energy to pierce my outer bark. From a trash heap at one of the San Antonio missions I gathered some dying aloe vera plants, and have many times repotted them, throwing the tangle of roots in the woods where they continue to thrive and bloom despite the odds. There are little trails everywhere made by unseen animals scurrying about under the cover of darkness. Holes are dug everywhere to provide shelter and dens of refuge from predators or the elements. I observed a large branch growing vertically towards the sky from a seemingly dead tree stump, it's green leaves fresh and alive and fragrant. And I saw my first hummingbird of the season, and swear she looked just like a fairy.
