Search Results for: healing trees

I looked down on the knee-high, stump of a young tree sprouting green mushrooms and thought of the yellowish-green swirling dots I had just finished drawing on the background of my Twin Healing Trees fabric painting.

Not the same but similar.

Here the circles of the tree rings were not seen flat like when cut by a chainsaw, but three dimensional like the ruins of a castle.   I also saw the swirls and circles I made earlier with my greenish/yellow marker in the growth rings of the mushrooms.

Such a beautiful tree stump, dead, but so alive.

Then on my walk, I came to another tree stump.  This one hollowed out and big enough for me to sit inside of.  And when I did, right in front of me was a conical leaf, strung on a strand of, what I assume is, spiders web.

Even when battered by the wind, the stand held tight.

There had to be a story here.  The leaf was too much like a cocoon or nest for a small creature.  And the strand so strong.  There was nothing inside the leaf, but it was all seemed much too intentional to just be there for my pleasure.

Fate and Zinnia splashed through the water flowing over the Gulley Bridge.  The narrow plank of wood was submerged under six inches of water. I stood on the other side of the stream in my snowshoes, considering an alternate route.

The stream at its narrowest is about 8 feet wide and separates the farm from The Orphaned Woods. In one direction it empties into wetlands that border our property.   They were no more frozen than the stream itself.  To the north, just over the pasture fence on our neighbor’s property is a bridge sturdy enough for snowmobiles to use.

I called the dogs back and soon I was lifting my snowshoes over the wire fence on the furthest edge of the pasture.  After a few tries Fate and Zinnia found their way under the fence and were over the neighbor’s bridge and out of sight before I even got to it.

There were few animal tracks on the snow-covered path along the stream and I kept an eye out for a place to start walking up the hill and deeper into the woods where there weren’t as many brambles to catch on my snowshoes.

When I first heard the rumble I thought it was a plow on Route 22.

But as it grew louder and came closer, I knew it was snowmobiles.  I was walking on my neighbor’s land yet still I was annoyed by the intrusion.  I have only seen another person in these woods a few times in the eight years I’ve walked there. I have no right to complain about other people being in the woods, yet I do get possessive about them even if I have no right to.

Fate was running right towards the lights of the snowmobiles as they came towards us.  But I know she wants no part of loud fast-moving vehicles.  Both dogs fled the noise when I called them and we headed in the opposite direction as they made their way down the hill and into the cornfield away from us.

Soon the loudest noise was the crows calling back and forth to each other. Perhaps as annoyed at our presence as I was about the snowmobiles.

Snow fell as we walked covering our tracks.

I thought about how the longer I walk in the woods, the quieter my mind becomes, the more present I am to see what’s in front of me, and the calmer I am.

I know part of that is physical exertion.  But I also know that being silently immersed in the woods is healing for me.   It brings me back to myself and reminds me what’s real.

When I get back from my walks, I always feel grounded.  As if, like the trees, I too have my roots in the earth.

I didn’t imagine that when Jon and I were arranging the buttons that Kathleen sent me that they would become the leaves on a tree.   And even when Jon formed a tree from the buttons, and I was inspired,  I didn’t think that my finished piece would be as much about clouds as trees.

I came up with the words for this piece as I was coming out of sleep, in that space where so much creativity is born.  Poet Veronica Hallissey just wrote a poem on her blog called “The Learning Place“.  It’s about how when we sleep, we go to a healing place.  “..the who you are, is still the best of all learning places…”  she writes.

Sometimes, when I’m uncertain or upset about something, as I’m going to sleep, I’ll ask for a dream to help me.   Many times I wake remembering a dream that tells me something I need to hear.  Other times I’ll just wake up feeling better about my decisions.

In my fabric painting, Cloud is a Whisper, I see the tree as a symbol of being physically and emotionally grounded, the cloud as the subconscious, and the necessity of trusting both so we can heal and learn about ourselves.

I have several people who are interested in Cloud is a Whisper, so I believe it will be sold to one of them.

I knew I needed to get to my studio today. I could feel myself getting irritable and low which is what happens when I don’t get to do my work.

I spent most of last week processing my wool sales and intentionally worked on Sunday to get the orders for my Twin Healing Tree magnets filled so I could get to my studio this morning.

But I still had a bunch of paperwork to do for my bookkeeper so she could file my sales tax. And it took longer than I thought to do it.  By the time I was done, my head was stuck in numbers and systems, not a good space for me to create from.

I was spent, and when Jon offered to take me out to Jean’s Place for lunch, I greedily accepted.

The waffle with strawberries and whipped cream perked me up, but now my brain felt clouded and dull. So, I headed out into the woods.

The snow and ice were melting in the spring-like temperatures.  The air was thick with heavy, damp, breezes that smelled as warm as they felt.  Fate and I made our way through the woods to the path that would take us to the dirt road where we would meet Jon and Zinnia who were walking there.

But before we got to the road, to the right of the path, and down a hill, I saw the sun reaching through the trees and glowing softly on the ice in the swamp.  The surrounding trees reflected as far down into the ice as they towered to the sky.

I wanted to try to get a photo of the moment I was witnessing.

I could see the patches of ice beneath the leaves, so I tried to be careful.  When I fell it wasn’t unexpected.  I landed on my hip and elbow, the thud inside my head and rattle of my teeth, was uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar.

I got up, took my pictures, then made it up the hill without slipping.

Back on the path, I felt more alive than I had in days.  As if the fall woke me up from my stupor. I needed something to rattle my brain, to knock me out of myself.

All my shipping and paperwork, done for the day, I sat down at my computer to write this.

There’s more than one way for me to be creative. Taking pictures and videos, and writing are fulfilling to me.  But it’s different than the physical touch of fabric in my hands, of cutting fabric and running it through the sewing machine to create something tangible.

A computer screen and keyboard does not replicate the constant movement and physicality of sewing that is so satisfying to me.  Creating something that is an expression of myself, that I can touch, that I can hold in my hands feels like it’s necessary for my well being.

It brings me out of my head and into the world.  It wakes me up, without having to fall on the ice.