Sacred Forest Bathing

      

By Ellen Dee Davidson

Sacred Forest Bathing Ellen Dee Davidson Invitation          Imagine walking down a path on soft russet duff. The faint sweet fragrance of the simple, white trilliums with their yellow stamens wafts on the breeze. There are so many trilliums; they line the trail. The flute-like note of a hermit thrush punctuates the air, calling us back to this place and this moment in time, so our thoughts slow down and we start noticing more.      After this winter’s fierce rains, the moss is scintillating with fresh vibrant aliveness. Waist-high ferns glisten with dewdrops. A blue jay flits through branches, flying between shafts of sunlight that seem to pour down grace.      It’s so quiet here that the rustles of a chipmunk in the brush seem loud. It’s so quiet here that we can hear ourselves think. It’s so quiet here that we can hear ourselves not think. We can open up to the spaciousness and delight of being in a fragment of the wholeness that once was, a remnant of the glory of the biosphere Earth created over eons.      These remnants of wilderness, places allowed to evolve in their own wild ways without the interference of human beings, give us glimpses into what it feels like to be whole. And for sure it’s not linear. All is curvy, fractal, interrelated. The essence of wholeness is when all of the disparate parts assemble in harmony, whether it is our body, emotions, spirits, minds, and essences or the elements of earth, water, fire, air and space.      A common note in diverse ecosystems seems to be beauty; every environment has unique colors, scents, hues, vibrations, patterns, and energy fields that come together in exquisite coherence. Even the transitional environments, where we go from forest to beach, for example, do it with such elegance and interwoven delicacy that our hearts open to beauty.      My odyssey began over thirty years ago when my husband took a job in Humboldt County, California, in the far north of the state. It is a region of redwoods, rivers, and big lagoons along stretches of rugged coastline. There is even an old-growth redwood behind my backyard. I named the tree Grandmother Dragon Tree because she feels old and grandmotherly and has two prongs sticking out the top of her crown and a snout nose that resembles a dragon. (I’m calling the tree “she” because I can’t bear to call living beings “it,” as if they are objects.)      As soon as we settled into the house, Grandmother Dragon Tree began visiting and teaching me in dreams. In 1992, I’m sound asleep when the giant tree appears in my mind. She pulses with light and consciousness. I see waves of energy radiate from Grandmother Dragon Tree—up, down, and across the valley for a quarter mile in every direction. Words come into my dream. “My radiant field uplifts.” And somehow I know she’s improving the tone of all the life in this area: the creek and fish, occasional river otters, spawning salmon, eagles, hawks, herons, egrets, deer, bear, fox, porcupines and myself and my family. Some nights in my dreams, I see starlight streak down her trunk, grounding into the soil. Other times, there is the vision of the tree, almost as if she is greeting me, and then the dream image of her morphs into pictures of mushrooms growing on her bark, huddled against her roots, or sprouting up in circles around her.      I can’t figure out why the tree keeps showing me mushrooms. It is decades before I learn of discoveries scientists make about the importance of fungi and their mycelial networks transmitting nutrients between trees. At first, I don’t understand the dreams at all. It never occurs to me that the tree is sentient and actually communicating with me. Instead, I analyze each dream in a Jungian way, as if the tree represents part of myself.      About fifteen years after Grandmother Dragon Tree’s first visits to me in my dreams, I begin going on retreats and meditating with a lama in the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana tradition. The lama comes to my friend Annette’s refurbished redwood barn. About twenty of us sit on woven wool carpets. During rainstorms, a woodstove keeps us cozy, while on hot summer days, with the windows wide open, we watch the crown sparrows dip and dive. Each retreat, we soften and open by meditating, dancing, listening to dharma talks, chanting mantras, and receiving the beauty of the blossoming rhododendrons. So I’m in a very receptive state when the lama suggests we “follow the juice.”      I think he means that we follow our deepest heart wishes and do what increases our vital life force energy. Both of my children are grown and off to college, and I have more free time than I’ve ever had, so I start playing a game with myself upon waking and ask, “What is my heart’s desire to do today?” Most free days, the answer is, “Go to the redwood forest.” Although there is a lovely second-growth community forest in my town, Arcata, I can’t resist the lure of forests that have never been logged and so usually drive either forty minutes south or north to find completely untouched redwoods. I begin hiking miles, sometimes with my husband, Steve, or one of my friends, most often Allegra. I first met Allegra when our daughters were in elementary school and we were at an assembly. Looking across the sea of people, I saw her face lit up from within, glowing like a full moon, and it almost seemed like there was a twinkling tiara of sparkling fairy lights around her head. Later, she told me that I also looked luminous and magical, like an elf! We’ve been friends ever since.      But Steve is often busy with his garden, and Allegra with her family, so I usually go alone. Sometimes it is scary. I run into mountain lions, rutting elk, and black bears. But mostly it is blissful to be in all that silence, and I spend hours meditating with the old trees. I’m not expecting spending time in the forest to heal me, but it does and over the years I find myself happier and healthier than I’ve ever been. I’m also not expecting the spirits of the land to speak to me and to take me on a mythic journey that opens me up to visionary experiences, but they do and over the years I find myself increasingly able to receive the magical and mysterious wisdom of the trees.      Immersing myself deeply into the enchanted realm of the ancient redwood forest, I have discovered that everything communicates with me, often on levels too subtle to reach my conscious awareness. Information comes into my body, sometimes as an instinct—the way we often know who is safe or not, without understanding exactly why. Children and pets do this all the time. I’ve learned to trust this intelligence that permeates my body. When I don’t invalidate what I’m receiving, things go better for me, and eventually I understand what I picked up. So I slow down and allow the trees to enliven me, awakening memories of a state of wholeness when redwood forests stretched from California to Canada, oaks were worshipped in my ancestral lands of Ireland, and people lived so intimately with Earth it was an entangled weave of life.      It still is an entangled weave of life. There’s no getting around that. Modern humans have stepped back behind squares and rectangles, metallic devices, electronic barrages, noise, traffic, artificial perfumes, laundry detergents, and walls so that we create a delusion of independence, of not being entangled with life. But of course this is impossible. We are woven deeply into the fabric of Earth’s creative expression.      We are in dynamic times where old systems are crumbling and we have yet to birth the new. It’s a challenge to keep our balance and focus on what we do want, while feeling so deeply for our own and others’ suffering. In this story of wild wanderings, I hope to explore ways nature can help us to lean into our fullness, health, and potential to get off this hamster wheel of human-induced suffering, abuse, and war on ourselves, one another, and nature.      We can look to wilderness for guidance, especially forests. Trees have been on the planet for over 360 million years. In that time, they have been huge contributors to creating the biosphere that has elaborated itself into this astonishing diversity of interconnected life. It’s a stunning creation that has, in fact, made Earth habitable for us. We humans have only been here for a few million years, so it’s safe to say trees are our natural elders. We can learn from them. As I take readers strolling down this wild path, I hope you, like me, will be reminded of your wholeness, the part of you that knows health, connectivity, and a way home to our original blueprint of living in harmony with Earth.     Bio:   Ellen Dee Davidson has worked as a creative writing, piano, and elementary school teacher and is the author of a number of children’s books, including Wind, which won the Nautilus Gold Award, and The Miracle Forest. She is a member of TreeSisters, Awakening Women, and the Earth Treasure Vase Global Healing Project. She lives in Humboldt County, California, where she has fallen in love with the ancient redwood forests.   Ellen Dee Davidson