I am perfectly attuned to my chosen patch of Earth, my rooted place, my real estate, my home. I’ve gone all-in, set up camp, sent my roots deep, made a commitment.
I may be here longer than the longest human lifespan, so I must make my peace with my choice of growing site, make the best of it, learn to love it.
Grandmother Cottonwood, winter
To survive I must be flexible with the changes happening around my patch of earth and sky. If I am brittle and rigid, I might snap in two during a heavy windstorm, losing limbs right and left.
To survive, my roots must reach deep, for shallow roots would not hold my weight or counterbalance my majestic limbs, and I would topple in weather conditions that would undermine and weaken me.
I have made my stand, sent down roots, taken my place among the community of trees, knowing my interconnections with all the living beings of this place – those who rely on sunlight, water, earth, and air for their lives.
Grandmother Cottonwood, summer
Whatever happens, I stand strong and tall. I carry out my purpose; reach to the light and root to the Earth, my home.
Dear ones, send your roots deep and spread your branches wide. As a living being on this planet it is your birthright to take up your share of sunlight water and nutrients. No more, no less.
Hackberry tree
When you sacrifice the water, nutrients, resources, space, and sunlight that you require to thrive in order to help a weaker being, you only weaken and diminish yourself.
When you sacrifice your own well-being to try and help other healthy adults you are keeping yourself small and stunted. Your health and well being suffer, you have trouble accessing your inner power and your future suffers.
You will never see a tree leaning away from the light!
Sometimes they must lean away from the shade of larger trees, to find their own light. When the larger tree falls, the smaller can shoot up and take its place in the canopy. This is the way of trees.
Of course when you have small children or you are caring for someone who is ill, you will do what you can for them and help them. Yet, even then, you must maintain and take care of your own energy, take some time for yourself, breathe deeply, eat healthfully, get enough sleep and exercise. No one will do it for you!
Do not give up your own precious path, your well made plans, your true heartfelt work, your beloved dreams to try and help those who live in the shadows. You will both be weakened. Once abandoned, your creative and spirit guided life may fade from your consciousness and be forgotten.
To help others in healthy ways that honor your needs, you can show and reflect to them their own inner power, their own strength their own capabilities, their own capacity to plug into the light.
Grandmother Cottonwood
That is what balanced healthy loving is. Letting others find their way according to their purpose here on planet Earth.
My purpose as a tree: Root deeply and reach to the light.
Stop awhile on your hike, your walk to work or school, lean against my trunk, absorb my loving energy. I have much to give.
I share my strength, my shade, my beauty with you. You can trust my solidity. My roots anchor me securely. I will not wobble or fall, back away or collapse as you lean your full weight against me. I am here for you, a sure presence.
Grandmother Cottonwood
I share my loving energy with you. What you might call my love is all encompassing. It does not question or expect or judge, it simply radiates like joy from the core of my being, embracing and enriching and interweaving with the entire web of life.
I share my tree wisdom with you. I have weathered many storms, many cold winters, droughts, floods, beating summer suns, loss of limbs, nearby construction projects that have felled many of my companion trees, yet I endure and thrive. I continue to send my roots into the earth for nourishment and reach my branches to the light life-giving sunlight.
Hackberry bark
Those of you who pay attention with your heart and your 5 senses can learn from the trees. You might learn patience in the face of change. You might learn endurance in all seasons, all weather conditions, You might discover a new way to think about unconditional love.
You might learn that to be strong and stable you must develop deep roots and connect with Earth energy. You might learn how to gracefully claim and take up the space that is yours and spread your branches to the light, because it is your birthright.
You can learn much from a tree. Trust, root deep, love, endure.
I, Grandmother Cottonwood, am a magnificent tree. I live in three worlds.
My roots reach deeply into the lower world, pulled by gravity , the magnetic pull of Earth’s core. My roots draw in nourishment and water and all earth elements needed to feed me.
This is the zone of magic, of power, of earthy energies and animal spirits, of ancient knowledge, of survival on this planet. This is the region of Earth wisdom that will feed your souls.
The wisdom of the lower world has been accumulated over millennia from the time our Earth was a swirling mass of gasses, even before life took hold.
All myths, legends, all ancient wisdom resides here. You can tap into their power and richness. They will feed and fuel your growth. As my roots feed me.
I am rooted to the Earth
GCW root zone
My magnificent trunk and large limbs reside in the middle world,the spiritual aspect of the created world. Here I weather storms, bake under a hot summer sun, rest in winter, scatter my seeds in spring. Here I age and witness tired old limbs fall to the earth and others thrive and come into leaf.
I witness my bark growing thicker and tougher each year. I interweave branches and roots with the sycamores, the hack-berries, the thorny locusts, the grasses, the nearby cottonwoods.
Here I interact with the energy, the spirits of those who walk by or who lean against me, those who give me tree hugs.
Our spirits are all one here. All living beings are connected through our invisible energies. Our spirits interweave and overlap whether we know it or not. We communicate and understand each other. Human, plant, animal, insect, Earth.
As a living being on planet Earth, my awareness is centered in my physical reality in this place and time
I am centered in my body.
Grandmother Cottonwood
My smaller branches and tiny twigs, my growing tips and buds, my fine crown of leaves reside in the upper world. This is a place of expansion, of light, of growth, a place of miracles of divine wisdom and divine energies. This is the realm of spirit, of your higher self.
Here the sunlight touches my leaves fueling their growth as they absorb the life giving light. My crown brings the amazing energies of the divine down from the heavens into my body to keep life alive. I reach to the sun, my source of power. I am whole and complete
I am aligned with divine light.
Grandmother Cottonwood in fall
I am rooted to the Earth. I am centered in my body. I am aligned with divine light.
We are delighted and proud to bless this Earth with our heavenly fragrances, our beautiful crowns of green all year long, our deep roots that hold and weave the soil into a strong fabric, our spreading branches that shelter and provide homes and food for many living creatures, feathered, winged, fur bearing, six and eight legged.
Cedar in the snow
We take seriously our charge to lovingly shelter your homes, playgrounds, parks, schools and farmsteads, to provide beauty and stability, to act as silent companions to the dead in graveyards, to decorate your homes and places of worship in the dark and cold times of year when all other growing things are brown and sleeping
We are honored to enter into your homes and buildings to provide the structural support of the walls, floors, roofs, the natural beauty of our wood-grain in your trims and furniture. We lovingly share our beauty and our strength with you.
We evergreens spread our cloaks of green standing tall and proud, loving all beings, loving this life, this Earth, sharing sunlight and air with all living creatures, knowing the stones the soil and bedrock, rooted deeply and reaching to the light…
Tree grow tall to the sun, our source of energy and we root deeply to the earth, our home base, our ground of existence.
We may grow in a group together, but we do not lean to the right to the left to help another smaller tree to more light.
Community of cottonwoods
We do not weaken ourselves to help others grow. We are strong together, each taking our place in the light. When a mature tree dies the young saplings crowding underneath will shoot up quickly into the sunlight, finally finding their own place in the canopy.
Be like a tree. Do not weaken yourself or sacrifice your energy and power or hold yourself back because another adult is weaker, has less energy, is farther behind than you.
Of course you will help and protect and love your children. Human children need more care, attention and togetherness than cottonwood seedlings.
Grandmother Cottonwood
If you want to, show them where their power lies. Reflect their strengths to them, let them access the source of power within themselves
Weakening yourself to help other grown people never works because the others do not know what to do with your energy, your power, your knowledge. They will squander your gifts while draining you. For nothing!
They will either learn to access their own power and stand on their own feet or they will not. If they do not, please bless them on their life’s path and let go of your misplaced responsibility
Your job is to grow to the light and
spread your branches!
We living beings are born, our seeds sprout, our eggs hatch, cells divide and whoever we are, we begin a joyful time of tremendous growth and transformation.
Whether you are a tree sprouting from a minute white seed embedded in cottonwood fluff, a tiny songbird hatchling breaking through into the light, or a human baby leaving the warmth and comfort of your mother’s womb, the growth at this tender time of life is exponential.
Newborn baby
All creatures come to this life with amazing potential within the limits of the energetic blueprint of their species.
For me, Grandmother Cottonwood, my greatest potential is to reach maturity, to live a long life, rooted to the earth, stretching tall, soaking in the sunlight through my thousands of leaves each springs and summer, developing new seeds each year…
…then letting my seeds go on the wind and watching my valley fill with white cotton floating on the breeze, my tiny seeds finding secure places to sprout and send down roots, then watching them grow while they meet the challenges of weather, predators, mowers, insects, earth movers, herbicides, heavy feet or hooves.
Cottonwood seeds
For those with two legs, reaching your potential can be a lifelong process of recognizing challenges to your body heart and soul, discovering or creating solutions, moving through them with grace, letting go of old beliefs that keep you stuck, accepting limitations, listening to the promptings of your heart, paying attention to the dreams of your soul, the deepest desires of your spirit and finding healthy ways to get where you want to be.
Reaching your potential is a constant
movement toward wholeness and soul satisfaction in your life.
We plant spirits, the spirits of nature, and living plants in our hundreds of billions have endured, persevered, and adapted over the lifetime of our home Mother Earth.
Vine tendril
Some of our number have gone extinct only to be replaced by new plant life forms better adapted to new and different climatic conditions.
We plants adapt and endure even now with the warming oceans, super-storms, human alteration of our valleys, rivers, plains, mountains, and forests.
We will endure into the future as we’ve endured for billions of years trusting our seeds, spores, runners and roots to the future.
We are constantly changing and adapting to our home, interwoven with all life in the vast and complex web of existence.
My peace has been disrupted by heavy equipment, its heavy vibrations shaking the earth, sending out un-harmonious energies, compacting the soil at my root zone.
Why buzz cut all the underbrush here in my shade zone? Why chop and mince all these beautiful growing things to the ground as if they were garbage?
This disrupts our community and sets us back. We grow together, or not at all.
Grandmother Cottonwood and friends
You with your heavy tracked chopper machine, do you really think you have dominion over the earth and all growing things? What will you do when the gasoline runs out?
I ask that all who live here show some respect to your fellow inhabitants of planet Earth. Live and let live!
Long after this chopper of live growth is gone, long after the machine has crumbled into rust, long after fossil fuels are history, the trees that grow from my offspring’s seeds will tower over this Earth once again, shading and sheltering all who grow nearby.
Each individual in the community of
rooted beings will find their own niche to thrive and grow and live
in peace and quiet here in our modest hillside community.
Once again billions of tiny winged seeds flutter in spiral descent to the earth where they will either take root and grow, or die to become food for the soil or the seed eaters.
Silver Maple Seeds
Millions will take root and reach briefly to the sun, only to be eaten by hungry creatures, mowed down, shaded out, flattened, deprived of water or air…
Their lives, their existence become a blessing to this earth. Their joy at living and fulfilling their destiny, however briefly is immeasurable, and strengthens the web of all life in ways unfathomable to human intelligence.
A few who take root will develop over many years into massive friendly shade trees lining the streets of towns, gracing woodlands and riparian zones, providing shade to humans, shelter to those buzzing and winged insects, flying birds large and small, and tiny fur bearers.
Silver Maple Bark
They will send their roots deep into the earth to hold the soil and anchor their massive trunks and crowns, drawing nourishment and life giving ground water into themselves.
Silver maples grace our world with their interlacing branches, providing cool shade on hot days, a solid place to lean and connect to the Earth. A place to know peace.
Every seed, every seedling is a
complete miracle, unrepeatable by any manufacturing process devised
by humans. Each one, a mystery.
Ask Grandmother Cottonwood 