Messages Left Behind

Saturday my friend Diana and I went looking for prayer trees.  These trees - in this area, they are mostly ponderosa pine - were modified for specific purposes by Ute people about 450 years ago.

While walking through the forest, it is easy to pass prayer trees without even knowing it, but when one knows what to look for, the unique shapes readily show themselves.  The photos below are just a few of the prayer trees that Diana and I found.  Of course many of these sacred trees have died, burned, or been cut down over the years, and because the ponderosa pine lives to be between 300 and 600 years old, the remnants of the Ute culture we saw Saturday won't be around much longer.

John Wesley Anderson has studied the prayer trees of the Pikes Peak area extensively, and he writes that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them in this region of Colorado.  Anderson says that, 

"Utes believe every living thing has a spirit. The prayer tree spirit lifts their prayers high to the pine needles at the crown, which are blown by the wind - the breath of the creator - releasing their prayers for the next 800 years."

Just think, if the people who left their prayers in these trees were correct about this, we are still living within the prayers that were left in these trees long ago!

Here are a few photos of the trees we located:

Trail Marker Tree (bent at an angle pointing to Pikes Peak, a source of water, etc.).  This is also a Medicine Tree - you see the cut where bark was removed and medicine taken from the layer below the bark. 

Burial Tree 

The horizontal part may point to something of significance regarding the deceased person.

 Burial Tree up close

 Ligature markings - Here you can see the horizontal lines where a tie was made in the tree to make it bend as it grew.  I read on one website that the "rope" they used for this was made out of yucca.

Ceremonial or Storytelling Tree 

 A closer look at the Ceremonial or Storytelling Tree
 

Probably a Trail Marker Tree - with my friend, Diana, and her copy of the book that guided us on this Sacred Tree search.

 

 Ceremony or Storytelling Tree

Closer look at the top of the Ceremony or Storytelling Tree

This one is called Grandmother Tree.  It is a Story Tree, and is considered one of the most sacred of the trees in this particular park.  It is old, and large for a ponderosa, as you can tell by the contrast with the bench in the background.

Another view of Grandmother Tree

Two trees that were made to grow together to form a Prophesy Tree.  The tree on the left was made to grow into the one on the right, forming a portal.  Walking through it, a person is headed toward Pike's Peak - a sacred place for the Utes.  It may also have been a territorial boundary.  Here, Diana is walking through the portal.  

Where the two trees of the portal grew into each other. 

These are also two trees grown together as a Prophecy Tree - and this one is known as the Hugging Tree.  It's one of the more sacred trees in this area.  What might the prophecy be?  Has it come to fruition? Or will we be long gone before the prophecy is fulfilled? 

Hugging Tree - where the two trees join

 

 Hugging Tree - I love this angle.  They did such a beautiful job with this.  I feel honored to have seen it.

 

 Hugging Tree - this angle is also beautiful.

 

Hugging Tree close-up

 Trail Marker Tree pointing to the Hugging Tree in background- can you see the Hugging Tree back there?

If Diana hadn't shared the information from her book with me, I could have easily taken a nice, peaceful stroll through this forest without feeling the connection I now feel to the people who have been here before us.  What other messages wait for us to notice?

Thank you to Diana and to John Wesley Anderson's book, Ute Indian Prayer Trees, for help in identifying these beautiful trees!