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!

Sunset

fiery evening sky,

our hearts open to let you in,

our knees weaken as we behold your

magnificence,

your light breaks us into a million pieces

of awe and wonder, love and

possibility.

fiery evening sky,

heal us in your warmth, and

hold us in your

mystery.

refract our ideas of self

through the prism of

truth

that we may join you

in a brilliant display

of Infinite Aliveness.

Carol Barrow

June, 2015

What I Would Write

Using the image of some things I found while an adolescent living in Kansas, I wanted to write about big, clear hearts and minds that are still.  But for the past few months, Creativity has forgotten where I live.  Everything I have tried to write, in the end, has looked like this:

Only not as pretty...

Finally, I decided to just not care, and I wrote about what I would like to write if I were able to figure out how to do it.  I am sure that many rich and famous writers have suggested this exercise for years, but I seem to need to get to the point of desperation before I give up and do whatever it takes to move pen, keyboard, camera shutter, or anything else.

I actually kinda sorta like what came from my non-essay.  And I love that I found the voice that comes before "the editor" starts its destruction!

I have now titled this piece:

 What I Would Like to Write If I Were Able to Figure out How to Do It

I want to write about the clear, Plexiglas heart I found when I was an adolescent.  I want to write about the headless, insides-less teddy bear I found later while walking around the lake with my cousin.  The teddy bear was small, maybe eight inches tall (but his head would have made him taller), and the heart could easily fit in the palm of my hand.

I kept both of those findings for a very long time.  I kept the heart inside the headless bear's body.  I don't know what ended up happening to the heart or the bear.  Was it like Puff the Magic Dragon?  I grew up and forgot about my bear like Jackie Paper did with Puff?

I want to write about not having a head, but having a clear heart so large that it fills the torso.  Maybe Douglas E. Harding can help me with the "having no head" part. 

No head - no opinions, no judgments, no anger, no inaccurate memory, no plans.  Only a big, clear heart with arms to hug, and legs to carry me from one place to another, from one hug to another.  One could swim like this, love, be loved, hike, stroke the head of a newborn baby.

Of course a bear or a person couldn't live without a head to house a brain to run the organs that keep one alive.  At least that's the way it seems from what I've read. I don't want to remove mine in order to find out if this is really true for me.  But I could pretend. 

Imagine a big, clear heart from collar bone to pelvis.  Imagine no worries, no judgments - just huge, big heart that loves all that comes. 

I want to figure out a colorful way to write about this.

For Jill

to my friend
who soothes my body and soul
with loving massage
who notices my strengths
and doesn't go away
when I don't seem
capable of just breathing
in kind words offered
stopping at
Thank You
I will do that someday
I promise,
here is my dance
come through this body
recorded on paper
I think of you when
I see green
a color you often wear
the color outside now
thank you rain,
thank you friend
for being springtime
nourishing
loving
alive
growing
here
now

Earth Full of Butterflies

Last week I was again giving massage to my ninety-seven-year-old client, and as I moved my thumb across muscle fibers, I realized that the piece I wrote about her and the butterflies which surround her was very much in alignment with my thoughts and feelings about our dear Earth.  So I took the Betty of the Butterflies piece and changed it to reflect my love for our planet.  Here is what came of that:

Earth Full of Butterflies

On every continent of the planet, butterflies.

Migrating to Mexico, flying flower to flower, embroidered on pillows, crocheted into blankets, captured in mason jars, bred in museums, and depicted in gold pins placed perfectly on lapels.  Butterflies.

At almost five billion years old, seas and air no longer vibrant, land nearly depleted, our sweet Earth appears to be heading into a cocoon where it will transform into... what?  Does the caterpillar have any idea what comes next after she crawls into the sleeping bag of chrysalisness?

The Earth recently suffered from radiation poisoning after a meltdown of nuclear reactors at Fukushima, the dumping of millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, not to mention the ongoing mountain top removal, deforestation, and the continued dumping of plastics into its seas.  It asks me to love it and care for it every day.  I reduce, reuse, and recycle.  I patiently listen to find out what more I can do to bring health and peace.

I don't know what needs to happen here.  The Earth keeps getting sicker, more polluted, and more reliant on us to change our ways.  Does it need all of this damage to help it transform in its metamorphosis?  Or can we turn things around so that it is healthy once again?  These questions may be useful - I don't know.  Most of all, I want to be here with the Earth and the life on it.  Right here, right now.  Just loving.

Today when I had finished watching a red-tailed hawk and pulling dandelions that neighbors don't appreciate, but bees do, I picked up The Earth Prayers book. Edited in 1991 by my teacher, Elias Amidon, and his wife before the above mentioned ecological catastrophes, but after many others, it is still relevant.  In silence, I read the prayers to the Earth.

Prayers with gratitude.  Prayers of petition. "In this moment, each moment, I give thanks."  "Help us to protect these waters, these wild lands you open on; instill in us the powers to contain the ooze of mines, the excrement of need."  I know this is my language and faith - and I want to live it more.

All over the Earth, butterflies drink nectar, fly freely, bring joy to our eyes.

A caterpillar knows how to become a butterfly; the Earth knows how to heal.

I have faith in these things.


 Carol
April, 2015

Bunny Meditation

bunny sits frozen on desert sand,       

then suddenly jumps and darts

zig-zaggy up the hill.

sun kisses evening sky

goodnight and

slowly shuts its eyes.

from evening stillness, coyotes sing,

the chorus serenades

orion, the hunter.

as dark sky turns gold,

and warmth returns,

coyote crests hilltop,

small, limp, furry legs

ooze out between his jaws.

four rabbits' feet; good luck.

at what point does bunny become coyote? 

when its blood runs warm in the

carnivore's pores?  or

at the moment jaws clamp

death?  maybe the fateful

moment when hunger meets irresistible,

wild grass shoot.  possibly

before the kit is even born.

rabbit, sand, sun, sky, coyote

coyote, rain, root, rat, feces

feces, bug, breath, bone, human

human, wind, worm, wound, planet

planet, gene, god, grace, heaven

i am

  you are

    it is

      beginningless

        endless

          nothingness

            allness

              never and forever

                 beyond the beyond

bunny sits frozen on desert sand

Carol Barrow

April 18, 2015