This is not your average plant community. Redwoods are too tall to stand on their ownÑ they reach out and hold one another. Once mature, a tree will sprout successors from its root base, and so on. When one falls over, vertical branches become trunks and keep going, while the fallen trunk will root where it touches the earth. One cannot measure girth or count rings and know a tree's age. Nothing there is ever "dead." From the soil to the canopy, the old forest is a single woven organism that, until recently, blanketed the hills of the western coastal region.
That this place has a memory is not mysticism. It has experienced ice ages, precessions of the earth's axis, millions of years of weather systems. Through the salmon and the fog, the forest has shared its food and its very breath with the ocean since just after the whales first appeared. Whole families of organisms have evolved and gone extinct within its body, and all these things are contained in living cellular memory. Removal of the forest is erasing this memory. And yet, as the final shreds of the old forest give up their life to a plague of sprawling primates, somehow that vital force is being transferred. New realities are emerging:
Teams of young women who care naught for pop culture, hauling gear on strenuous hikes, fasting, praying, teaching, practicing systems, studying maps, training like Marines, but with love, to gleefully dangle their bodies in the path of huge, deadly machines.
Young men, full of spunk, who think that nonviolence is cooler than power over. They want to fill the world with positive images so that today's children won't have to deprogram the same bullshit that they did.
Laid-off mill workers and senior citizens locking themselves to logging road gates, including a seventy year old woman locked to her own walker.
Pacific Lumber's number one old-growth faller filing suit against the company for hazardous and illegal forest practices.
There are cops hired as armed guards over lawless corporate plunder. But there's the one cop, holding the line with his buddies, who for a brief moment loses his focus to a sea of drumbeats, rainbow colors in sensual movement, righteous laughterÑ then sees himself a link in a chain of riot gear, feels silly, and wishes silently that he were on the other side. And there is the smiling elf-child, who notices that cop and says respectfully, "Come join us, you will be welcome in our basecamp."
In the courts, wife-beaters are released on their own recognizance while tree huggers are sent back to maximum securityÑtill even the police are changing their minds. To quote one corrections officer, "You guys don't belong here. Humboldt county is f****d up."
In the jails are circles of men, holding hands to chant, to praise one another for their wisdom and serenity.
Rabbis are telling corporate bullies to change their ways before they bring about plagues and natural disasters of biblical proportions.
In stone cathedrals, there are Christians praying for trees.
There are circles of witches, reawakened from the ashes of persecution, singing ancient sacred songs, dodging security to return to the forest and offer prayers of love and healing for ALL beings, including the pitiful Mr. Hurwitz....
We think big, because it does not honor this place to ask for small things. This is the rebirth of many ancient worlds, invisible to the eyes of greed and domination, silent behind the wail of industrial machinery, yet more alive than is customarily thought possible. This is the beginning of many futures, because our efforts to protect this place yield massive growth in our own lives. As our tribe grows and strengthens, we see that we are not saving the forest as much as the forest is saving us. In ever-increasing numbers, people are opening to the voices of trees, and the lesson becomes clear:
Come back! Come to see-listen-touch-smell-taste-REMEMBER. It's not your technology that needs an upgrade, but your consciousness. Evolve! Fear is poisoning you! What you call comfort is cancer. What you call power is insanity. Look within. Open the cages. Dare for a moment to lower your ego and experience oneness with people no matter what their customs or appearance, for you are still one family. Dare just once to learn the language of ALL beings, from the spiny to the slimy, from the ancestors to the aliens. That vibration is your native tongue; when you feel it, you'll be home. There you will find the courage to stop taking life from mother earth, and begin receiving the life she offers.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited