t r e e s t o r y

Okay I have mentioned it a few times but here is a practice that will heal all your maladies, improve your sex life, make you more attractive, harmonize your thoughts and calm your central nervous system. I call it Tree Breathing. I do it every time I come to Madonna. I do tree breathing often when I am on walks. If there was one thing I would have you do in your life it is this practice. Not just read about it, but really do it. Alas, many will read, but few will do. Tree Br

Today I woke up from a dream. I was looking up from the base of Madonna at her limbs swaying gracefully and fully in the wind. Simple, that’s it. Just as if I were there. This was potent to me as a few nights before as I bid my farewell, I lay against one of her 13 sister trunks and asked her to come to me in a dream – and it happened. I feel as if my nervous system and hers are becoming attuned. As I moved about mi casa I fell into some tiresome thoughts involving resentment

What will happen to me if I spend 30 days with a madrona? Can I inspire others to notice a tree in their life? Will the greater community support my work? These are the central questions I am exploring. How will my life change if I come out of the closet and confess my unconditional love of a tree and express it with her and the world directly? I came to Madonna late tonight. The wind rolled out of the forest and across the fort grounds and chilled me as it seeped through my

I shuttle between two worlds daily. The world of Doings, magnetized to a computer and the strange world of social media as I run the campaign for TreeStory. And the world of Being with the tree, a place where the senses are prominent, where dogmind and tree mind and my essential mind meet in a great quieted silence. When I am with Madonna, my body goes through a period of adjustment. At first, I feel myself essentially leaning forward as if trying to rise away from my body. M

I approached Madonna from the seaside. It was well past twilight, the last whispers of orange fading from the western sky. My pattern has shifted to coming to her later at night as stillness takes over the fort. She is of a beauty I haven’t really begun to address. Part of the reason is all last week I was immersed in a 12-hour a day leadership program called Soul Motion, It would take pages to describe the process and enlivenment from that – but it has shrunk my ability to b

Tonight I approach Madonna (the madrona) as a large aware presence in the open field. I feel her as a great benevolent creature of power and kindness. She is darker than the sky around her as if she has sucked all the nearby light inside to feed on through the night. I trail my hand along her thirteen trunks and circle her saying hello. Her bark is sometimes smooth as a woman’s thigh and other times scaly as an iguana. I rest my chest against her and do my tree breathing prac

Today is Buddha’s birthday. It is also the full moon, a blue moon, the second full moon of the month. 2,500 hundred years or so ago, Siddhartha, the prince raised in luxury, went on a quest to discover freedom from the inevitability of human suffering. His six year journey eventually brought him to a tree. That tree was an Asiatic fig or ficus religiosa, which we now know as the Bodhi (“being awake”) tree. He sat beneath it and vowed to stay until he attained enlightenment. H

When running a campaign that asks for financial support needed to do one’s work, it’s tempting to get caught up in assessing how things are going based on contributions coming in. It is part of frontal lobe linear, rational thinking, separated mindedness. I knew this doubt would enter at some point, that it would come during lulls in participation. What am I doing? Does it matter? I should name this doubter. He comes to visit in every creative enterprise I have ever embarked

I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. -Wendell Berry I sit and rest my back against the body of the madrona and feel relaxation stream through mine. My breathing softens. My senses open. I sense the wind stirring my skin and hear the shifting of leaves like sand flowing across a dune. I see clouds pass through limbs and notice my brain easing. I think that part of the brain needs to watch clouds, to watch limbs blow in

This entire campaign is a great intuitive social medium experiment. The medium is the tree. The social experiment is: what will happen to me, how will it impact my experience of life to be with one particular tree every day? I feel I am becoming attuned with the Madrona. People have gone so far as to tell me I’m becoming a tree…not sure about that. But my allegiance towards it and feelings about it are growing and real. I am quickly losing the impulse to justify this to peopl