Singing to the End

Talking to Trees, Part Three

One of the most impactful stories of my life was about torture, horror, and death.

And what a difference love can make, even in the worst of the worst of the worst.

One of my first spiritual teachers, Cerridwen, wrote a book called The Heart of the Fire about her past-life memory in Scotland. Whether you take the book as a novel or as a memoir is besides the point; whether you believe in past lives or collective consciousness or one final death is immaterial. The lesson is the gift, regardless of its origin.

In The Heart of the Fire (spoiler alert! I'm about to give the ending away, and then share an alternative ending...) Fiona – aka Cerridwen in this lifetime – falls in love with her best friend Annie. Their romance burns hot and bright (damn, can Cerridwen write sexy sex scenes!), and then at some point they part ways. Years later Fiona discovers that Annie has been captured by the witch hunters. In the wrenching finale Fiona desperately tries to save her beloved friend, only to be captured herself and killed.

After Cerridwen published the book she did some healing work, and decided to go back into the story of Fiona and Annie from a different place. The rewrite left me weeping with understanding, and was a touchstone in my own relationships that I often failed miserably to get anywhere close to.

Fiona discovers that Annie has been captured by the witch hunters. She finds a safe space, then uses her spiritual practice to get quiet, to drop beneath her fear and terror. Fiona then reaches out psychically to Annie, who responds. Fiona stays with Annie energetically as she is tortured, feeding her energy and love. When Annie is killed Fiona is there on the etheric plane, holding her hand and midwifing her through her death. She comes back from her trance, grieves the terrible loss of her friend, and then gets quiet again until she can see the energetic golden thread that leads her away from the witch hunters. She survives, gets married, and has a fulfilling life which honors her memory of Annie.

Oooof.

I remember weeping as I read this version of the story, and realizing: “I can turn towards the pain. I can turn towards the sorrow. I can bring love to the horror.”

This was 34 years ago, when I was a baby witch. I had so much to learn. Yet this seed was planted deep in my being, and two years ago it took root.

On April 6^th, 2022 the U.S. Forest Service lit a “prescribed burn” outside of Hermit's Peak, 30 miles north of this land I steward. Within a couple of hours the fire was out of control, and over the next three months the fire danced with the spring winds, growing to become the biggest wildfire in New Mexico history.

The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire burns in the mountains near Pecos, N.M., on May 25, 2022. Eddie Moore / The Albuquerque Journal / AP Images

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Read more about the wildfire in my first article: When What You Love Destroys What You Love.

Or read this recent article in Rolling Stone: The Government Set a Fire in New Mexico. It Burned 341,735 Acres

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On May 1^st, 2022 I was teaching in Sedona when I got the notice to evacuate my house in Las Vegas, NM and not to long after that to evacuate the land, which is about 1/2 hour from Las Vegas. The fire that seems so far away was rapidly heading south, fueled by 50-70 mile an hour winds and drought conditions.

I used my spiritual practice to get quiet. I listened. And I knew that the wildfire was going through the land.

As I write about in my first article for Out of the Fire, I'm an incredibly optimistic, we-can-figure-this-out person who knows the power of prayer and intent. Yet I knew in my bones that there was no amount of prayer and wishing or hoping or begging that was going to save the land from the fire.

When the wildfire roared through the land I was back in New Mexico, sitting in my truck at the evacuation center. Like all of us in San Miguel and Mora counties, I had been following the daily fire updates, the wind patterns, and the efforts of the firefighters. I checked my phone multiple times a day to see where the wildfire was heading, how far it had moved, how the winds had shifted.

It was a Monday, 5 pm. I checked the online map one more time before I headed to my friend's house where I was staying.

The fire was in my neighbor's field. Winds 40 miles an hour, blowing north to south.

I burst into tears.

Once the tears subsided, I felt myself frantically asking, “What do I do? What do I do?”

I wanted to speed up I-25, to Romeroville and take the backroad to the land. I wanted to be with my trees.

The lesson and love of all of my spiritual teachers blossomed in that moment. I felt my elders: Cerridwen, don Miguel, Ana Forrest, Peggy.

“Be still,” they said. “Listen.”

And just like Fiona, I sank beneath my grief and fear and desperation and got quiet.

I reached out to the pines and the juniper, the cottonwood and the oak.

And they reached back to me.

“Sing to the trees,” I heard in my heart. “Sing. Be with us.”

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It has been two years since that moment, and I still burst into tears even thinking about it. The grief has softened, but just as when you lose a beloved, there is still an ache, an emptiness, a sorrow carved from loving something fiercely.

And so let's pause here, and together grieve for what we have loved and what we have lost.

Once the grief has moved into a soft emptiness, let's together get quiet. And listen.

Breathe.

Open.

Listen.

What needs singing to? Who’s hand can you hold (it may be your own.) Where is the golden thread leading you forward?

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Part Two: Courtship / Stewardship

https://heatherash.substack.com/p/courtship-as-stewardship

Part One: Talking to Trees