Why Aspen?

Musing about my new website, first by feeling such appreciation for my dear friend of fifty plus years, AKA website designer and creator, AKA Jody Gillerman.*

I simply told her I wanted Aspen trees to be centered, and look at what she created!

Why Aspens? Because one saved my life. Quite literally. I was driving by myself in Colorado on the continental divide when it started snowing and my car skidded. I think I over corrected for the skid and the car took flight off the road and down the mountainside. An Aspen tree stopped the flight sixty feet below, allowing me to climb back to the road.

Years later another friend asked me what tree I would want to be if I were a tree. I knew I was Aspen.

I will ask you to pause right here to ask yourself the same question, what tree would you be? Take your time, this is an important question and a deep practice. Feel into the question. Perhaps close your eyes and remember trees that live near you, or trees you have known in your past....

Which trees are coming forward? Are you in a place where you can see a tree in real time? If so, and if you want to, give that tree all your attention, receive its being-ness. You are already receiving its lifeforce AKA oxygen. You are always and ever in mutual life giving exchanges with all plants and trees. I could muse on indefinitely about the ways we go about our lives as though the trees were merely backdrop scenery, barely paying any attention.... And yet, we would not be here without them.

No worries if you don’t know which tree is the one you’d be. Try many on for size. I promise it will be the beginning of an important relationship between you and Nature, which is to say, between you and your Nature.

Years later I learned more about Aspens. “One aspen tree is actually only a small part of a larger organism. A stand or group of aspen trees is considered a singular organism with the main life force underground in the extensive root system. Before a single aspen trunk appears above the surface, the root system may lie dormant for many years until the conditions are just right, including sufficient sunlight. “ **

And so it is I muse about how you and I are connected, how each of us is part of a larger organism, how we too need certain conditions in order to grow and thrive. But mostly that we are connected in profound ways that are not necessarily seen, but are nonetheless present.

Please consider finding your tree nature and let that show you how to be connected. Feel into the reality that you and the trees are breathing each other. And I’ll connect with you again at my next random musing!

* JoAnn (Jody) Gillerman | jo.artpodorg@gmail.com

https://www.joanangillerman.com | https://www.art-pod.org/

** Hannah Featherman, National Forest Foundation