“It’s not enough to simply find black ash; it has to be the right one – a tree ready to be a basket…. Trees are not taken, but requested. Respectfully, the cutter explains his purpose and the tree is asked permission for the harvest. Sometimes the answer is no…. If consent is granted, a prayer is made and tobacco is left as a reciprocating gift.”
If I were a black ash, the answer has been no. Just no. And yet there has been a theme of late, of letting go. The moon, the planets, the time of life. Let go.
No! Or, why? Mostly why. The Cutter has asked permission to cut, without explaining the purpose. Does not Creator know that asking permission includes explanation? And so, my Heart, my Soul, my Tree Self has said no, again and again until today.
This is the week of New Moon in Scorpio…. after months of messages of a Great Let Go. My Tree Self waits, expectant – but no explanation, until today. There’s something about today….
Today my shoulder blade said, Let go. You are shouldering too much. Let go. Today my reflexologist said there’s a lot going on in your solar plexus, your heart and your throat. Today I drew a card, her gift to me – “I surrender it all.” I gesture toward my solar plexus. My solar plexus winks. Today I draw another card, as I usually do, and usually the message of the second card seems unrelated. Not today – today I draw, “Let it go.”
“Tell me, Creator! Tell me! Let go of what?!”
I drive away, holding that question, waiting, wondering. Will Creator answer? I drive, listening to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s audiobook, Braiding Sweetgrass. The cadence of her voice, the poetry of her words, pull me into the story. She has been to see John Pidgeon, renowned basket maker, for lessons in basket making. She explains that John does not teach basket weaving, with piles of splints supplied and ready. No, “he teaches basket making, beginning with the living tree.”
Choosing the tree, straight and strong. The asking. The consent. The cutting. The carrying home. The pounding. And then the stripping. “The tree’s life is coming off in his hands, layer by layer…. He gestures to the big pile of splint we’ve accumulated. ‘Don’t ever forget that. It’s the whole life of that tree you’ve got piled up there.”
I hear Creator’s voice. “I want to cut you and strip you and make you into baskets. Are you willing?” I see strips of my life peeled off, woven into baskets of words. My whole life piled up. Am I willing? This time, I answer, “Yes!”
- Wall Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, p. 143-144.
- Ibid., p. 143.
- Ibid., p. 145.
Dream Bringer’s Studio 