(written last year)

I spend up to eight hours a day in the forest, every day. I am that
fortunate.

In spending all of this time walking through trees, crossing
branches, and bogging through mud, I have lots of time to think on
many things. I have time to see a small branch in the creek that few
others see, and even fewer stop to appreciate. I leave offerings,
prayers and blessings, and continue on my daily journies.

I live in the Piney Woods of the Deep Southland. We have little old
growth forest left, and very little hard woods. We have skinny, sad
looking pine trees,and massive, proud looking pine trees. But what
we don't have are deep and ancient forests, for they are gone with a
time long past.

As I sat in the tall, tall pines today, I pondered how the spirits of
this new forest might be like compaired to the spirits of an old
growth forest. I thought of the cycle of the old growth. Great Father
Trees drop their seeds to the nurturing soils of the Mother,
and a small tree springs up. This small tree is nurtured and
protected by the forest, and it grows up at the base of the great
tree that spawned it. One day, this small tree, say an oak tree,
will be the massive Grandfather Oak, like the kings before him. As
he stands proud in the forest, a new generation of seedlings breaks
out of the leaves that cover the soil. And so this cycle continues,
as it has since a time unknown. This makes ancient, and knowing
spirits...to be reared by the many spirits that have come before.

Then my thoughts turned to the forest that I was in, this new
forest. Many decades ago, the old timber was harvested, the land was
leveled, and the memory of the forest wiped clean. The spirits
were scattered in diaspora. But soon, after the brush was burned, a
new crop was planted. Being planted were small, displaced, foreign
trees....these small, small short-needle pines. Gone were the
massive Oaks, and the impressive Long-leaf Pines...and now, as far as
the eye could see, were these orphaned trees.

They had to grow up without the protective canopy of the Old Forest,
they had to forge new ground, and reach for the sky in the best way
they could. They followed the natural cycle, and they did what they
could to become a great forest. Many years later, these small
trees reached their full height, and became a huge and beautiful
forest. But it wasn't the same forest that had lived that cycle of
death and rebirth, but a forest that had been cut from the
natural cycle, and forced to find its place in it.

One day, this forest will be cut and harvested, and new orphaned
trees will be planted in its place, never will this cycle of old be
truely renewed. But, if this forest were left untouched, then one
day, these great trees that I sit with will drop their seed.....and
from it, a small sprig of green will break the forest floor....and
they cycle will continue.

As modern pagans, we stand tall and proud, but as a new forest....a
forest violently cut off from a natural cycle that existed before
time was known. We, in our generation, will never truely reach the
connection and majesty of that Great Forest before us, but
we are a forest still....and we have learned this cycle as best we
can, and have grown without mentorship from the Great Elder Trees.
But...if we allow it, our seed will fall to become new seedlings, and
thus our new forest will become old and wise.