[Root Necklaces :: sterling silver and curious cuts of imperial jasper that look suspiciously and beautifully like cross sections of trees :: I SWOON!]
“She would sing the forest eternal. She would place her body in the womb of trees. She would bleed into the earth. She would place her bare feet onto moss and spiked pine needles, peat and mud, and up between her toes and through her pores would ooze the rich dark syrup of mother earth, and over her ankles would swarm tiny insects, and around her shoulders would float the exquisite flowy drapery of her green hemlock cape. She would take great gulps from slender bars of silver light, forest filtred, like incandescent strands of old woman’s hair. She would bow to the sturdy white pine, the brave, pioneering alder, the cooling sitka spruce, the mighty Douglas fir, the sorrowing hemlock, the sheltering maple, her beloved cedar. She would bow to the Wild Cedar Woman who dwells in the forest. She would hold her wooden hand, sing her wild huu, huu, and put herself back together again and again. She would drink the forest liquids and drench herself in possibility.”
[Susan Vreeland :: The Forest Lover]
Oh, heck. I wish I had written that. But someone else did. This is the final paragraph in Susan Vreeland’s book, The Forest Lover, which I read earlier this summer. That final paragraph was filled with such feeling. The whole book was great, once I got into it, but that final paragraph was such an anthem, such a glorious uprising of emotion and beauty and strength…I was changed by it, charged by it.
Have you read this book?
Go get a copy.
Then order all of Emily Carr’s (the beloved Canadian artist) writings, especially her collected journals, and dig in. I’m, well, I’m obsessed. I get that way with published journals though…it’s almost a vice.
Love and trees,
The Plume
gorgeous..your silver and stone interpretations and the quote from the forest lover..which I have now added to my ‘must read/amazon wish list’!
amongst trees and green is where I feel at home. where I belong. when I was young I used to imagine that I was from a family of ents 😉
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
― Hermann Hesse, ‘Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte’
Loving the jasper and silver trees. That trout is amazing, too. (it could almost be a belt buckle!) hehe. You’ve been busy up there in the forest.
That book. It was soo good, after I finally got into it. Right? It took me two months to read it!
And I own Emily’s book of art. Her totems!
Funny, how much I adore the Canadians. Joni, Neil, Gordon, Emily, Grey Owl, you.
xo
Deep foresty smiles sent to you.
I love the math problems you are presenting to us for posting comments. Finally a math problem that I can handle. xoxo
I thought the same thing!
J- good golly! They are stunning!!!
Wow, what gorgeous pieces! I think they are some of my favorite creations of yours! Of course, I am a tree girl myself, lucky enough to live in the woods 🙂
(Will they be in your shop soon?)
Jillian, these are beautiful!
gorgeous jewellery & gorgeous words 🙂
Those necklaces make me want to cry they are so beautiful. That passage as well, just pure fire for the soul.
Beautiful! And what an incredible quote. Seems like she was writing about you, my dear. xo
Just beautiful…and I have some reading to do. Thank you!!
LOVE these. They really do look like tree rings. I wonder if you could dry a piece of tree trunk and coat it and actually preserve it well enough to do that with real tree parts? Hm, something to think about.
Beautiful work, lady.
I love your new cover pic! It’s so cute!
Magical pendants—they are divine!! And, Emily Carr!! I read her long ago and loved her- thanks for reminding me of her again!! xo