Happy Holydays, dear friends,
I have been writing a weekly Earth Devotions on Thursdays and Fridays but I have not been able to do so this week, as my family has been down with the flu. I have been busy tending them, the home and land, to keep the hearth fires going, both literally and metaphorically. I did get a chance to write a love letter to Cedar though, and record it for you, in and among doing 108 sun salutations to honor the liminal space of the Winter Solstice. Whew! Carpe diem! We cannot have the good things in life without the hard. Life is fabulous and terrifying and sad and pleasurable, short and fragile, and long, too. May we be fully present for it, letting love, respect and gratitude guide our way.
With deep appreciation for each of you,
Mary Morgaine Squire
12/23/23
~Love Letters to Our Plant Allies~
Cedar
Thuja spp.
Cupressaceae
Dear Cedar,
My, oh my. Thank you, Grandmother, for being so confidently and magnificently yourself. The gifts you have bestowed upon the people is huge, just like you. The stories we have told about and around you are countless. Our indigenous brothers and sisters were held by you all throughout life, from the cradleboard to lining the grave with your mats, with the gifts of your medicine in between.
When I moved to the Northwest of North America at age 19 and saw you, plicata, in the wild for the first time, I gasped then teared up as I came into view of your old growth. This is the tree of Life, I thought. This is the tree of Spirit. This is the tree that would enchant anyone into lovingly protecting our planet.
But not even you could do that, and if you couldn’t, who will? I watched thousands upon thousands of your beautiful wood cut down in swaths- clearcut and carried away. This is how you break the soul of the world, by treating such a sacred being as you, Cedar, like this. All the life you were supporting, including your own— gone, desecrated, terminated.
I offer this little letter right here, right now, to tell you that you deserve so much more from us, and there are many who would never treat you like that. Blessed be your boughs that hang like feathers of an enormous perched bird watching over the world, giving of yourself until the end of time.
Your wood and your leaves smell divine. There are some other plants that share your name but they don’t smell the same- like Eastern Red Cedar which is actually a Juniper, and the Cedrus trees, like the Cedars of Lebanon and Atlantic Cedars, who are in a totally different family than your Cypress one. On this continent where I live, we have 2 species of you, plicata and occidentalis.
How we love placing your evergreen scales on the fire as a smudge and as a prayer. Years ago, I had a very special person in my life die, and it was you who came to clear the home. My friend Aslan arrived with a big branch of you that he lit outside and then brought your smoke in to smudge the whole house and cleanse the smells and ache of death.Â
I have gathered your boughs to sleep upon, hold ceremony on, sit on in the sweat lodge and watched deer nibble upon them. Thank you, Cedar. I can’t even name all the things you share but here is a little attempt at thanksgivings for your bounty. Thank you for your bark baskets, shingles, storage containers, cordage, fire drills, resilient wood for structures, starch, healing tea and oil and especially for your canoes. In our modern times, we make cedar chests to hold what’s dear to us.
I am most familiar with your occidentalis species, Eastern Arborvitae, whom we also call White Cedar. We have made many a hybrid of you, Thuja, the Green Giant being the most popular, bred for ornamental and privacy hedging. One of the first things I was asked to do when I began my job as landscaper at Herb Mountain Farm in 2005 was to plant one of you. I don’t know if you are a hybrid or not, but I have been so blessed by watching you grow. You were in a little pot then, and now you are over 30 feet tall.
You aren’t a tree I can easily hug, as your branches are so thick and low to the ground, so I hug your boughs instead. The Anishinaabe taught us that you mirror yourself up and down—that your branches are positioned just like your roots underground. They say if a bird builds its nest in one of your boughs, a rabbit will build its nest below in the same spot of your roots.Â
Thank you, Cedar, for being a direct line of communication to the spirit world. I will continue to pray with and protect you.
Love,
Mary Plantwalker
Making freshly dug Elecampane Tea to support Hart’s lungs, and the color always blows my mind! It is more blue, really, than the photo shows. What a beautiful ally!
I hosted a nourishing and inspiring Appalachian Tea Ceremony this week, what joy! Thank you to all who attended!
I believe it was Thuja whose branches I set up my prayer camp beneath for 5 days of ceremony in the Inyo Mountains of Southeastern California. In the high desert (9,000 ft), they were like giant ancient bonsai. In that five days, the weather swung from extreme to extreme. Desiccating heat to frozen hailstorms... these trees held their gorgeous gnarled dancing poses in a way I will never forget.
Oh what a lovely letter. I would have loved to attend your Appalachian tea ceremony if I would live close by. Wish Cedar would grow where I live but it is a little too hot.
I enjoy reading your writing very much. Thank you for sharing. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Take care of yourself.