Allow me to introduce you too…

I’d like to introduce you to a new friend of mine…..

This is the oldest tree in Buffalo New York, ancestral lands of the Seneca Tribe, where I live.

They are a Sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) that lives in a historic district near downtown, where red brick alleyways lead to small pubs and where old stone mansions still shine with elegant and formidable power.

An old metal plack adorns this tree, stating that the tree is the oldest in the city, with a guess of over 250 years old.

This tree has become a portal for me and my family, a guardian to deep nature and a historical dive into a mode of place-making of which I find so valuable.

I have a sense this tree is older, but lets just say that they are 250 years old, this massive and beautiful living being, deeply conscious and aware, holding memory and alchemy, transmuting information to the wider urban ecosystem…..

250 years ago the American Revolutionary War had yet to begin….

Much of the US interior was still possessed by the original Indigenous inhabitants of these lands…..

What else can you conjure in your mind that this tree has experienced, living and growing and breathing and communicating from an age older than the modern United States of America?

There is a cypress tree in Iran which is estimated to be over 4,000 years old.

There are alive and conscious beings here with us that have experienced the entire rise of civilizations from ancient times to now, as we gaze into the troubled and extraordinary times we live in, as humans always have.

What do you feel in your body when you consciously connect with the ancient trees amongst us in the physical or morphic field realms?

I feel sadness.

I feel strength.

I feel deep time stretching my limited and fast paced civilized mind.

I feel a massaging of my soul by the roots of beings who have experienced the rise and fall of armies and prophets, the increase in atmospheric carbon, the changing of water tables and languages, the migrations of now extinct species of birds, the flourishing of young plants and healing ideas spreading throughout the ecology like wildfire…. wildfire.

I hope these images bring a spark of Gaian soul into your day. Use them as you want and know we are living among ancient beings, even in our city landscapes where cars and pavement dominate and deprave. They are here with us.

May we find courage by remembering we are held by myriads of beings who hold doorways to deep truth and grounding.

We are an ancient and resilient family of creatures.