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Blogs by Jeanne G. Miller
What gifts do you find when you look with in? 2/23/2008 9:44:17 AM
On a photography trip to the White Mountains in California to see the Bristlecone Pine Forrest, I was awed by the length of time that these trees have been living. As I stood and took pictures of their beauty, I wondered what they had seen and what stories they had heard. The battles fought, the families they had watched grow, and the mystery of the earth throughout her seasons. “These ancient trees have survived more than 40 centuries, exceeding the age of the oldest Giant Sequoia by 1,500 yrs. Each Bristlecone pine, from young seedling to ancient relic, has an individual character. Young trees are densely clad with glistening needle-covered branches that sway like foxtails in the wind. With their bristled cones dripping pine scented resin on a warm afternoon, they exude all the freshness of youth. As centuries pass and the trees are battered by the elements, they become sculpted into astonishingly beautiful shapes and forms. These "old age" gnarled Bristlecones command complete attention, for there is a definite emotional impact upon meeting a 4,000 year-old tree. The aged trees tenacity to maintain life is impressive. While most of its wood is dead, growth barely continues through a thin ribbon of bark. When all life finally ceases, the snags stand like elegant ghosts for a thousand years or more. They continue to be polished by wind driven ice and sand. The dense wood is slowly eroding away rather than decaying.” (from Inyo National Forest Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest web sight)
When it was time to take a break, I settled down at the base on one of the magnificent tree and rested. I sat quietly in a meditative state with my eyes closed. I heard the sound of a hawk crying in the sky just above me. My mind’s eye went to a scene of open space on top of the mountain where I was sitting. This place was covered in snow with a few barren tree trunks. There appeared in my mind’s eye an Indian dressed in a headdress, mid-calf high leather moccasins with leather fringe on the sides. He had leather armbands around his mid-upper arm. He had leather flaps hanging down from his waist in the front and in back. He had an object in his right hand that he was shaking as he danced around a small campfire. He was chanting as he danced.
I sat for a while as I watched him dance. Then I asked him what message did he have for me. His answer was his presence. I was filled with an over whelming sense of gratitude for him, my privilege for being there with him and for the holiness of the place in which I was standing. My emotions were unable to contain the extent of gratitude and tears began to fall from my eyes.
The sense of gratitude remained for the rest of the day. Periodically the emotion of gratitude would intensify and my eyes would again fill with tears.
