Deep Time

Deep Time – A Big Dream

   I am standing on top of a mountain looking over a landscape of unspeakable wild natural beauty that stretches as far as I can see. This is the ‘long view’ the dream -maker tells me. The trees are stretching out their lush green needles to the sky as if in prayer, and they are whole. The forests, clear waters, the animals, birds, insects, and All of Nature have been returned to a State of Grace.

An Old red skinned Indian Man appears. He is a Grandfather. He is on the mountain with me but also stands below (both and). He speaks to me.

 “Sit, listen, this is the Song of Life”.

The sound of a drum is deep and resonant.

 A finely crafted flowing red clay seat appears below (it flows like a wave) although it is situated a few inches above the earth. Almost hovering. I also see a drum made from deerskin and red clay on the ground. There is a four directional equilateral black cross on the skin of the drum. The cross is thick, around the cross an intricate design is etched/inked into its skin also highlighted in black.

The Grandfather speaks again.

“Sit and play this drum”.

 I protest mightily. 

“I don’t know how. I know nothing, I say.”

He replies: “Play! It is the Song of (a) Life”.

 My life? I am still protesting, but I know I will play the drum. I will do as he says, though I don’t know how. The drum is a prayer. Now, I am sitting below in front of the drum that is situated on the ground. I wake up.

I will play the drum.

 Big picture context: For Indigenous peoples the drum is the Heartbeat of the Universe and for some Native peoples Red Earth is Sacred. The equilateral cross speaks to the Four Directions that are called in during every ceremony. Indigenous peoples have also been crucified since the European invasion that has destroyed the beauty of this beloved country.

Indigenous peoples are the intergenerational seed savers, the story tellers that live on.

Personal context: Rain. I write a story called Gary’s Garden about the joy of growing plants for him, plants that include a a scarlet runner bean that is one of three of my precious heirloom seeds that uncannily survived being neglected, forgotten, saved in an unripe state last fall and miraculously came back to life again (see blog). Scarlet runner beans are Native to the Americas, one of or the oldest beans cultivated by Indigenous peoples. This bean sprout was a surprise for my Vet. All the other plants Gary has seen every time he has visited for months. In the story I am overjoyed to be able to share in the excitement of passing on these beloved  beings that are already so loved by this man.  And the scarlet runner was my special gift!  I was aware that by seeding this bean for him that I was passing on the seeds of an unknown future in the Indigenous way, one that follows  global collapse.

 In his story I write some words that I don’t really understand…. 

 Plants have invisible roots that attach themselves to the person who loves them for who and what they are. 

 Did the rooting plants catch him the way he once caught me? Rooted underground. 

This is, I believe, is the second Big Dream that I have that reveals that Earth has been restored a Peace that is beyond our present comprehension (if we are living the Reality of Breakdown).

The first Big Dream of this kind I had in New Mexico when I held in my palm a miniature lush green earth full of animals and every kind of plant but this tiny earth didn’t have any people and it was encased in plastic. I was looking at it from both perspectives – up close and from a great distance. Around that time I also had a visceral experience of light pulsing up from my feet as I walked by the river before dawn. The mycelial network was communicating with me, through dreams and pulsing earth light but at the time I didn’t connect the two.

Humans were absent from both Big Dreams.

The edge of hope in these troubled times lies in  “Deep Time” a period that spans millions and millions of years.

 Robin Wall Kimmerer gives us another example:

“Mosses are the coral reef of the forest. I have faith in photosynthesis. The plants know what to do. They know how to sequester carbon. They know how to cool the air. They know how to build capacity for ecosystem services and biodiversity. Will the world be different? It will. Will there be tremendous losses? There will. Heartbreaking losses. But the evolutionary creativity of the plant world will renew itself. Plants will figure out how to come back to a homeostatic relationship with the planet.”

Mycelial networks stretch back even further taking us back to the beginning of all plant life as they crochet their inconceivably complex webs of hyphae just below earth’s surface.

And before that alga floated on warm shallow waters until she met her first fungal partner. One ate light the other ate rock and together they moved to land. 

Partners.

In harmony Life will begin again.

Blessed Be.