Working with trees
Trees rank high as one of Nature’s greatest teachers and healers. I have loved trees since I was a toddler when I’d try to throw my tiny arms around the trunk and hug it. But I didn’t understand the greater function of a tree until I went to Sequoia National Park in the Sierra Nevadas of California. That story will be discussed later in this chapter.
Trees are vital to those of us on Earth because they absorb carbon dioxide, transmute it, and release it through their leaves into our atmosphere as oxygen. Without trees giving us life-sustaining oxygen, we wouldn’t be here. Depending on the tree, its age, its health, and the number and condition of surrounding trees, it can manufacture roughly 48 pounds of oxygen per year. That’s enough to support two people’s survival for a year! Other sources cite that trees can release 260 pounds of oxygen per year—enough to support a family of four! And consider this fact: a 100-foot tree, 18 inches in diameter will produce 6,000 pounds of oxygen a year![1] That is why you should plant trees around your home! That is why the Amazon rainforest must be sustained and not cut down. Doing so will decrease the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere. Science calls this area “the lungs of the Earth.”[2]
[1] (Savatree, 2018)
[2] (GreenlinePrint.com, 2012)
Supplying us with oxygen is only one feature of trees—they also carry some other equally important functions. Among them is my belief that trees give us oxygen for the spirit, too. In fact, I’d like to share a true story with you about my intersection and meeting with the Sequoia tree I mentioned earlier to illustrate this point.
Trees can be female, male, or androgynous. Each has a spirit within it, and each has a name. In the late 1970s a good friend of mine, Laura Weigt, invited me to come out to Sequoia National Park. She loved Nature and was going to join a group of women who would select and meditate with some of the largest trees in the world, the Sequoias. I was excited about the prospect and quickly agreed to go. I’d never seen the Sequoias and was thrilled just thinking about walking among these North American giants—the largest in the world. A Sequoia’s average height is between 164-279 feet tall, with a trunk diameter between 20-26 feet. Some measure 311 feet tall and possess a 56-foot diameter. The oldest giant Sequoia is 3,500 years old.[3]
[3] (Dictionary.com, 2018)