Communing With Trees in the Taiga

google image Siberian taiga

At Real Toads, for her Transforming Friday prompt,  Hannah has issued one of her intriguing challenges, to explore a landscape foreign to us, this time the taiga. I immediately thought of a series of books I own, one of which is titled The Ringing Cedars of Russia, about trees in the Siberian taiga who have been storing up energies for many hundreds of years and, after a time, begin to ring. The author, Vladimir Megre,  was told of this by a Russian elder, went to investigate, met an amazing young woman named Anastasia in the forest, who was utterly in tune with nature, and his life was forever changed. He wrote a series of books through the 1990's on all he learned from her about living in harmony with nature, and about communicating with it.

These books caught on, and are transforming the culture of Russia. Now eco-villages abound all across Russia. Take a trip with me to the Siberian taiga, to listen to  the ringing cedars of Russia.

I travel through time and space

to a Paradise-like glade

in the Siberian taiga.

She meets me there,

on the edge of the forest,

beckons me to follow.

All is silence.

Putting her finger to her lips,

she motions me to stand still

before the ancient trees,

and listen.

photo Sherry Blue Sky

At first I cannot hear it,

but then my ears attune:

there is a ringing.

I arch my brows, she nods.

It is coming from the trees.

"These ancient beings

are filled with cosmic energy

from many hundreds of years,"

she tells me.

"They are trying to teach us

how to live with

all life on earth,

how to attune our energies,

how to align ourselves

with the natural world,

learn from it,

speak to it."

www.siberianhuskies.com

As I watch and learn,

I see wild animals -

wolves and foxes,

bear and mountain lion-  

all in her domain

approach her humbly,

without fear,

seemingly tamed.

Moscowtopnews.com

"The trees, the animals,

--all of Mother Earth--

is inviting us

to step into a world

of Love,

where all beings

live in harmony

with the earth."

Yes.

This is

the only truth

that makes sense,

and I am learning it

from a tree

and a forest sprite.

In listening to

the song of

this old tree,

I have stepped through the veil

of transformation,

and my vision is

 forever changed.

The tree

sang its song of love to me,

and I must answer.

With hope.

With healing.

With joy.

With love.

anastasiasgarden.com

In researching further for this poem, I came across this house, which I SO TOTALLY want to live in. When I lived in Tofino, some of my friends actually did live in trees, or in dwellings such as this, or in yurts high above the forest looking out to sea. Tofino then became Whistlerized and they were evicted by district council. But they lived in heaven for those years.

I read that there are now 150  Anastasia communities, with 100 residents in each of them, spread across Russia. There is also an Anastasia community  forming on 100 acres in the Shasta Valley in Oregon. They are looking for pioneers. My idea of heaven - intentional communities of aware humans, living in harmony with Mother Earth, and joyously.  

I also discovered, while reading,  that "Trees are like bioelectric condensers of cosmic energy." (Anastasiasgarden.com) And the cedars in the Siberian taiga, when they are 500 plus years old, begin to ring to ask us to use their stored up energy for the benefit of the earth. If their call is not answered in three years, they begin to burn up from within, a process that takes 27 years.

Amazing stuff. This world has so much in it we aren't aware of. We have so much to learn - and fast.