Going into the meditation I was bored. Usually I can visualize what we're supposed to be doing, but not get truly into it. Holding the piece of hematite I had chosen from the handful being passed around, I closed my eyes. I focused on my breathing like always. We were instructed to go to our safe place, our happy place. For the second time in a meditation, I went to my father's house... my home in my heart. I was still aware of the here and now, but my mind went there. Inside it was summer, with warm yellow sunlight pouring in the windows, lighting up the little specks floating around, the smell of the moist soil and green leaves of the houseplants, with the faint smoky undertone from my father's old pipe and the wood-stove.

We were then told to walk until we arrive at the hill, with a choice of entering the cave below or going to the hilltop. I went out the front door of the house, the screen door creaking open and shutting with a hiss and a sharp click. I go down the steps, around the house, and toward the creek. I still felt my breath, but I was going deeper in. I walked carefully down the steep slope of the creek bank, slipping a bit on the wet rotting planks and plywood that was dumped there. It was summer inside, but here it was the muddy mess after the snow has melted away, the beginning of spring when everything is still dead and the wet grass squelches under your feet. I walked along the creek bottom over the cold wet rocks. There is little water flowing, the spring rains have not yet come. I could hear a murmur in the background, what must have been the man guiding the meditation, but I was no longer paying attention. I was here in my creek where I had played for so many years as a child.

I was still compelled to find the cave. I did, in a way. There was an overhang of earth on the south creek bank, where the roots of a tree dangled down in front, reaching for the water that wasn't flowing there yet. I climbed up a little and brushed the roots aside to get in. It was a few feet deep, and tall enough I could sit up straight. The bottom and sides were solid mud, the packed sort that crumbles if you dig it up, rich, fertile soil with just a little clay in it. The roof of the little cave was dirt, with roots dangling down and holding the earth in place. I sat down in the middle of the cave, facing the opening, feeling the earth around me, not with my hands, but feeling its presence. 

The roots began growing down. Slowly they moved at first, growing longer and thicker as they worked their way into the ground around me. They then slithered down me, not like a snake but in the way only a root can, touching me with their rough earthy fingers, caressing my body. More and more they grew around me, until they began to grow right through me. I didn't hurt, but I could feel them passing through me as if I were made of earth as well. Slowly my consciousness shifted, and there was no longer a body. I flowed slowly up the roots like the thick sap in the spring. I was the sap. I flowed up and felt the sensation of having branches for the first time. When I the sap reached the tips of those most tender branches, I filled and became the tree. I felt my leaves, round, green, and flat, fluttering in the wind. I realized I was facing south, the opposite of how I had been, but it did not matter at all. I no longer had a human body, a human face, so I turned my many leaves up to the sun, drinking in its nourishing warmth.

Two blue birds landed on my branches, to the east and the west sides of my center. I know not what kind they were, but they were light and a gentle cornflower blue. The east one said in a low breathy androgynous voice, the way I like to imagine the Goddess herself sounds, "Listen."  It then lifted off, and as it did so it turned into a black crow and flew away.  I looked, if a tree could look, at the west one, and it too told me in it's husky voice "Listen" and I asked it without words what I was to listen for. It only replied, "Listen to the wind", and flew away, becoming a crow like the other. The breeze blew stronger, making my leaves tremble and flutter quickly with a tshhh sound. I heard birds cry in the distance, and I began to hear words in the wind, but I could not make out their strange language.

 They continued to blow, whispering to me their airy secrets. Then I was borne upon the wind like thousands of tiny fluffy seeds swirling in the sky, blowing up and to the east towards an increasingly brighter yellow-white light. It was not the sun, as the sun was just leaning to the west of the sky, but a bright ethereal light. As it got brighter and brighter it surrounded me, it was hot, not like fire is hot but like plunging into pure energy, and it kept getting brighter. As it began to be too bright, too hot, almost too much to bear, there was an audible "SNAP!" and suddenly I was sitting in Rose's living room again, the piece of hematite hot as if I had taken it from an oven. I dropped it, and only then became conscious of my breathing, taking in a quick gasp of air, looking around the room wide eyed. A baby had cried, and I never heard it. Taz had snored, and I did not hear that either. We were asked to share our experiences, and I was so overawed that I could not communicate all that I had seen and felt though I stumbled through as best I could, and I think this is a poor representation of the whole thing but I wanted to write it out so I could always remember it. So here it is. The day I was a tree.

Wouldst thou follow me
into a land of green and gold?
Where bards still sing and men can fly,
with endless beauty to behold?

Wouldst thou follow me
if I beckoned to ye, come hither?
If I told you of the wonders here,
and of the flowers that never wither?

Wouldst thou follow me
when I step into the fairy ring?
Wouldst thou come and see my world,
and meet the Fairy King?

Wouldst thou follow me,
and be guest to a glorious feast?
Wouldst thou drink the fairy wine,
or sit and dine at least?

If I told you of dancing and such,
of the wonderful musical melody;
if I told you, tis you I love,
wouldst thou follow me?