Nature Speaks Project

INTERVIEW WITH:   Desda Zuckerman

INTERVIEW BY:     Linda Milks

DATE:                 5 February, 2007

PLACE:                Spirit Way Healing Center, 

                          Novato, CA 94945

CONTACT:             desda&desda.com /   desda.com

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 I met Desda in a round about way. 

During a Jon Young nature workshop in the summer of 2006 one of the attendees and I were speaking of the personal projects we were working on.   She told me of a friend who may be interested in NSP and offered to email her about this.

A few months later I received an email from her friend expressing interest and recommending someone else whom she thought was better suited for tree communication.  This person was Desda who agreed right away even though she was in the midst of writing a book.

Begins with Desda cautioning me that often times the tape recorders don’t work with her. And so we begin…

Desda:

Trees, trees are amazing; the tree spirits are phenomenally powerful, big beings.  Every single tree has a tree spirit.  

My experience of tree spirits has been life-long; I’ve always been in touch with trees.  I’ve always had experiences with trees as being my big brothers or sisters.  My feeling about trees is that they contain deep wisdom about this planet and the information they give us when we really allow them to speak to us is soul effecting.  It is profound, it opens the doors for us, it makes space for us to look accurately for____?___on the soul’s purpose.  So I believe that trees have a profound insight into the natural order of life on this planet.

They are, without question, some of the wisest living things on this planet.  So if you can experience an extremely old tree in your development and in your practice of writing this book – I would urge you to do that.

So, I have three expertises.   One is space clearing, one is earth work and one is healing.  I’ve been focusing for a few years now on the healing of human beings.  Because if I don’t heal human beings the trees are going to be all dead anyway.  So I feel like I have to focus here, but my greatest love is the earthwork.  It’s my first heart work.

When I was a little girl I lived on a mountain or a small hill in southern CA in a little town called  ___?____.   The hill was made up of quartz crystal.  My father planted on this hillside in a little valley called High Valley in Poway which at that time had almost no people in it – there were like 100 families living within a hundred square miles.

On that property he planted six acres of avocado trees. So I was involved with the planting of the trees and the caretaking of the trees when they were very little.  And I used to lie down underneath the trees with the crown of my head against this little tiny tree, and I found that they talked to me.   I found that they didn’t use words, they didn’t speak to me in the same language I spoke, but they spoke to me in kind if a deep knowingness, deep primal wisdom.  They would just transmit information to me.

For example, they would say things that they needed.  They said like, I need more water; or I don’t like them putting the fence in so close to me.  And this would be more like images.  So I would tell my father these things and sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t but ?? And most of the time I was intervening for the trees.

Linda:

Did your father accept this as a natural thing?

Desda:

Sometimes.  Pretty much though as a wild imagination. I was not taken too seriously about the trees.  Although sometimes he would see that what I said was true. 

Linda:

True in an empirical, pragmatic way.?

Desda:

Yes, from the patrilineal understanding.

The other thing that was very interesting is that when I was born my matrilineal grandmother planted a tree.  She planted an orange tree when I was born.  So now that orange tree is still flowering and producing fruit, and I’m 56 years old so it’s an old orange tree now.

So that was another interesting poetic tree connection thing.

I’m partial to redwoods and yew trees.  I really feel a connection with those particular trees.  Although I also love my cedar tree, they are originally from Tibet, the Himalayas.  They’re imported and they’re here and they don’t quite fit in.  They are from a different climate but they like it here.  And the climate where they’re from in Tibet is the southern plain, so it’s actually similar although there it gets much colder. But they do pretty well here.

The redwoods, I think because of the significance that they have to the Native American people of this area and the fact that they were treated as the buffalo were treated by the plains Indians the redwood was treated the same way by the Miwok, Kashaya, and Pomo people. So there is a kind of wisdom that they have about the history of this place.  And you can actually ask them: “what should I do with your bark, what should I do with your wood, what should I do with the leaves you give me, what should I do with this, that and other things.  Redwood leaves make a wonderful tea if you’ve ever drunk it, it’s delicious.  (Linda nods and agrees.)  Redwood bark is astringent in nature.  You can make an astringent poultice to pull out bee stings and that kind of thing.  The leaves dropping on the ground make for a very acidic soil so you can grow certain kinds of plants under the redwoods that you can’t grow under others.  So the redwoods have this organic knowledge.

But redwoods don’t have the same knowledge that yew trees have.  So it’s interesting. Yew trees, as you know, are the source of tomaxifin and have cancer curing properties. And they’ve started harvesting the yew trees in the northwest for use in that regard.  

I have had an exceptional experience with a yew tree in England.  This is a tree that might be as old as 2000 years.  They’re not sure but they think so.  It’s in a little church yard called ___?___.

And the ancient people, the Celts of that area, and the Pics too, used to bury their great warriors on the boughs of yew trees.  Which is why eventually they grew to making their bows and arrows out of yew wood and they became known as yew men – or yeomen.

The yew is integrally related to the English heritage.  I’m Celt through my Irish descendents and also my English side – I’m a descendent of both of those.  And through my matrilineal heritage I come from a family of ancient Irish kings.   The Cons, the Cons of Ireland, and the family name is Concannon.  And that’s from the area of Galway.  And they were great teachers, priests, warriors, scholars – before the time of Christ.  My family ruled Ireland for 1500 years before the time of Christ. They had a relationship with the Druids – so there was an ancient worship, actually, of the Tree.  Especially the Yew tree like the redwood is here.

Linda:

How did you come by that knowledge? 

Desda: 

It’s an historical fact. I’m a direct descendent of the head of the family who was George Concannon or ___?____.  And the older son and the younger son both were sent to the US in the 1840’s.  I am a descendent of the older son.  They abandoned the family seat because of the potato famine.  They were protestants in a catholic world and the family still in Ireland are now also catholic.

Linda:

Yes, my Irish heritage was also protestant.

Desda:

Right , we were Black Irish right on the coast of Galway which is where the Spanish landed during the Armada.

Linda:

You mentioned that you had a relationship with a tree in England.  Can you talk about that and what you gained from the relationship?

Desda:

Yes, absolutely. 

(Desda shows me a piece of Yew bark from a tree in Nutley, England.) 

 It has healing properties and I use it on people for healing.

The tree dropped that at my feet.  You never take things from a tree that they don’t give you.  You can ask a tree for a healing gift and if they drop it at your feet then it’s for you.  But if you are not to have something from that tree, nothing will fall while you’re there. 

Anyone who begins to strip the tree apart is not in respectful communion with the tree.  And if branches fall then you can use it for whatever you want, but it’s good to ask the tree what it would like to be used for. ..

This big yew tree grew in the graveyard of this church in Nutley – this is an ancient yew tree and it grew from an ancient bough that was placed in the ground from another sacred grove and was brought there.  And in the ground, the yew sprouted this 2000 year old tree grew from a dead yeoman. 

You find all these old, old trees in almost all the churchyards in England.  The church was built there not because of the trees but that was a sacred site for the earlier people, the indigenous people.  So when Christianity came to England they built churches in the sacred groves.  And this was one of the great disasters, in some ways – certainly archeologically – of that period.

This tree is enormous around.  Yews don’t get tall but they grow big around.  At least in England they don’t but they do in the US in the upper NW.  Not tall like the redwoods, of course they are the tallest – the sequoias are tallest.  But what we’ve got here with the Yew is that it will grow to 40 feet in circumference.  Literally, 25 people stretching their arms across around it can’t make a circle – they are big fat trees.  And they are kind of like the redwoods in that they grow up like multiple trunks inside a mother pod.  But they’re not quite the same because the yew grows more cup / pot-like.????

I got inside the yew tree and sat there with some other people who had come to see this tree. Actually we went to this church because a woman told us that there were a lot of fairies there.  So we went there to see the fairies and then there was this tree. We then all got inside this tree and stayed for hours.   What the tree does when you’re inside it is different than when you are outside of it.  Sitting inside of trees is a different form of connecting with them. 

When you sit outside of a tree and lean against it, there can be a profound connection.  But there is nothing like putting your whole body inside a tree, inside of this big organism -and being surrounded completely by the atmosphere of the tree. 

I experience being inside the tree as a consciousness altering event.  That happens even when I put my head against a tree but I still feel more distinct from the tree.  But when I climb inside the tree there is a way that the tree swallows me up, it takes me in, like it is taking me into it’s womb.  And it’s a very profound experience to be taken into a big tree.

Trees have this tremendous energy structure around them, a huge force-field around them.  

They have a big  chi around them.  They spread chi out around them – electro-magnetic fields essentially.  So when you’re outside of a tree it’s a different experience than when you are inside because inside, the field is actually being generated outside of you.  So you are not in the field of the tree as much as you are in the actual organism of the tree.   Whereas if you are outside with your head on the tree you are really in the electro-magnetic field of the tree.  So that is what’s happening.

Linda:

That’s a great distinction. 

Desda:

The way I experience it spiritually, is that I have the experience of going home.  For me getting inside a big tree like that – there just isn’t anything better.  It’s going home.  And I get a chance to relax!  I love it!  It’s like I’m an infant being held by my mother.  I go right into the most sacred, protected, sanctuary space within me; within my psychological memory, within my emotional memory, within my physical memory and very deeply within my spiritual memory.  So I have an experience of dropping in that is absolutely unparallel in my life.

Linda:

Have you experienced this by getting inside other trees?

Desda:

Yes, redwoods I can get inside of.   Redwoods and oaks and some bay laurels get big enough.

Linda:

Can you describe the differences and contrasts of what it feels like to be inside a yew tree and say a redwood or others?

Desda:

Well they are all a little different.  The yew is a healer.  The yew’s have a very healing essence, it is a stately, a very present healer.  And it’s a healer for humanity.  I mean, look what’s coming from them.  (Tomaxafin – cancer fighting drug) 

And you don’t have to kill the tree to get that, by the way.  But that’s another discussion I guess…I could talk to you about that.   We can get the essence of the tree without chopping it down. Grinding it up, smashing it up, destroying it –Absolutely it’s possible.  I could do it, you could do it, we could all do it together.  You don’t have to kill things to get their vibratory rate into our selves.  You know?

Linda:

Right, like they do with flower essences.

Desda:

(gets up and looks for various tree essences in her collection)

Green Man essences do lots of trees.  They have a whole line of tree essences.  You should probably contact them. (she explains she has thorn essences…she is looking for her yew essence)

I’d like to keep talking about how they are different.

So the redwood is not a healer.   The redwood is a guardian.  The redwoods see themselves as a watchful, guardian of the earth.   You know, it’s a different kind of tree altogether.   It’s a different organism.  They have  shallower root systems than yews. Yew roots go down really deep.

There’s a great book on the yew trees…

( she looks for the book but doesn’t see it)

You can look it up online – it’s a great book that is just called “YEWS”. And I urge you to read it.  

So one’s a healer, one’s a guardian… there are big stately trees that have different functions; for example the oak.  The oak is a very spiritual tree; the oak is a teacher.  So you go to the old oak trees – like these old oaks up on the mountains here in Novato.  If you’ve not walked there – oh there are incredible oaks trees that are @ 200 years old. 

Linda:

I have at the IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) campus in Petaluma / Novato…

Desda:

Oh then that’s right on the mountain here.  It’s the Olompali Indians who named the mountain.   And the Olompali named the mountains like Mt. Tamalpais.  And the Olompali have some sacred oak trees on it that are very, very big.  By IONS but also on the other side.

Linda:

Let me ask you something.   What is it that makes one tree considered  sacred as opposed to another tree that is not?.  Can you tease that out?

Desda:

Well it’s more like they’re teachers – and I consider all trees as sacred.   Oak trees are teachers, they’re educators so they have that sort of sacred duty;  whereas the redwood is a guardian which is also a sacred duty.  And the yew is more of a healer.  So all these trees have different jobs, and all of them do healing work and all of them do guardian work and all of them do teaching work.  But those particular varieties are called to be stronger in different areas.  So if I were having difficulty physically I would go to a yew tree and get inside of it.  If I couldn’t find a yew tree, I would get inside a redwood tree.   Because, the redwood tree can talk to the yew tree in England. 

Linda:

Do all species of tree speak to each other?

Desda:

We all speak to each other.  Everything alive on this planet speaks to each other.  And we do it through a magnetic force field.  It’s an electromagnetic grid in the planet which is about 18 inches down in the surface of the earth.  So every time you cut the earth, you break into this communications network.  And it affects everyone on the planet even if it’s just a simple little hole for a rose bush in the garden.  Everywhere we are affecting everything.  

This is a single organism, this earth.  And everything on it is vital and important and everything on it talks to the rest of it.   Human beings talk to each other through this same electro-magnetic grid.  A slightly different level of it but they do. 

So anyway – they talk to each other.  I can go into my redwood grove; I have a redwood grove on my land – there are 6 baby redwood trees who are only about 30 years old, and I can sit in my baby redwood grove and those guys will talk with the yew trees in Nutley. ( England.)

I can go up to my diadora cedars.  I can throw my arms around them; cedars are very wise too.  Cedars are very interesting trees.  They’re a little quixotic in nature, they don’t really like to talk to people, and they’re very cagey.  But once they establish a relationship, they harbor and protect nature spirits. 

So they are like havens for nature spirits. So where there are lots of cedars you’ll find lots of fairies and earth energy spirits, earth spirits, nature spirits.  And all of these trees have souls.  All of these trees have divine light at the core just like human beings do.  All of these trees are alive, awake, conscious entities. 

 The city of Novato has a habit of cutting down trees. They allowed a developer to cut down a bay tree that was phenomenal.  It was the biggest bay tree I’ve ever seen in my life.  It might have been 100 feet tall, it was maybe 35 – 40 feet around. It was huge and it was an anchor.  Bay trees anchor.  They represent the changeable nature of the planet because they only anchor for a period of time and then they uproot. 

Bay trees are very interesting though.  When you have a big storm a lot of bay trees uproot – and Wow – the energy in the space changes so dramatically.  Everything goes up in the air, people don’t know what’s happening, they don’t know where they’re going; well, it’s the uprooting of the bay trees.  The bay trees will fork????? , their roots will come up, they’ll still keep growing flipped over on their side with ¾????? of their trunk and all of their roots exposed.

They are amazing and we have a lot of them in these woods in this area.

Linda:

So they ground the energy in the whole area.  Not just for specific trees or where they are or for the animals,…?

Desda:

Yes.  They ground the energy for the whole space, the whole area.

So the oaks do a job, the bays do a job, the redwoods do a job, every single tree that lives does a job.  The fruit trees do a job, they provide nourishment, they’re like mothering trees. They are very nourishing and motherly, the ones that fruit and flower and do that graceful, feminine thing are very motherly in their quality and you can get that motherly nurturing from an old apple tree, for example.

So the divine feminine manifests in these ancient flowering trees.  The divine masculine exists in the tall redwoods and the tall cedars. 

Now, on a piece of land you will find the queen or the king tree. Or a head tree, a chieftain…  Usually on a large ____????_________.???  

On a piece of land there will be a tree that’s in charge that holds the space for the rest of the property.  That tree has to be nurtured at all costs.  This bay tree that was so old and so big was holding the space for this whole area this whole valley.  

And when they cut that tree down, I didn’t know about it. And when they cut the tree down they didn’t release the tree spirit.  So the tree spirit is trapped underneath a house.  That house will not be a happy house, it will be a difficult house.  So that is a really big tree spirit. If I had known I would have released the tree spirit before it was cut down.

I did that with a street project on the street where I live.  It was on a eucalyptus.  I live on a tree street and when we had a big street project, we were going to have to take out 6 trees.  And when we did that I went out and released all the tree spirits from the 6 trees.

Linda:

Oh, that’s great.

Desda:

When it comes down to cutting down big trees it really creates dissention in the land. 

Linda:

Would you go to a recently felled tree and after the fact, release the tree spirit?

Desda:

Yes. I have to have their permission if somebody owns the property.

Linda:

You need to get the permission from someone who owns the property.

Desda:

I do because they have a relationship with the tree – and especially if they murdered the tree.  You have to get in there with them and… you can’t just be releasing tree spirits left and right.  It’s not good karma.  But I get to release the tree spirits on a whole stretch of public land.  Yes, when they’re killing all these trees with sudden oak death, when they’re taking out all these trees I can release the tree spirits. I can walk all over these hills and release tree spirits all day and all night and go wheeew.  And there’s a way to do that.

There is a specific technique that I use to release tree spirits.  And it’s not something people should just do; I mean you shouldn’t just think that you can do it.  You have to learn how to do it. Number one, you have to learn how to work affectively with energy so that you are not merging with the energy of the tree and making yourself vulnerable to this tree spirit.  So the energy that is appropriate for a tree to process is not appropriate for human beings. We’re different so we can’t clear a tree spirit by taking it into ourselves and moving it through our own structure. That’s called getting sick.

You have to learn how to do this.  I always caution people that they have to be very careful when working with the earth especially doing any earth work, to work correctly. I’ve developed some techniques that I’ve taught in England and the US.  I’ve taught people how to do what I call going to the edge, working from the edge of the structure.  And when people learn how to do that they can do very effective earth work without taking on the toxicity of the Hanford nuclear plant (In WA state) or Hamilton field for example.–(an old army base turned housing development in Novato, CA)

But you can do earth work – or Mt. Tamalpais which is pretty abused. (Marin County, CA)   You know they cut the top of it off. 

Linda:

I did not know that. When did they do that?

Desda:

Yes, we have a one breasted mountain here in the capital of breast cancer.  It was done in the 1946.  There is some consciousness around that now, thank goodness. 

Linda:

Do you have a specific story that you can relate, about a special tree?

Desda:

Well, I’m trying to think about which story to tell.  I have so many stories…

I was doing some earth work in England with a couple of friends of mine in @1999 or 2000.  And I was there working with Will Le Strange   and Cathryn McNaughton who are two very beautiful earth workers established in England. 

Cathryn is an American woman who has lived in England for many years and she has written books about Nature Spirits and such.  And Will Le Strange is a feng shui guy and an earth worker.  I’m not sure where Will is living now, he was in the US but may have gone back – he’s a very delightful guy.   The two of them are wonderful earth workers so we went to clear a quarry together near the town of Bathe. 

If you know anything about Bathe you’ll know that it was built almost entirely on stone.   Well stone is quarry found in the earth and a lot of those earth sites are really sick.  There are toxic pools of water and the earth is very disturbed by what’s happened by having an entire mountain removed to create a town. 

So we went to this site and there was a problem with the land there and the people wanted to return the land to it’s more natural state.  They had bought the land and their desire was to create a green piece of property and heal the quarry site.  That was one of the things they really wanted to do.  And I think a guy there wanted to build a healing center on the property but I’m not sure if he pursued that.  This was Will’s call.

So the three of us went to do this job together and it was rainy and cold and miserable so were all bundled up because you  know you can’t do earth work inside you’ve got to do it outside.  We divided up in different areas and Cathryn worked at the top of the quarry and Will worked over on the side where there had been a lot of digging and I worked by this pit where the water was kept and being captured and there was a crook face????.  And in the crook face ?? there were these little trees that had started to grow.  Little spunky trees.  And one of them was a rowan tree, another one was a kind of a birch of some kind, it had a white trunk.  So these trees were growing and they were plucky little guys you know kind of growing out of the rock on the side of this …..

Linda:

That’s’ always amazing isn’t it.?

Desda:

Its’ incredible.  So I started interacting with the earth, I started interfacing and I slowly went into discussion with the water and I got some information from the water and the rock there in the cliff banks.  And the cliff banks actually popped out, a face did, and started to speak to me.  That’s what happens when you really interact with these guys, they’ll start talking.  So I looked at this one little funny crooked tree and I said to it, “so, how’s it going?”   And back came this big, booming, loud response like an ancient tree; because it was.  It was a remnant of a tree that had been cut down centuries before when this quarrying had begun and it was fighting for life in this little tiny tree.   And it spoke up and said, “well it’s about time we got some help around here”!  And it was so loud I actually cried out

_________________???_______. 

And you know all of us have had experiences like this but this was so loud and so present from such a tiny tree.  So what that tree essentially told me, what I learned from that tree was, not only would the tree spirit wait but it would hold the space while waiting.  So as the intention came for this place to be reclaimed and brought back to a more natural state this tree felt like it was safe to come up.  And it was only a few years old dating from when these people took possession of the property.  These people who this tree loved.  So it was helping these people reclaim this green space. And it was bringing the ancient force of the ancient old growth, primary forest trees, from that area. 

Linda:

That’s wonderful.  The quality of this voice, can you describe it as angry or just loud or …

Desda:

I have heard every tree.  I’ve heard weeping trees, sad trees, trees that have an emotional quality…But this tree was not that it was just very, very big.  It was like all of a sudden there was a sequoia, a 2000 year old sequoia that was a 150 feet tall saying, “well it’s about time you got here to help me. I’ve been really working hard. And you, have been awful slow hearing the call. “It wasn’t angry it was just like, “I’ve been doing this a long time!” It had that quality to it – it wasn’t angry it was just Big and very forceful, powerful.

(Desda tone of voice is like an older brother speaking to a younger brother with a bit of impatience)

I’m going to change the subject is that OK?

Linda:

That’s fine.

Desda:

So the kind of wood that things are made of also has the power of the tree that the wood has come from.  They speak a different language.  So that  piece, which is an Ikea bookshelf,  is made from a type of pine.  And this, which is probably made in Bali or Indonesia some where, is actually a hardwood from that part of the world.  (she knocks on a piece of furniture)

So these pieces of wood have a different vibration, a frequency, they have a different energetic about them, this came from a much older tree than that came from, there’s a different energy from that…  (she points to different pieces of furniture) 

You know how some bedroom sets are rosewood, some bedroom sets are oak, some are birch and some are maple…all of those woods have a particular frequency, and they will affect the people who own them.

At whatever level you have the tree, whether it’s sawdust- which is very powerful. In earth healing we use sawdust.  But from sawdust all the way to the ancient tree, the huge ancient tree, you’ve got a full spectrum of energetic – different quality of living material…But who that tree is shows up in the sawdust just as it does in the living tree.  So the spirit of the tree is present in everything that it gives off. Just like this little piece of yew wood, I mean you can feel the power in this, the energetic is quite strong sill.

(She shows / hands me small pieces of wood she has, first one from a yew tree…unfortunately I am unable to feel its energy.) 

It’s not from around here, it’s a different wood….It doesn’t talk to you, huh?

Linda:

I’m not getting anything.  I’m not sensitive enough yet to understand…

(I hold the small piece of yew bark & try, unsuccessfully,  to feel the energy)

Desda:

Well you can learn to do that.  So for example, this is a little twig from the NW.  ( She hands me the twig)   I picked this up in WA.  And I’m not sure what kind of tree it is but the energetic of that is different from the energetic of the other thing.  See this has got a lot of parts to it as well.

So you can see the difference between them.  You can feel that one is cooler than the other, one has more heat, one has more vibration…This is not as strong but what this is, is kind of a conduit. (the twig)

I use this with acupuncture as a needle.  Just like I use this, a porcupine quill. 

Linda:

Do you have a story about a tree that might be local?  One that you’ve had a long relationship with?

Desda:

Yes, I do.  I have a redwood that I’m really partial to, it’s a female redwood tree, a mother in a grouping of three. So there’s a father, a mother and a baby, three 3 trees that are together, it’s like a little family.  And it’s in a grove in a park here on Sutro in Novato.  A very nice little, weird little park.

But this grove of trees are not very old, probably between 80 – 90 years old, the oldest one.  Anyway, the story I have about that tree is that when I was going back and forth to England a lot to learn from the earth more about the earth skills I have and to study a little bit, but ended up teaching. 

What happened was that I went to this particular little redwood grove a lot to study, for them to teach me.  And this particular redwood and I developed a bit of a friendship and I would go to this redwood tree and I would stand with my whole back against the tree.  There is a way that you stand with your head arched back and your crown is touching the tree and your spine is against the tree.  I would stand that way and the tree would try and give me feedback on what I was learning about.  So a lot of information I’m giving you really came from the redwood tree – this repository of information and knowledge.  And that’s where I learned that the redwoods are guardians; from that tree, from her. 

She’s a really amazing tree in my relationship.  I remember one time I went to her  I took a group to that grove one time.  And actually I have a picture of me sitting under that tree with the group that I’ll try to find for you.  And it was the first time that I really wanted to help people see fairies.   This was @ 2002.  And so I was seated beneath that tree and we had a conversation,  and I told her  that there was this group that I was going to bring to see you.  She said that’s fine.  And I said I’d really like to see if we can get them to see fairies. So I went and I sat underneath the tree and I got people to sit around in a nice circle, it was really a sweet little space. 

 I said now I’ve asked the tree to help you to see fairies,  I taught them how to see fairies, I taught them how to see the edge,  I taught them how to up their vibratory rate so they could interact with this different level of frequency, so I’d already done a lot of teaching with them.    I said, OK now, here’s what I’m going to do.                   

So I put out my hand and there in the picture is me holding a globe of light.  And I’m laughing because it was so cool.  And so I’m holding this little globe of light and bouncing it up and down.  And people in the class not only saw this but could feel it.  So the ones that couldn’t see could feel.  And I learned at that time, the tree said  just give the fairy to whomever you think is ready to have it. So I said who wants to hold the fairy?  And everybody put their hand up and I just felt drawn to this one person and dropped the fairy into her hand, and she sat there underneath the tree looking at this fairy I had dropped in her hand that the tree had prompted me to do that.

I thought that was a really good story.

Linda:

That’s a great story!  And then you left the fairy there though…

Desda:

Oh yes, I would not have taken fairy’s home!  First of all they’re not coming!

Linda:

Can you explain something about the different Nature Spirits and Elementals and Deva’s and Angels, as distinct from the soul of the tree and the soul of the species?

Desda:

Well the tree spirit and the soul of the species are different things.  So I’m going to speak specifically about trees – because that’s a five hour class, the question you just asked.  The tree spirits are entities that live within the tree, and they spring from the seed that creates the tree and they spring from the over soul or larger soul of the species of the tree.  So they are a fragment off of the greater soul that is the species of the tree. 

Linda:

That’s how I learned it too.

Desda:

Yes. And what happens is that they grow up within the tree and they will inhabit the tree.  So they’ll talk to us and sometimes you can see their faces in the tree. And they have very interesting faces.  Sometimes sort of human looking, but they look wild. And if you spend enough time with the trees and if your open enough, their face will come out to you.  It’s kind of like looking at an Escher – all of a sudden you see the reverse, right?  Well it’s like that with the tree- amazing. 

I have these photographs of fairies and stuff but I don’t have any photographs of tree spirits. But it will be interesting to try to take a photograph while we’re meeting with the tree spirits to see if we catch the spirit...But sometimes they – especially eucalyptus trees they’re really powerful. 

They’re very powerful and ancient and it’s one of the reasons that the aborigines of Australia and their culture are still so present is because they draw a lot of their power from the eucalyptus.  Eucalyptus is all over the world now. It’s all over the place so the aboriginal people have gone with it. 

So if they are smart enough to know how, which they are, the shamanic healers are for sure, how to travel on the tree.  They can go anywhere in the world where there’s eucalyptus.  You can do that with any tree.  CA oak is one species, you can travel on the species.

Linda:

Can you explain that a little more about traveling using the connection to the species…

Desda:

If you know how to lock into that grid, that alignment place, it’s more of a network than a grid. A grid is kind of tight & it’s more like a net.  So if you can connect in you can travel. 

Linda:

You’ve done that?

Desda:

Yes.  In fact here’s a way I’ve used this for healing work.  The redwoods in my little grove are quite amazing and there’s an earth energy who lives on my land who’s very powerful.  One time I had a particularly difficult space clearing and what I did was I took it outside. 

I took a map of the house that I was carrying.  There were a lot of weird things that had happened with this house, a lot of very upsetting things, and I determined that this house had been built on a forest and lots of trees had been cut down and it wasn’t that old of a house, it had been pretty recent so the land was very disturbed.  The people in the house were all getting sick.  Everybody was getting sick, really sick. So I took this little map of this house and the people’s names and I took it outside, put it down and put a great big crystal on top of it. 

So I set this crystal down on top of this map and put my hands on two of the trees.  I grabbed hold of the trunk of one and grabbed hold of the leaves of another because they were redwoods and I said, “I need to know what’s wrong with this property”, because I was not getting it.  And I stood there holding these trees. And this image of a  forest came to me! Just huge. And this property was on the east coast, it was a big property.  And it was this giant forest of really tall, strong trees.

I had my cell phone with me so I flipped it open and I hit their phone number, the people who I was working for, and called them up and asked, “Was there a forest there on your property”?  Oh yes,  they cleared the land to build the house about 15 years ago and nobody has ever been healthy here.

Uh, that’s because you have about 100 tree spirits trapped underneath your house and they’re all screaming to get loose.  And as a result, it’s very unsettled in your house. ‘And the woman was like, Oh my God, this is incredible.’  So I had her on the phone, I put the phone down on the ground, I stood there holding these two trees, and with the map under the crystal, and I traveled through the map.  I drew the energy down, I’m in these redwoods but the redwoods connected me to the tree spirits of the property and what happened was as I felt into them and released them all.  All 100 tree spirits.  The woman’s on the phone and I hear this, “Oh my God, what are you doing?”  I said we’re releasing the tree spirits. 

I’ve never felt anything like this, there’s this air coming up from the floor. She felt this pressure building underneath her and she said it’s making my legs shake, she felt this energy… I said, ‘Step to the side your standing in a tree spirit.’  So she just moved to the side and said, Oh my God…and it just swept, swoosh, up (the tree spirit) and it was this very tangible, real feeling for this woman, this real positive experience of letting these trees go.  I check up with her a week later and asked, How are you guys doing?    

They had had all kind of problems with things breaking, and window breaking and mirrors cracking and cups being cracked in the cupboards.  Their one kid was ADD or ADHD, they really hadn’t been able to figure it out…So the whole thing of this house is releasing this whole forest of trees is letting go.  And in the process of this, the kid stops being ADD, they stop having things break, crack, fall over.  

The husband and wife stop bickering which they had been doing since they had moved into the house. The daughter starts behaving normally – she had been running and screaming excessively from room to room, she was about 3, and having tantrums and acting out emotionally; she stopped cold.  Her whole family just transformed, (snap), like that from this land healing. 

So earth work is extraordinarily powerful.  It can really make a huge difference and the tree spirit is a big part of that because we have so many of them on our planet that we must cohabitate with. 

Linda:

Yes.

Desda:

I probably have a thousand experiences with trees like that.  Seriously, there are so many of them. Just walking on the roots you have these experiences. And if you have a problem that you’re trying to resolve, walk in the woods and you can tune into a particular tree.

The theme, I believe, that the trees most consistently want us to know and understand; in my spirit and soul I feel this very strongly, is that they are here and they exist on this planet with us as partners.  They’re not here to serve us but to be in partnership with us. And that our evolution as human beings must include this information. 

Linda:

I think you are exactly right. 

Desda:

That’s the thing I can really tell you about.  So if you find a tree that you feel is really part of this project and you want to talk to it and if it’s not talking to you, I’ll talk to it. 

Linda:

I don’t know why but I still haven’t gotten any clear communication, except for the initial calling, which was very clear. 

Desda:

Maybe you need to learn how to tune in to this part of yourself. Part of what you need is to be around people like me, who are open.  So the more time you spend with me and people like me, the more open you’ll get. 

That’s not everybody, but it’s the real people who are really open; because there are a lot of people who are a little wacky in this world.  You can ferret those out pretty easily.  You can know, you will know who is wacky and who is not. 

The experiences I’ve had would seem a little wacky to some people but they’re not.  They are very grounded in the earth. And that’s the thing you want to look for is the grounded person. The more grounded the person is the more reliable the information is.

There is a very old gum tree that we found on the same property next to the big redwoods that I love so much, the mother redwood.  There was this gum tree – and it had been a private home and clearly it was out of it’s element – this tree had been planted in this wooded area and it was just sort of this freak tree in this environment but it was extraordinarily beautiful. 

And if you’ve ever seen gum trees they are very human looking.  Their limbs are very smooth and their bark feels almost like skin it’s very beautiful.  It had these big, big trunks, I mean this tree is probably 70 years old with a big trunk, big limbs, and I visited this tree on a regular basis. It wasn’t a terribly articulate tree not like some of them are but this tree was very loving, it was almost like a tall vibration  very loving and inclusive, a compassionate wisdom type tree very open, very loving. 

And I came back one time and this tree had been cut into and graffiti on.  Kids had written terrible things on this tree, written their names and filthy words, and it was gross what they did to this beautiful old, piece of nature.  And I came and I saw this and I literally burst into tears when I saw this.  And I held the tree and I put my arms around it’s damaged trunk and I cried.  My tears  were falling on this tree because I was so upset that this had been done to my friend.  And as the tears were hitting the trunk of the tree there was this spasm of love from this tree.  It came back to me that it was so primal, so pure and so basic. It had no agenda, had no anger, it had no sense of humiliation or violation.  It came back, the message was to me ‘that’s the way of the world’- and just with compassion.

So, the lessons we can learn from trees are stellar, beyond all measure. They go beyond anything that you or I could come up with.  The capacity and heart and love and acceptance and forgiveness and guardianship that trees have for human beings is way, way beyond what we people deserve as a species.

(We laugh in agreement)