All Text, Music, and Illustrations, including Paintings, Photographs, and 3D models, Copyright © 2022 by Jim Robbins.
ROOTS AND CURRENTS
Words and Music by Jim Robbins
In a place that dreams, ten trunks
rise from a low throne, the breath
of vanished tribes whispering
that we have stepped
into another life. A trail leads
past roots through the domain
of the buckeye and the wildcat.
I see a god of the hunt
in my mind's eye as deer
crash through the brush,
the tribes pulled into quiet currents
as we wake to a vast ocean
of breath. The sprouts
of horse chestnuts plunge
into dark earth. I suddenly feel
like I could flow through all things.
My wife, I think, loved my watercolor of two buckeye trees joined at the roots. My wife discovered after I painted the picture that sometimes two or more tree trunks grow from one seed, and since my wife and I considered their union symbolic of our love for each other, we vowed that when one of us died, the surviving spouse would spread the ashes of the other on the roots of those trees. We called the trees “the couple,” and we would slow down to honor them every time we drove through Watt’s Valley. We soon realized that buckeye trees change dramatically, so much so that you might not believe that you're seeing the same tree from one season to the next. Sadly, soon after my wife left, one of the trunks collapsed, the dead trunk remaining linked at the roots with the still-living trunk.
When we were traveling together in the car, my wife and I would often read each other's mind. Our thoughts would often concern people or events that had nothing to do with where we were or where we were going or what had recently happened, yet somehow we would think of the same things. It didn't just happen because we knew each other so well: Often a topic would occur out of the blue, and we both would be thinking about it. Sometimes we would try to figure out who had first experienced the thought and who was being telepathic. Sometimes I realized that I had experienced a mental image or a phrase, and my wife would then bring up the subject. Other times my wife would have the thought and I would bring up the subject. Eventually we realized that we were both telepathic when "mingling auras," which is what we ended up calling the phenomenon. Whenever we described this phenomenon to other people, of course, no one ever really seemed to believe us.
Once, as I explored the Sycamore Creek watershed, I followed a trail that led to a ridge with the most majestic buckeye tree that I’ve ever encountered. Ten large trunks rose up from its root system out of what looked like a low throne. As I approached it, I almost tripped over a small pounding stone with two mortars. I continued on the trail and found myself standing in the middle of a house pit. As I stood in the house pit, I suddenly had a vision of a god with antlers on his head and a spear in his hand. A few seconds later I heard deer crashing through the brush on the hill above me. It was as if the god were alerting me about the deer. I have experienced visions of gods and goddesses at other Native American sites before, as if shamans had created god forms for helpful nature spirits to ensoul. I sighed and whispered to myself that I was too out of shape to chase deer. As unbelievable as it may sound, I suddenly felt a wave of laughter that seemed to emanate from the place where I had envisioned the god.
I suspected that other pounding stones were in the area, so I explored the ridge a little more and discovered another pounding stone with four mortars brimming with dirt and humus. Not far from the pounding stone, I found a collapsed mine and an indentation in the ground where the miners had apparently set up their encampment. I wasn’t surprised to find evidence of mining at a Native American village site because I had found other Native American sites in the area with collapsed mines. Miners during the gold rush, of course, had been known to exploit Native Americans.
Unlike the other collapsed mines in the area, this one had not been dynamited to keep unsuspecting explorers from falling into a deep hole and disappearing without a trace. I was afraid for a moment that the mine had collapsed on the miners and their Native American workers. The mine, still containing a small hole on one side, had been conquered by poison oak. I imagined that a bobcat or a mountain lion used it as its den.
I returned to the massive buckeye and smelled a freshness that I’ve rarely ever encountered. Though one of the oldest buckeyes in the woodland forest, it was emanating freshness into the ocean of air, its breath carried by currents all through the forest. Its recently fallen seeds had each sprouted a root that was sliding into the earth. The tree and its progeny were pulling water and nutrients from all the tribes of trees and flowers and animals and people that came before them and eventually breathing some of their energy back into the woodlands.
The buckeye on another level was startling because it was so different from the other buckeyes in the area. When I took my wife to see it one day, she literally did not believe that it was a buckeye tree. The buckeye reminded me that nature is another order of existence, full of mysterious and majestic creatures and unexpected spiritual vibrations, and you never know when you’re going to encounter them. As in any relationship, you just need to remain open.
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