Madeline’s Tree

At the top of the lower meadow and pasture is Madeline’s Tree, named after one of the founders of Monan’s Rill, who died peacefully at home on this land and whose ashes are buried under a rock cairn at the base.

This sacred great grandmother tree has watched over our house at the Rill since long before it was built, embraced me in morning meditation during shelter in place last spring, and helped me find strength and clarity as I returned to the land after the fire in the fall.

Although the top branches are still green, an arborist has told us that the fire did so much damage that this tree has a very small chance of survival. So it is coming down, we are letting go, and feeling the loss.

I woke up this morning with the song “Clearcut,” by my former JED Collective housemates Ethan Miller and Kate Boverman, in my heart. As I expected, I can’t find a recording anywhere on the internet. I think I still have the CD, but if I do it is in the house below Madeline’s tree that we still haven’t moved back into. The house that is surrounded by a burned landscape and so many trees, both dead and alive, that are being cut down by PG&E contractors every day.

The chorus, which is what has been singing inside me since I woke up, goes:

I feel like I’m clearcut
I feel like my rivers have run dry
And I’m raw beneath the open sky
and the rain, when it comes,
will carry me away in a landslide

There are many verses to the song but these lines resonate most with me today:

If this broken world was all I knew
If all I hear was sorrow’s cry
What would I know of anger and hope
Or for what would be worthy to die?

But I have seen forests as old as riverbeds
I’ve seen trees that rise up to the dawn
And I have known love that rises above
The despair that this cruel world brings on

I’ve seen beauty in the eyes of another
I’ve heard music you would not believe
And the source of my pain is the source of my hope
In a vision of what this world could be

-Thea @farmerthea – 6-year resident of Monan’s Rill