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Sacred Sites: The Faerie Grove
Part Two: Old Growth ForestThe faerie grove is nestled in a hidden pocket of old growth forest, protected from the surrounding logging operations by a stream and the geography of the land. Old Growth forest possesses a unique energy, deep and rich, as timeless as the trees which reach for the heavens. The trees that grow in the faerie grove are hundreds of years old, but there are places where I do ritual work, such as the California Redwoods where the trees are as much as two thousand years old.
The grove is nestled in the midst of a stand of old growth timber.
Imagine working with entities that were saplings when the Roman Empire was at its height. There is a richness of energy present there and an almost timeless wisdom. The vast majority of the forests I work with are classified as temperate rainforests, an ecosystem that is somewhat different from deciduous forests and other conifer forest where I've worked rituals. When a forest elder reaches the end of the life and topples to the forest floor, it's body becomes a nurse log, providing sustenance for the next generation of trees. While hiking through old growth temperate rainforest, you'll see saplings sprouting from fallen logs and mature trees with odd root and trunk shapes as they were formed before the nurse logs that nurtured them fully decayed.
We often talk about hereditary memory in human beings, legacy skills or memories of past times that are passed down either through bloodlines or through metaphysical means. What we fail to consider is that the same thing happens with trees in a temperate rainforest. Each subsequent generation literally grows from the body of the generation that preceded them, passing on the wisdom of the forest for thousands of years.
"When you step from the road and cross the boundary that leads into the mystical stands of trees, you immediately sense a change in the energy around you. As your feet begin to walk in the shadow of the forest elders, the air around you begins to deepen, to grow fuller and rich with potential. As you begin to wander amidst the massive trunks, you begin to realize that the energy comes from the trees around you, from the way they interact with the weave of the Nature around you. You begin to make connections in your mind, understanding that each tree has stood here for hundreds of years, simply watching, absorbing the world around it. As the boundaries between you and the realm of spirit begin to relax, you realize that the wisdom the trees hold can be tapped into, if only you knew how."
In the center of the grove stands a wind-broken tree, towering over the area around it. When I first began to work with the site, well over a decade ago, the area around the obelisk was mostly moss and low ground coverage, but over the years the area has grown thick with ferns.
A wind-broken tree forms a natural obelisk in the midst of The Faerie Grove.
It was here, around this broken trunk, where I would work my rituals. And it was a nine foot (2.7 meter) long vein of heartwood (the wood from the center of the trunk) that formed the base of my first altar that I built in my home years and years ago.