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Birches | Poem by Robert Frost

Birches | Poem by Robert Frost

MaBi Photo

In Chapter 4 of The Power of the Crystalline Trees, Lan has a healing vision that involves birches. Birches are a most wondrous tree providing nourishment through the sap and bark that can be used to make containers and even canoes. The leaves, bark and buds can be used medicinally for healing joint pain, kidney or bladder stones, and urinary track infections. Robert Frost acknowledges the power of birches in this following poem:

Birches

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Check out this story about what’s beneath the forest floor

Check out this story about what’s beneath the forest floor

In Chapter Four of The Power of the Crystalline Trees, Lan has an experience with the “wood wide web” This story by Robert Macfarlane is about the magic underneath the soil in a forest.

Here’s an excerpt:

IN THE EARLY 1990s a young Canadian forest ecologist called Suzanne Simard, studying the understory of logged temperate forests in northwest British Columbia, observed a curious correlation. When paper birch saplings were weeded out from clear-cut and reseeded plantations, their disappearance coincided with first the deterioration and then premature deaths of the planted Douglas fir saplings among which they grew.

Foresters had long assumed that such weeding was necessary to prevent the young birches (the “weeds”) depriving the young firs (the “crop”) of valuable soil resources. But Simard began to wonder whether this simple model of competition was correct. It seemed to her plausible that the paper birches were somehow helping rather than hindering the firs: when they were removed, the health of the firs suffered. If this interspecies aid-giving did exist between trees, though, what was its nature—and how could individual trees extend help to one another across the spaces of the forest?

Keep reading!

http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=8231&fbclid=IwAR3fCBQ9hXnvyjgncH9x1sovKZz9ul3gF8XAmIpovZf4TOY7vlphYgeEx_E

Juicy Trivia about The Power of the Crystalline Trees

Juicy Trivia about The Power of the Crystalline Trees

Photo by Clea G. Hall

A Book is Born: Some Backstory on The Power of the Crystalline Trees

It’s been a big first week since the birth of The Power of the Crystalline Trees. Lots of positive response on Facebook to the launch. And sharing of the page link.

But first…thank you so much to those who have left those awesome reviews on Amazon! With just 4 reviews the book climbed all the way up to the 300s (the lower the number the better). A few more reviews and the book could possible get into the top 100 for our category.

And then a small step for the author but a giant leap for the book …Amazon finally linked the two versions of the book (kindle and print). I kept checking cause it said 72 hours…and nothing, nothing, nothing. So finally I sent them an email yesterday (that was fun tracking that link down) and this morning…ta da!

So now I have one link to rule them all!

Here’s the link to leave a review.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I thought it would be fun to share some “special  trivia” about the book. When I fall in love with a book I want to know all the backstory…which is partly why I created the website. So here are some fun tidbits:

Lan’s secret name: Gavilán is actually Spanish for Hawk. Definitely Lan’s totem animal, Hawk energy shows up in the next book The Power of the Crystalline Horses. Those wings are soooo dreamy and Lan will continue to have visions about someone with wings that stirs his heart (weird cause he doesn’t know anyone who has wings).

The Forest of Dandaka: I feel as though writing about trees and how they interact with each other hasn’t just made me feel more connected to trees, but I feel like trees are more aware of me! I’m in the circle of trust, so to speak. Which is why for every copy of TPotCT that is bought in print, I will be donating to reforesting projects. And receiving the contribution of trees in all forms in my life (the house I live in, the journal I create with, the furniture my legs are resting on right now) with the deepest of appreciation.

I am wondering…after reading Chapter 5…do you feel a greater connection to trees as well?

The Moon Calendar and Days Out of Balance: I’ve always been fascinated by the rhythms of the moon. The past several years, I’ve created New Moon Calendars for the coming year to help me be more aware of when the New and Full Moon dates are. (Segue: I wonder how much of my menstrual issues that I had 2 decades ago was because I was out of rhythm with the moon?)

I loved creating a New Moon Calendar for the book based on trees…which is a very Celtic thing. Based on today’s date we are currently in the Cyprus Moon Month. The Day Out of Balance actually fell on the New Moon date of Nov 7th. Yikes! All kinds of weird things happened that day in our nonfictional world!

My fictional Days Out of Balance are based on equinox and solstice dates plus the midpoint between seasonal changes…except the first New Moon of the new year, the Tibetan New Year). I have to actually track the time frame of my characters as they journey in the book to keep track of when a Day Out of Balance is going to happen next. I’m cooking up some really spectacular events for the sequel!

One last question for you…where in the world do you imagine our story is actually taking place?

In the next post, I’ll share some challenges I’m facing writing the sequel. Perhaps you can help me solve them with your creative input.

Okay…please take a minute to pop on over to Amazon and leave a review, if you haven’t yet. Let’s get into the top 100! Here’s the link.

Again…a huge thank you if you already have. I have no way to respond to your reviews on the page (I desperately want to click a “Thumb’s Up” like on FB) but I read each one and receive your contribution to the book with so much gratitude.

Till next time,
gia

 

The Triple Spiral

The Triple Spiral

Asira learns the power of spirals in her healing work in Chapter 8. One of them is the triple spiral. Discover the benefits of it by tracing it with your finger.