WHAT IS HONORABLE TREE FELLING?
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Honorable Tree Felling is about the mystical aspects of trees, about deep listening and conversing with the woods. It is about learning to re-view our human selves, not as the highest lifeform or the protagonist in the forest story, but as a citizen, a collaborator, a healer, and an intimate companion in the forest.
Honorable Tree Felling is a day-long workshop in which I and my trusted collaborators share rich wisdom traditions from around the world, from ancient times to the present. We survey wise and spiritual perspectives, where tree-kind are honored, where myths are centered around trees, where trees are the teachers and perhaps the tragic heroes, and where trees are living cooperators in the human experience. Read More on our Blog... |
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HONORABLE TREE FELLING (8 HRS, $300, MIN=7)
Partly about tree felling, but principally a day of learning to communicate with the forest More-than-Human. Deepen your connection with trees and with other humans. Survey spiritual, symbolic, and mythic traditions across time and culture.
Experience gestures, meditations, writings, ceremonies, and actions that allow communication and energy exchange with trees. Observe your facilitator fell a tree with respect and gratitude, then plant new trees. Strengthen your community with like-minded humans and the Divine within Nature. You are not alone in your awe and gratefulness for forests!
Review details and register for our next workshop: April 12, 2025 11am-7:30pm - Camping and other gifts are possible.
Experience gestures, meditations, writings, ceremonies, and actions that allow communication and energy exchange with trees. Observe your facilitator fell a tree with respect and gratitude, then plant new trees. Strengthen your community with like-minded humans and the Divine within Nature. You are not alone in your awe and gratefulness for forests!
Review details and register for our next workshop: April 12, 2025 11am-7:30pm - Camping and other gifts are possible.
A Day in Honorable Tree felling
The day is broken into five sections of multiple modules. The sections give a general idea of the topics in a symbolic, if not literal way:
Each of the short modules will fall into one of the following types:
The curriculum is made of as many as two dozen short modules that can be adaptively assembled to make up the day-long workshop. This means the program will never be exactly like previous HTF programs. SLIDING SCALEWe have recently instituted a sliding scale payment program to help lower entry barriers for those with current financial hardships. The table below summarizes the levels.
Click on this helpful PDF below to see all the detail of our sliding scale program, including what it takes to qualify for work trades and the important meanings of the support levels, which are derived from social community terms of the Andean sumaq kausay principle.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONSWhy would I ever fell a tree? Isn’t it best to allow all trees to thrive?The predominant Western viewpoint is that trees are a renewable natural resource. As such, cutting them down can provide things of value: fuel, construction materials, paper products, and medicine. If not cut down, trees provide habitat and food for animals, stabilize soils, provide shade and windbreaks, and importantly produce oxygen. All living beings are impermanent. This is as true for trees as it is for humans, our pets, and wild animals of the forest, the seas, and the air. There are many reasons we cut down trees, beyond their common uses as a wood resource. We cut down trees that are crowding, damaged, diseased, or nutritionally impoverished to improve tree vitality in the remaining forest stand. The cut trees may become a useful resource for humans or they may be left in the forest to return nutrients, sequester carbon, and create habitat for everything from mosses and mushrooms to amphibians and warm-blooded critters. There is a viewpoint held by some that trees should be allowed to flourish and we should not cut them under any circumstance. Every forest system has limitations to the density, variety, and health of its trees. Soil nutrition, erosion, plant diseases, changing weather patterns, and forest age are some of the limiting factors. In much of present day New England, maturing forests are showing increased plant disease rates, species die-offs, and browsing pressure from deer, for example. Considering this, we believe there are times when cutting down living trees is in the best interest of the forest. In HTF, we teach a mindful approach to doing this work. Why is felling a tree during the workshop so important?Most of the day during HTF we will be expanding our sensory and intuitive apparatus to connect more deeply with the consciousness of trees and the forest More-than-Human. Felling a tree is a good way to allow each participant to put into practice lessons from earlier in the day. This experience operates somatically (physically) to unblock emotions we may all have unconsciously contained as children of the Western post-industrial commodification of the forest. Why is a chainsaw ever used to fell a tree (over a handsaw or hatchet, for example)?Chainsaws, hand saws, and axes all can be used to cut down trees. They all operate by removing bits of wood from the tree until the tree can no longer stay upright and falls over. The chainsaw allows this work to be exceptionally precise and requires less strength than hand tools. Because chainsaws can be precise and fast, they limit the amount of time the person doing the work is in danger beneath a toppling tree. Outside of commercial logging, where large harvesting equipment is often used, gas powered chainsaws are currently the preferred tool for felling by land owners and stewards. Electric chainsaws are evolving, but most are not suitable for tree felling. Will I get to learn how to fell a tree, or will I be required to do so?Both the physics and the metaphysics of safely and kindly felling a tree are taught in this workshop, but participants do not cut anything down. Towards the end of the workshop a live tree is felled by the lead facilitator in a manner allowing participants to first connect with the tree, witness the work being done in a loving and masterful fashion, and aid in the cleanup of the felled tree. Only the lead facilitator operates a chainsaw during this curriculum. What opportunities are there for me to learn the mechanical elements of felling a tree?Pine Hill Voices offers a four-hour introductory course, Chainsawing for Greenhorns, which emphasizes hands-on use of a chainsaw. Skills taught include safe chainsaw starting and use, hazardous forces, basic methods for cutting up wood that is on the ground, and basic techniques for felling and bucking. If you have taken Chainsawing for Greenhorns or already have some familiarity with chainsaw operation, we frequently host Game of Logging® syndicated courses taught by experienced logger-trainers. Levels 1&2 include safety and saw maintenance, felling practice (typically 8-14 inch diameter stems), and safe releasing of springpoles (smaller trees bent under compression). Having completed the first two days, Levels 3&4 go into greater depth on felling back- and side-leaning trees, limbing and bucking, and cleaning up storm damaged trees. Why is Honorable Tree Felling important when there are forest management practices based in modern Western science?This workshop does not replace forest management practices, but instead seeks to expand a person’s tools and methods of interacting with forests beyond those available in modern forest management. HTF teaches attendees ways to observe, listen, communicate, and cooperate with forests as a collaborator, rather than as the forest’s master. HTF encourages attendees to make personal, experiential discoveries with the woods in ways outside of books, classroom teaching, and scientific taxonomy, by exploring the idea that trees are sophisticated living entities. As a comparative example, you can technically know a person by reading a biography about them or you can know them more deeply and personally by experiencing them as a friend. What kinds of spirituality or religions are included in Honorable Tree Felling? Does Honorable Tree Felling require me to align with a certain religion, culture, or spirituality?HTF includes stories and songs representing spiritual experiences and religions from around the world. We explore and bring to light stories, songs, myths, and practices used by many wisdom traditions, but we are not in the business of converting anyone to a specific religion. Nor do we intend to cast aspersions onto a specific religion. We give credit to, and respectfully engage in, practices and rituals originating in many traditions. Some of these examples may resonate personally for some participants, in which case we urge folx to delve further into those specific traditions. The practitioners at Pine Hill Voices may be labeled interspiritualists: we lovingly recognize the common truths and values of many religions while we do not adhere to a specific religious doctrine. Read more about the Catholic monk, Wayne Robert Teasdale (1945-2004) who coined this term. We reflect upon the Sanskrit, “Ekam sat vipra bahuda vadanti.” (Truth is one, but called differently by many.) Source: the Rig Veda (I.164.46). Is there a difference between spirituality and religion?Spirituality and religion are different, but overlap to some degree. Please consider how we use the terms spirituality and religion at Pine Hill Voices. Spirituality encapsulates the personal/individual aspects of being, where we ask, discover, and experience the Divine. We may ask questions like “What is my personal experience with the Divine?” and “Where do I personally find meaning, connection, and value within the moment, in the self, with others, with nature, and with that which I understand as the Sacred or Divine?” A spiritual experience is said to have occurred when we have had a direct, personal mystical or sacred connection with a profound greater-ness. One may see, feel, or otherwise sense a kind of oneness, harmony, unified energy, or Divine presence in the world. One may be given especially meaningful insight during such an experience. Religion is the community system one adopts which prescribes the values, rituals, and beliefs to uphold in life. Often religions are designed to replicate or recreate the spiritual experiences had by others, and in this way these two terms overlap. Most of the world’s religions have in common the values of compassion, community with others, and a code of ethics. They also have ritual practices, sacred writings and songs, and special places of worship. Most religions describe one or more higher energy beings who may be referred to as gods, goddesses, or spirits. Religions may include beliefs about life after death and/or reincarnation, sacrifice, justice and peace. What if I am already devoted to a certain religion? What if I am traumatized by a certain religious upbringing or experience?If a participant is already devoted to a specific religion and the beliefs, practices, and values of that religion, we ask that they be open-minded to the explorations of all of the other spiritual and religious traditions presented. Just as we will not proselytize participants as we give our teachings, neither shall a participant attempt to co-opt the focus of our teachings in a specific direction. The facilitators understand that participants may arrive holding trauma from certain religious exposures. We endeavor to meet and honor the experience of all participants in a kind, loving, and healing way. Provisions are in place for those who may need to process emotions which can emerge during various teachings. Our goal is to hold everyone within the container of the workshop, and to promote growth, healing, and understanding among all participants. Are the teachings at Pine Hill Voices classifiable as culturally appropriated?At Pine Hill Voices, we recognize that we are all spiritually connected agents of the Divine living out our human realities, and that the greatest power in the Universe is love. Wisdom traditions from around the world also recognize these truths. Receiving wisdom from other traditions, acknowledging its origins, and respectfully applying it in our own spiritual path is what we call cultural appreciation, not appropriation. Some people may call this approach ‘interspirituality,’ meaning the intentional, grateful, and humble integration of spiritual teachings and practices from different cultures and religious traditions. (Interspirituality is different from interfaith. Interfaith refers to recognizing and working with other faiths, but not adapting or blending them.) Cultural appropriation is when one says or acts as someone they are not, when they claim to be uniquely qualified or possess the right, best, or only path, especially when they have claimed this path, process, or provenance from a different peoples. At Pine Hill Voices we are surveying many perspectives and openly honoring their origins. We encourage you to discover what works for you, and to call upon the Divine in a personal, intentional, and loving manner. | ||
"So many people could use this knowledge." SC
"A better understanding of my place in the web of life." SK
"This is huge! Never seen anything like this! So needed." RS
"A better understanding of my place in the web of life." SK
"This is huge! Never seen anything like this! So needed." RS