Honorable Tree Felling – The Backstory

What comes to mind to you when you read Honorable Tree Felling? I ask, because it is hard for me to speculate. I already know what it is.
 
Is it teaching you to be a death doula for trees? It is about some sort of ceremony for tree sacrifice? What kind of tree felling technique counts as honorable?
 
Let’s back up a step, back a couple of years. I had hosted one of many sessions of Game of Logging when a recent graduate of the course wrote me a long and heartfelt email.

​This individual had done very well in the course, scoring the highest points for technique and no deductions for safety missteps. They had won the prized T-shirt!
 
But they weren’t writing to say what a great experience it was. They were unhappy. They told me how they spoke every seed they planted in their garden. They were justifiably shocked that we apparently went into a forest stand and indiscriminately began cutting down living trees. They needed to know there was better intention in the work, that we had been kind and just.
 
It was a brave and important letter to send. I immediately voiced my deep gratitude for it. Yes, it certainly appeared that we just went into the woods and indiscriminately cut down living trees. But there was something I hadn’t been telling folks in the workshops, something I had been keeping to myself, because I was afraid of what people might think: that I had a screw loose, or had lost my marbles, or any other idiom for idiocy you wish to drop in here.
 
Truth was, yes, I had consulted with the landowner about their hopes and desires for those woods. But, I had also gone to that stand of trees several times, spent time listening to the forest, studying the trees, seeking out trees with damaged crowns, where overcrowding was limiting growth, where tree diseases had taken hold. How was the wind, the water, the soil? I had deliberately gone through those woods flagging trees that would both serve the teaching objectives of the course and benefit the forest community as a whole. Both considerations were a gesture of love for me.
 
I was in the regular practice of doing this before workshops. It might have looked like I was a trained forester making decisions about tree stand prosperity for future utilization by humans, what in forestry is called prescribing a treatment. What I was doing was actually more in communion with the forest. I wasn’t just prescribing. I was listening, watching, bargaining. I was retracing steps, scrapping plans, and finding more cooperative groves.
 
Yes, there was forestry science going on, but I was also communicating with the trees. I humbly asked the trees to help. I asked for help in determining whom to cut down. I asked for safety and good lessons for everyone in the chainsaw class. I spoke with the elder trees and asked permission for all of what was to come.
 
In my boyhood I spent a great amount of time exploring the woods across the road from my house. There were mosses and ferns, sinkholes and little knolls, great white pines and brushy understory saplings. There was a pond there, too, with leopard frogs and water striders. Crows gathered in the tallest pines while squirrels ran along fallen trees. It was here where I first had mystical experiences. I heard the wind make words I could understand. I fell into time-stopped moments. As I grew and traveled, there were more incidents. I saw dancing lights in the woods at night or emerging from the stump of a freshly cut tree. Trees would tell me their names, and I learned a way to listen and process it into a name that a person could utter, like Doopra, Borlotta, or Uncle Stenk.
 
When I was getting a forest stand prepared as a Game of Logging classroom, going through my listening and asking, it felt somehow right for me. However, I was not ready to go public with my methods. Then the email from that kind student challenged the anthropocentric forestry view. That email was my sign to come out of hiding, to be more public with my reverence for trees and my practices with the More-than-Human forest community.

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Honorable Tree Felling Is...

​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.
 
Our day is packed with variety. At one point we will be practicing tree-related poses from yoga and qi gong, and the next moment wandering in the woods. There are readings of poems and short stories, followed with personal reflections on how those words landed with each of us. We consider stories, fables, songs and prayers tied to trees, and ask what tree wisdom might be missing from our Western Civilization viewpoint.

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In Honorable Tree Felling we do not spend much time on the science of tree communication, mycorrhizal networks, and conventional forest management discussions. There are plenty of other resources out there on those subjects.
 
In our circle of humans we will hold space for each other. You may experience emotions, centering, and healing with regard to your tree relationship history. You may access hidden memories or past life connections with forests. Through ceremony and communion with the More-than-Human, we sample world religions and spiritual practices without enforcing any specific belief system.
 
After doing all of these things, we collectively address the question of cutting down a living tree. How might we fell a tree with this deepened level of caring and intention? Together we consider how to perform the act, and work in harmony to break down the tree after facilitator Matty fells it. Afterwards, we plant new trees and finish with a celebratory service in a sacred circle beneath towering pines.

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Attending

Spaces in Honorable Tree Felling are still available. Our next offering is Saturday April 12, 2025. The normal cost is $300 per person for an eight-and-a-half hour workshop and it is a bring-your-own-lunch affair. We have a sliding scale which allows those with ample financial resources to help pay forward opportunities for those with less discretionary income. For those who are really strapped for cash, but have an intense desire to expand their relationship with the forest, we may consider trade-out possibilities which involve working in our woods before the workshop.

We have tenting or car camping possibilities here on Pine Hill if you are coming from a ways away. And there may be possibilities for an additional free ceremony or sweat lodge on the day after the workshop, depending on interest and energy readings.  
 
Lovingly, Matty Adams and friends