[Prompt: Darkness and light as a struggle or gift. Posted on this Winter's Solstice.]

Your days-old eyes first trying to take in a world that was not the warm dark belly of mother, where the only light was the faint blood red silhouette of her taught skin, and even then, without context, what were you even seeing? A faint glimmer of gold from the midwife’s lamp revealing pulsing arteries amid the sloshing sounds of your naked environs. And then, having made it through what we now label as birth trauma, choke out amniotic fluid and suck in your first gasps of oxygen, the first not provided by your mother, and then you are out, and alive, and cold, and near blind. 

Trauma or not - you can choose your story, your label - but birth seems clear to me, to be the time you first undergo a life of repeat experiences of thinking you were one place, one relationship, one way of being, only to find out abruptly, or sometimes tediously, that everything you knew to be true was not so true, that dark can become light and sloshing become cooing and that shit is what you make for a living. 

Then, later in life another transmutation, where you learn to make different shit which people want and your shit turns into money. And later, a re-birth, where you realize your life has become dominated by money - and not necessarily the quantity of it, because both excess and paucity bring problems of imbalance. And maybe you transform away from money to a life of philanthropy or asceticism or abject poverty. 

Somewhere in the chronology of all the rebirths, reinventions, your father comes to you in the middle of a winter night and tells you to put your slippers and a coat on, and takes you outside, to the crest of the hill in the cow pasture, the top of the tobogganing hill, and he says, “Son, look up, look at that.” And you see something so profound, so rare, something you had not even learned about in school, something from the time before you emerged from mother’s cradle, violet and emerald waves hanging from the crown of a black winter sky and first revealed.

You cannot make sense of it, this rebirth from naiveté to enlightenment, and yet, unlike every other metamorphosis of your life’s arc, this one, this one moment, does not turn on things getting worse, but turning to more mystery, more divinity, electric in your nerves and challenging your heart to beat with such discovery.

A good measure of what we do while we’re here on Earth has to do with self-improvement. At least when we’ve recognized the cause to do so. Take chainsawing: learning and practice yields better results, cleaner work, happier woods, safety for our physical self, beauty and satisfaction all around.
 
We may be unconsciously doing that work, gradually learning by trial and error. Maybe we have noticed how our actions skew towards suffering or happiness. Karma in a nutshell.

​I like to consciously identify my own weaknesses and work to understand them, and then learn to live better with the recently disempowered version of my darker side.
 
Jung wrote about the shadow, that part of our unconscious being where we stuff the thoughts, feelings, behaviors we don’t like. On the conscious side we have what we and those around us see on the daily, our persona. The gatekeeper between the two is the ego. Not the boisterous attitude kind of ego, but a devious arbiter who doesn’t want us rooting around in the unconscious. Because, and this seems quite clear to me, when we are able to bring the unconscious into the open, up and out into conscious perception, we put ego out of a job. We can become more fully accepting of our whole self. The downside about this work is we have to confront the shadows we find in the unconscious.
 
When someone asks me what I do for a living, I resist saying I’m a safety trainer or a writer or a this or a that. People often confuse what a person does with who they are. But I do have an answer that reveals what I do and I am happy being defined by that. I say I’m a shadow hunter.
 
As Senator Sanders might say, “Let me be perfectly clear…”, digging around in repressed memories, traumas, and self-destructive patterns is no picnic. So much so, that a Jungian friend of mine once said, “Oh, no, I’m not doing that, I’m too old for that.”
 
There is a huge payoff if you do this work. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, sometimes downright debilitating. It is kind of like going to the gym after a period of absence - you feel better after you've done it. Greater self-love, compassion towards others, improved relationships, less negative self-talk, processing of buried feelings, and improved physical health can all come from bringing the unconscious into the conscious light.
 
“How do I do shadow work?” you wonder. “Asking for a friend,” you add. Together we chuckle. Then you want to know if it is safe. Yes, for the most part, but it will surely be uncomfortable at times. If you are concerned about the elephant in your room down there, the really big trauma, fear, or addiction, get a helper(s).
 
There are lots of ways. Talk psychotherapy with a Jungian therapist is a common approach. Other approaches include: EMDR involving rapid eye movement, sound healing, sand tray therapy, breathwork, and Gestalt therapy. Another tried and true method is to use mediation. There’s also journaling, especially noticing what strong emotional, physical, or spiritual experiences you have had or are currently experiencing.
 
Some folks write down their dreams. This essay came to me in a dream and I’m sitting here right now with a cup of coffee getting it all down on e-paper. My reward: out to the woods, felling some dead wood for late season firewood, splitting up an ill birch tree at the neighbors, then some quiet time wandering in the fallen leaves on perhaps the last warm overcast day of autumn.
 
In the rest of my dream I was practicing another kind of shadow mining and it was as peaceful and kind to me as it was juicy and effective. Let me tell you about it. In real life, I had a bought a deck of archetype cards and a book to go with it written by Caroline Myss.
 
Archetypes are character templates. Oxford says the word comes from arkhetupon, meaning “something moulded first as a model.” Plato was writing about archetypes, though the idea may be even older. Human archetypes include: Princess, Trickster, Sage, and Warrior. There may be a hundred of them.
 
[scribbled in margin] Trees have archetypes, too. Just sayin’. Pine is the elder, long-lived, a teacher. Birch is about healing, regeneration, flexibility. Honorable Tree Felling workshop explores tree archetypes, gender tendencies, and even how we can see the world as a tree.

​Myss’ deck of eighty cards aren’t for divination like Tarot cards and you can’t play pinocle with them. But like Tarot cards, they each reflect aspects of a person that can be represented in the best light or as a darker expression. You might want to say each card can express a trait as good or bad, white or black, right or wrong.

I usually say, skillful versus not skillful, or in power v. out of power.

​Myss labels her cards “light attribute” and “shadow attribute.”

​Did the smell of dry maple leaves bring up that memory of jumping in leaf piles? Is it time to bring out the fall sweaters? Has it been like this for you? Here on Pine Hill, it's been all the usual fall stuff: stack firewood, give grassy areas one last mowing, try not to be bummed out over the shortening days.

​Despite the melancholy of another summer gone by too fast, there’s also excitement about what lies ahead. The Game of Logging courses we added are rapidly filled with a mini cross-section of people… young to old, novice to pro, Gore-Tex to flannel.

A lot of Game of Logging classes are taught to more homogenous groups, like a class of tech school teens or a utility company’s service crew. Pine Hill offers open enrollment workshops, meaning we get the most diverse class composition possible. I love watching the connections flourish.
 
For a day or two together, we get to cross-pollinate with a new community… some folks who are quite different from us, others more familiar. We hold that space for each other kindly. We cheer for each other’s little successes. If we’re lucky, someone brings maple candy or crisp apples to share.
 
We train people to get closer to mastering the physics of felling. That is the advertised bit. And though the “game” in Game of Logging is meant to be playful and spur you to improving technique, working with living tissue is somehow more than a game.
 
I am often asked “Why are we cutting down this tree?” I consider it part of my job to be able to offer a credible answer. The answers vary, but they are always sincere. Our classmates might not realize that I’ve been in those woods before getting it ready for the teaching.
 
Getting ready means bringing down hazard trees while being mindful of the importance dead trees have to wildlife. Getting ready means knowing the landowner’s forest management plan so we enhance the wellness of certain trees. Getting ready means clearing underbrush that poses too much tripping hazard. Getting ready means flagging trees for students that have a low likelihood of hanging up. It means thinking about where people can sit for lunch. Where will they go to pee? What might the weather be and can we still keep working if the wind comes up? And whether you believe such things, or not, getting ready means discussing our training work with the forest itself and saying thanks for helping us, and for watching out for us.
 
A lot of intention goes into getting a stand ready for teaching. And for my part, a lot of loving tree communication. And these practices are the essence of our Honorable Tree Felling workshop coming up on November 1st. Looking from the outside, it might seem that we humans are in charge, the protagonists, the top of the forest food chain.
 
In HTF, as we call it, we look at the role trees have played in wisdom traditions from around world. We practice a little yoga and a little qigong as they relate to trees. We look at the forest as a community of beings that we collectively call the More-than-Human. That community is made of trees who have archetypes, genders, personalities, and healing properties.
 
I like to notice the differences in how our little cross-section of attendees considers trees. Some will talk with awe about trees as living and breathing, conscious in some tree-way, how they smell or what sort of pulse they have. Some might talk to trees, hugging or thanking them. Others will express none of this. Trees are firewood. Trees are lumber. Some trees are pests and some are treasures. As I see it, it is not a binary choice. Trees are all of this. To co-opt a popular phrase, “It’s all wood.”
 
On some level, everyone who works with trees has a deeper connection, however they express it, or don’t. And just like a forest made of all sorts of trees, our training groups are made of all types of folks, and for little while, they make a special grove of themselves. I’m inspired by the promise of renewal that autumn provides. What better time to review and renew the ways in which we work with forests?

​Even the greatest gale
She is but a whisper
When Earth revolves
Beyond the speed of sound
 
Sometimes trees shatter
Waves surge and swash
Our hair backwards blown
She’s not quite glued to gravity
 
Vanilla vetiver pheromones
Pine resin wood smoke
Caramel of marshmallow
Wind-borne scent remembrances
 
So it is on this hill
White pines top the canopy
Nature’s breath comes on slowly
A gentle wash of kelp against rock

               -----

When the beech and maple are bare
Her twirling Noreast shivers
Incite buzzing swarms of twigs
Too early for tree frogs thrumming
 
Summertime the green world
Breezes twinkle the poplar leaves
Light dances in the understory
Synchronous shadows depose balance
 
Geosmin rules the rainy perfume
Until lightning’s ozone owns the petrichor
With humidity the fungi fester
Perspiration like tidal pools
 
Dry autumn breezes
She signals school and funerals
Leafy mosiac tapestries shimmer
Arboreal cathedral calm for a time

               -----

End of day end of season
Memory filling
Wind on the hill
Transience was never as permanent
 
Scattered black feather hoodlums
Break the calm of dusk
Murderous calls mete out justice
Upon one in their thieves band
 
Darkness lowers its late grey curtain
She holds her breath once more
Then turns about cool now
Flowing presently down this hill
 
There she sleeps
Fitful sleep of gasps and withers
Until with the morrow sun
Wind resumes her erstwhile ways

​
© Matty Adams, 2024

It was that red and black flannel
Coat he wore
No fashion statement - just warmth.
 
It was the uniform of every daily chore
Garden variety wool
A nylon liner
No more.
 
It was that old coat
A little worn but never rent
Grimy ‘round the collar.
 
It was his old coat
Carrying his particular scent.
It was as if he still wore it
Even after he went.

​
© Matty Adams, 2022
This piece first appeared at writersforrecovery.org (Nov. 4, 2022).