I Found a Heart on My Land

There’s a big beautiful tree on my land. I have been bowing to her power (yes, I think of “her” as the mama of my land) ever since I met her and my house because she appears to be single-handedly holding my land in place.

In her glory standing tall behind the house.

I am on a canyon and the northern edge of my property drops pretty dramatically down into the canyon.  The people who originally built my house did a bit of a Beverly Hillbillies patch job on the hill to fortify it.  Heavy rains of the past few years, and particularly post-fire deluges, have revealed the pipes, strips of sheet metal, chunks of cement and plastic tubing that were so generously, hilariously, shoved into the side of the hill.

So while the land itself is soft and sandy (I would literally slide down the hill every time I tried to plant something), the protruding weapons have always made walking that edge a bit terrifying.  When the Army Corps cleared the land they put up a fence just past the tree trunk, making the walking ledge even more teeny tiny and treacherous.

Last Saturday I met my gardeners on my land to do the yearly fire-abating weed clearing. While they cleared weeds, I moved the fence, emptied pots and cleared away some things that I just hadn’t had the bandwidth to even touch since it burned.

I walked behind the tree and reached down to pick up a broken pot.

I thought I had inspected every inch of the land — particularly since there isn’t a lot left to inspect! But, as with everything about this fire, things come into my awareness when I can handle them and not a minute before.

I had never seen this.

I thought my girl was un-singed. 

Is it weird that the first thing I thought was that I wanted to put aloe gel on it?

I did two workshops recently for my community entitled “Healing Our Eaton-Fire Singed Hearts.”  Crazy synchronicity finding this five days after the second session and a day before mother’s day.

I love this mama and am so happy she appears to be thriving and spreading her beautiful leafy wings in spite of her singed heart.

Years ago, my girl as back drop to a cool conversation.