By Kathleen Mary Willis, April 25, 2021
(Golden Age of Gaia)
Thank you, Francesca.
In 1977 I started teaching school in southern New Hampshire, living in a woodland cottage with no electricity or running water, just candles and melted snow.
For the first few winters we still had cold spells plunging to -30 degrees Fahrenheit, tho in warmer months I spent many blissful hours tending the forest, picking up fallen branches as quiet meditation and slowly awakening to the Nature Spirits there.
During those years I found a few large wood ticks on me, that’s all. But something was changing.
Winters were growing milder…
I moved to an Ashram school further north in 1989, and tended flower gardens rather than forests each summer.
Over the next 24 years, our “Garden Zone” officially changed from 4 to 5 – warmer winters meant we could grow new plants, but the delicate balance of insect life also changed as destructive bark beetles and disease-bearing mosquitos thrived.
Worst of all, tiny deer ticks carrying the new and awful Lyme disease spread ever northward, so now even in northern New England we risk serious disease when venturing outdoors.
(Numerous friends and schoolchildren got Lyme after being bitten by a tick no larger than this period. Left untreated by heavy-duty antibiotics, Lyme causes serious neurological damage – one of my friends is now permanently in a wheelchair.)
So cheers for organic gardening, clean energy, and Gaia in harmonious balance!
****
I returned to my little woodland cottage for a final farewell before moving north.
The land was hurting, once-beautiful pastures sloping down to the river now abandoned and overgrown, large pines in the forest logged, poison ivy flourishing because of angry elementals betrayed by humans…
So I began walking around picking up fallen branches with love – and suffered terrible bouts of poison ivy!
Sensitive friends, along with hours alone meditating by the singing brook and creek, helped me understand the hurt and connect with benevolent woodland spirits and the Lady Deva overseeing that area.
A mighty Maple declared his presence, pines grew friendlier when I scraped thousands of caterpillar eggs off their trunks…
More adventures…
At last, my shaman buddy found the center of hostile energy: The Vine Man, an angry spirit inhabiting the huge hairy poison ivy vine strangling a tree down by the creek.
So one misty, windless morning we held ceremony, Ross severing the vine with firmness but compassion.
At that moment a wind chime hung nearby began ringing in triumphant tones, played by some joyful fairy celebrating our liberation!
Not long afterward torrential thunderstorms flooded the vale, knocking over the Vine Man’s tree and burying the poison ivy he’d marshaled there in thick silt.
That Whitsun, the wild apple trees burst into glorious bloom for the first time in years.
A wonderful tale of struggle and redemption, the hidden Light revealed (briefly!) in the end.
Standing with folded hands, I gazed out on the Forest that taught me so much and felt a wave of love from the community of souls there, visible and invisible.
Then something even more wonderful happened!
The veil was lifted from my eyes, and for a brief time I beheld the trees, meadows and stream shimmering with light, blessed because a human being just with loving intention and some prayers walked the land. Anyone can do this!
But this was the fruit of 9 years of epic adventure there!
My understanding is that spiritual beings long for closer community with human beings.
From the simple elementals to mighty devas and the angelic hosts – they WANT to work with us!
We just have to want that, too, and unexpected adventures will start happening.