The Grounding Earth: who inspires me to create….
Suzanne Simard.
A good friend gave me the gift of a book written by Suzanne Simard called Finding the Mother Tree. Suzanne began her career as a forest ecologist working for a logging company replanting areas that had been clear cut. Her family had been in the logging business for generations giving her a long familial relationship with trees. She explains in her book that clear cutting was a new development in logging since in the past, her family had selectively cut trees leaving the larger, older trees to support the ecology of the forest, thus keeping the forest healthy so it could produce new trees.
What she found as she planted saplings in these clear-cut areas, was that the young trees refused to thrive. Although soil amendments and other assistance was given, the young trees in the clear-cut areas did not do as well as the trees planted in the forests where selective cutting had been carried out.
As a forest ecologist, she studied this problem and discovered that trees in a healthy forest, have a complex root system that connects and enables them to cooperate and support each other. Assistance is given to sustain healthy tree growth as well as shifting energy and support to trees that are ill or diseased. Some of the oldest trees in the forest she has called the Mother Tree which is the tree that has the largest and most refined root system of all, connecting the trees within her family to her vast resources and intelligence. Like in the movie Avatar…
Watch this short video of her explaining her findings and the book that eloquently explains this complex system that shows trees and their intelligent processes that we may have to depend on for our own survival.
Journal prompt:
Isn’t it funny how we get so involved in our own worlds that we begin to take for granted the support systems around us. I find this happens at the moments when I am flying the highest, thinking I’ve got it all going just right. The higher you climb, the farther you fall… As a creative soul, I find it’s so very important to create and rely upon a creative family. When you are creative, you are constantly putting out into the world, or you operate in Yang energy. I use my creative community to bring me back into balance or remind me of Yin. When I am with other creatives, on a sketching date, a museum visit, a chatty lunch, I feel my roots connect and give me energy as I transfer energy to those around me. A symbiotic relationship.
Who is in your creative family? Who supports your creative endeavors and feeds your Yin. Yin and Yang are like breath, moving back and forth in life so take some time to create a support network, or a root system for your own creative life.
Do a simple or complex sketch of a tree in the blank page of the What section in your book. If you don’t know anything about drawing trees, try looking out your window at one and do a contour drawing around the edges of the canopy and trunk. Enjoy the tree that gives to you and all of us, creating the oxygen we breath.
Hugs to you all-
Marilee
Buy my Creativity Journal on Amazon and fill your book with all ten projects! There is space for journaling, ideation and creation of the final project.
The QR code in the book links you to the website journal so you can take it with you and be creative anywhere you may go.
You just need a pen, curiosity and joyful effort!!
