It’s the question after you’ve got your answers that garners the important information. 

Spirits in a cottonwood tree

Here are two buddies who live in a row of cottonwood trees out at Chatfield Farms, Colorado. 

I’d finished my day of exploring and photographing this pioneer farm site and was enjoying the simple beauty of the woods. I came upon a grove of cottonwood trees lining a grass path that had once been a working dirt road. The trees were arching beautifully in the strong autumn sun, casting dark cool shadows in the silent heat.

As I walked, one tree group called me to photograph them. That is their right, according to my photographic contract with the nature realm…but, hey, I was off duty and I tried to ignore the call. It followed me, like a puppy, as I sauntered to the end of the dirt path and turned to return. When I got to this tree, the energies intensified and I stopped.

At first I saw nothing. It took awhile for me to shift my sight to the frequency of this story. It is a simple story of two trees of equal strength growing together. On the left are the small energies of the land – its sweetness and fluffiness and the cottonwood “fluff” of seeds that float through the air each spring and portend new growth. On the right is the human energy – a farmer, with mustache and beard, wearing a tall pointed hat with ear coverings such as was worn in the winter in pioneering days.

These two energies would be of different sizes, if looked at from each of the worlds portrayed. The human would look small in the nature spirits’ world, and vice versa. But here both worlds are being respected and appreciated for their equal responsibility and effect in keeping this area strong and healthy. 

It was an answer to me I was not consciously seeking – the question after the answers. It was my news reporter Mother who long ago shared this methodology she used to develop a news story. 

Here I discovered the secret to this site… the respectful equality between two partners – nature and man – who have quietly and humbly loved and cared for this beautiful site.

We are in transformative times now, when the desire and passion for equality among people is becoming a dominating drive. I have been asked by my inner colleagues to remind all that equality has been a driving force from the start of the human presence on earth. It will not stop with humans among each other. It will continue until equality means equal respect for all as our co-equals inside creation.

That means respect for animals, vegetation, earth and water and air. ALL these existences are equally derived from the one source, contain that source, and will one day be treated with the same reverence that we should be according our common source. We have a long road ahead of us. But we have begun our journey.