"Never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself."--Frodo the hobbit as he enters Lothlorien forest in The Lord of the Rings.

The realization of old-growth forests as civilizations that we are destroying at a horrifying rate is haunting me. I once thought of forests as just a few trees, not as a compete ecosystem whole unto itself. We are used to thinking in packages and units, not vastness. Especially since we have little or no exposure to the vastness of Nature---we have hemmed her in and preserved her in parks like museum exhibits. That is not wilderness. I understand now what naturalist Larry Eifert means when he says we must find the wilderness inside ourselves because it is gone from our planet. Taking a walk on a well-maintained trail through a redwood grove is not the way it was 150 years ago. It is like viewing an ant colony in a plastic home and thinking that is nature. We have sacrificed greatness and expansiveness for clutter and "safety".

Since the white man's Gold Rush-frenzied invasion of California, 4% of the original old-growth redwood forests are left. The Headwaters Forest in Humboldt County, is the largest unprotected old-growth redwood forest remaining in the world and yes--it is imperiled as we all know. The other west-facing old-growth forests, the mossy Douglas fir and Sitka spruce old-growth have about 8% remaining. How can we now let multi-national companies and Texans-in-debt (Hurwitz) cut down the last of our ancient forests? My belief is that trees are alive--a species who can't speak up in their defense against our terror of nature or our greed.

I had a dream last night. I have been asking the interviewees if they dream of old-growth trees. In my dream I hiked down a ridge to my favorite redwood forest leading down to a beautiful river. As I got to where the forest started I saw blackened earth and all that was left were charred stumps. I screamed uncontrollably that this was a sacred place and who had dared to cut it down? There were other people there mourning and lighting candles. The forest was screaming too.

The purpose of this article is to anthropomorphize trees and to deepen our relationship to the forest kingdom. Our government sets aside stands of old-growth redwoods to protect the endangered spotted owl--what about the lives of the trees? They may not be "cute" and fuzzy and have puppy dog eyes like fur seals or the communication skills of the dolphin, but some among them have been here since Jesus was a tike. I'd say they have seniority, spirit and wisdom if we could hear them speaking to us.

I have woven together interviews with people as diverse as James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy; Leslie Gray, psychotherapist and shamanic healer; Eliot Cowan shamanic healer and author of Plant Spirit Medicine; Paul Hughes, Director of Forests Forever; Dr. Joshua David Stone author of many spiritual and psychological books; Larry Eifert, artist and author of The Distinctive Quality of Redwoods. They all share the common thread of cherishing and protecting our old-growth forests, believing that trees do indeed have soul and purpose beyond press board.

"When I walk in an old-growth forest the feeling is the closest to a real religious deep-seated meaning I've ever come across."--Larry Eifert

Larry Eifert is a world-renowned naturalist painter who's main subject has been the mighty redwood giants along the Humboldt coast. He is the author of The Distinctive Qualities of Redwoods and his murals can be seen in many state and national parks.

He not only paints the redwoods, he has studied them in depth and points out their unique qualities in his book: "Redwood forests are some of the least understood, yet most visited forests on earth. The greatest accumulation of plant mass ever recorded was a coast redwood stand in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It contained over 7 times the living matter per area of tropical rainforests, making this the highest accumulation of life on our planet. Redwoods grow in a family circle and have interconnect root systems, enabling trees to join forces in collecting water and stabilizing themselves against wind and flood."

Go To The Living Spirit of Old Growth Forests Part Two