What comes to mind to you when you read Honorable Tree Felling? I ask, because it is hard for me to speculate. I already know what it is.
 
Is it teaching you to be a death doula for trees? It is about some sort of ceremony for tree sacrifice? What kind of tree felling technique counts as honorable?
 
Let’s back up a step, back a couple of years. I had hosted one of many sessions of Game of Logging when a recent graduate of the course wrote me a long and heartfelt email.

​This individual had done very well in the course, scoring the highest points for technique and no deductions for safety missteps. They had won the prized T-shirt!
 
But they weren’t writing to say what a great experience it was. They were unhappy. They told me how they spoke to every seed they planted in their garden. They were justifiably shocked that we apparently went into a forest stand and indiscriminately began cutting down living trees. They needed to know there was better intention in the work, that we had been kind and just.
 
It was a brave and important letter to send. I immediately voiced my deep gratitude for it. Yes, it certainly appeared that we just went into the woods and indiscriminately cut down living trees. But there was something I hadn’t been telling folks in the workshops, something I had been keeping to myself, because I was afraid of what people might think: that I had a screw loose, or had lost my marbles, or any other idiom for idiocy you wish to drop in here.
 
Truth was, yes, I had consulted with the landowner about their hopes and desires for those woods. But, I had also gone to that stand of trees several times, spent time listening to the forest, studying the trees, seeking out trees with damaged crowns, where overcrowding was limiting growth, where tree diseases had taken hold. How was the wind, the water, the soil? I had deliberately gone through those woods flagging trees that would both serve the teaching objectives of the course and benefit the forest community as a whole. Both considerations were a gesture of love for me.
 
I was in the regular practice of doing this before workshops. It might have looked like I was a trained forester making decisions about tree stand prosperity for future utilization by humans, what in forestry is called prescribing a treatment. What I was doing was actually more in communion with the forest. I wasn’t just prescribing. I was listening, watching, bargaining. I was retracing steps, scrapping plans, and finding more cooperative groves.
 
Yes, there was forestry science going on, but I was also communicating with the trees. I humbly asked the trees to help. I asked for help in determining whom to cut down. I asked for safety and good lessons for everyone in the chainsaw class. I spoke with the elder trees and asked permission for all of what was to come.
 
In my boyhood I spent a great amount of time exploring the woods across the road from my house. There were mosses and ferns, sinkholes and little knolls, great white pines and brushy understory saplings. There was a pond there, too, with leopard frogs and water striders. Crows gathered in the tallest pines while squirrels ran along fallen trees. It was here where I first had mystical experiences. I heard the wind make words I could understand. I fell into time-stopped moments. As I grew and traveled, there were more incidents. I saw dancing lights in the woods at night or emerging from the stump of a freshly cut tree. Trees would tell me their names, and I learned a way to listen and process it into a name that a person could utter, like Doopra, Borlotta, or Uncle Stenk.
 
When I was getting a forest stand prepared as a Game of Logging classroom, going through my listening and asking, it felt somehow right for me. However, I was not ready to go public with my methods. Then the email from that kind student challenged the anthropocentric forestry view. That email was my sign to come out of hiding, to be more public with my reverence for trees and my practices with the More-than-Human forest community.

​Honorable Tree Felling is about the mystical aspects of trees, about deep listening and conversing with the woods. It is about learning to re-view our human selves, not as the highest lifeform or the protagonist in the forest story, but as a citizen, a collaborator, a healer, and an intimate companion in the forest.  
 
Honorable Tree Felling is a day-long workshop in which I and my trusted collaborators share rich wisdom traditions from around the world, from ancient times to the present. We survey wise and spiritual perspectives, where tree-kind are honored, where myths are centered around trees, where trees are the teachers and perhaps the tragic heroes, and where trees are living cooperators in the human experience.
 
Our day is packed with variety. At one point we will be practicing tree-related poses from yoga and qi gong, and the next moment wandering in the woods. There are readings of poems and short stories, followed with personal reflections on how those words landed with each of us. We consider stories, fables, songs and prayers tied to trees, and ask what tree wisdom might be missing from our Western Civilization viewpoint.

In Honorable Tree Felling we do not spend much time on the science of tree communication, mycorrhizal networks, and conventional forest management discussions. There are plenty of other resources out there on those subjects.
 
In our circle of humans we will hold space for each other. You may experience emotions, centering, and healing with regard to your tree relationship history. You may access hidden memories or past life connections with forests. Through ceremony and communion with the More-than-Human, we sample world religions and spiritual practices without enforcing any specific belief system.
 
After doing all of these things, we collectively address the question of cutting down a living tree. How might we fell a tree with this deepened level of caring and intention? Together we consider how to perform the act, and work in harmony to break down the tree after facilitator Matty fells it. Afterwards, we plant new trees and finish with a celebratory service in a sacred circle beneath towering pines.

A good measure of what we do while we’re here on Earth has to do with self-improvement. At least when we’ve recognized the cause to do so. Take chainsawing: learning and practice yields better results, cleaner work, happier woods, safety for our physical self, beauty and satisfaction all around.
 
We may be unconsciously doing that work, gradually learning by trial and error. Maybe we have noticed how our actions skew towards suffering or happiness. Karma in a nutshell.

​I like to consciously identify my own weaknesses and work to understand them, and then learn to live better with the recently disempowered version of my darker side.
 
Jung wrote about the shadow, that part of our unconscious being where we stuff the thoughts, feelings, behaviors we don’t like. On the conscious side we have what we and those around us see on the daily, our persona. The gatekeeper between the two is the ego. Not the boisterous attitude kind of ego, but a devious arbiter who doesn’t want us rooting around in the unconscious. Because, and this seems quite clear to me, when we are able to bring the unconscious into the open, up and out into conscious perception, we put ego out of a job. We can become more fully accepting of our whole self. The downside about this work is we have to confront the shadows we find in the unconscious.
 
When someone asks me what I do for a living, I resist saying I’m a safety trainer or a writer or a this or a that. People often confuse what a person does with who they are. But I do have an answer that reveals what I do and I am happy being defined by that. I say I’m a shadow hunter.
 
As Senator Sanders might say, “Let me be perfectly clear…”, digging around in repressed memories, traumas, and self-destructive patterns is no picnic. So much so, that a Jungian friend of mine once said, “Oh, no, I’m not doing that, I’m too old for that.”
 
There is a huge payoff if you do this work. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, sometimes downright debilitating. It is kind of like going to the gym after a period of absence - you feel better after you've done it. Greater self-love, compassion towards others, improved relationships, less negative self-talk, processing of buried feelings, and improved physical health can all come from bringing the unconscious into the conscious light.
 
“How do I do shadow work?” you wonder. “Asking for a friend,” you add. Together we chuckle. Then you want to know if it is safe. Yes, for the most part, but it will surely be uncomfortable at times. If you are concerned about the elephant in your room down there, the really big trauma, fear, or addiction, get a helper(s).
 
There are lots of ways. Talk psychotherapy with a Jungian therapist is a common approach. Other approaches include: EMDR involving rapid eye movement, sound healing, sand tray therapy, breathwork, and Gestalt therapy. Another tried and true method is to use mediation. There’s also journaling, especially noticing what strong emotional, physical, or spiritual experiences you have had or are currently experiencing.
 
Some folks write down their dreams. This essay came to me in a dream and I’m sitting here right now with a cup of coffee getting it all down on e-paper. My reward: out to the woods, felling some dead wood for late season firewood, splitting up an ill birch tree at the neighbors, then some quiet time wandering in the fallen leaves on perhaps the last warm overcast day of autumn.
 
In the rest of my dream I was practicing another kind of shadow mining and it was as peaceful and kind to me as it was juicy and effective. Let me tell you about it. In real life, I had a bought a deck of archetype cards and a book to go with it written by Caroline Myss.
 
Archetypes are character templates. Oxford says the word comes from arkhetupon, meaning “something moulded first as a model.” Plato was writing about archetypes, though the idea may be even older. Human archetypes include: Princess, Trickster, Sage, and Warrior. There may be a hundred of them.
 
[scribbled in margin] Trees have archetypes, too. Just sayin’. Pine is the elder, long-lived, a teacher. Birch is about healing, regeneration, flexibility. Honorable Tree Felling workshop explores tree archetypes, gender tendencies, and even how we can see the world as a tree.

​Myss’ deck of eighty cards aren’t for divination like Tarot cards and you can’t play pinocle with them. But like Tarot cards, they each reflect aspects of a person that can be represented in the best light or as a darker expression. You might want to say each card can express a trait as good or bad, white or black, right or wrong.

I usually say, skillful versus not skillful, or in power v. out of power.

​Myss labels her cards “light attribute” and “shadow attribute.”