By Tracey Forest

"And we plant the seeds, seeds for the future ones.
And we sing our prayers for those who have yet to come.

So much depends on what we give our lives to.
Let us befriend the work that we need to do."  **

ReGrowing Beloved Trees
In the above photo, I am holding in my hand a Dunstan chestnut.  A kind neighbor carefully stratified a bunch of them and gave them out to people who wanted them this spring.  I now have seven sprouting chestnut seedlings, who I will nurture in pots for a few years before planting them on the land of Spirit Hollow.  It takes six-ten years for these nut trees to begin to produce nuts, so I am eager to get them going now and to help reestablish the nearly-obliterated chestnut species.

The American chestnut was the most important food and timber tree species in the Eastern hardwood forest.   Reaching 100 feet in height and 10 feet wide, the Chestnut tree the population was more than 3 billion trees throughout the United States.  It was almost completely destroyed by a bark fungus accidentally introduced from the Far East in 1904. Within 40 years, over 30 million acres of chestnut trees were killed from Maine to Georgia and west to the Mississippi.

Dunstan chestnuts have been bred specifically to be resistant to chestnut blight over the last six decades. This variety, loving cultivated, has made the regrowing of healthy chestnut forests possible, revitalizing the available nutrition for wildlife and the environment.  Read more about the Dunstans here.
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Re-Seeding Healthy Humans
Somewhat like the struggling chestnuts, soulful humans too have suffered a deadly blight--the fungus of insatiable hunger of the dominator culture that consumes all in its path.

Yet like James Carpentar of Ohio, we all can do what we are called to do to serve the ones who have yet to come.

In the 1950s, Carpentar discovered a living American chestnut in a grove of dying trees and slowly, lovingly, began grafting and cross-pollinating (without any real guarantee that his work would make a difference).  Through Carpentar's and others' painstaking work of hybridization, Dunstan Chestnuts have been growing and bearing every year for almost 50 years now. These hybrid trees have been grown throughout much of the eastern United states, and almost none have died from the blight.

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Feeding the Future
While there are no assurances that all we plant will grow and bear food, what joy there is in doing in *anyway!

Here at Spirit Hollow, along with my family, I have been rebuilding the soil, making offerings to the creepy crawlies, singing to the land, dancing with the owls, and listening to the myriad others here for 24 years now.  My relationship with this place just keeps deepening, and my own work becomes clearer.

For the last few years, it has been my primary focus in life to "plant for a future I will never see."  My goal, as I grow older (and hopefully wiser) and more soul-rooted, is to leave behind a food legacy for the ones who will live here after I am gone.  Maybe that will be my own children, or maybe it will be other humans, but either way, they will have food.  So I have been planting fruit and nut trees, shrubs, berry bushes and perennial vegetables every year, and seeing how abundant and responsive Earth is when we tend her. 

And beyond food, I am giving my life to feeding the future ones in all kinds of other ways. With 50% of teens and young adults reporting crippling anxiety and depression, we must feed our young ones on the Soul level.  
 

If we lived in a healthy culture, youth would be surrounded by wise ones and elders, who would mirror their gifts, challenge their assumptions, and guide them to their edges, so they could encounter their depths—to tap into that which was trying to be born, to begin to heal, and to learn how to quench their deep thirsts and hungers and longings--indeed the kind of food that is NOT available in most places in the consumer culture.

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One of Spirit Hollow's programs, which addresses the urgent need to help our young ones feel deep belonging and find inspiration, creates a model of truly healthy culture.

EARTH CRAFT: for Young Adults Called to Reimagine . . . Everything

IS GOING INTO ITS THIRD SUMMER.  It's an incredible program where young adults gather here in tribe to participate in ecological, soul-centered living. Rooted in the dreaming Earth and dedicated to cultivating soul-centric living and embodiment, a community of 18-24 year-olds on the threshold of true adulthood will live together in land-based community while being mentored by seasoned guides in soulcraft, ritual arts, wild mind wholing and self-healing techniques to nurture reciprocal relationships with themselves, the human and more-than-human world.

Earth Craft is "a socio-cultural acupuncture point for the health of the whole." 
~Dr. Hilary Leighton, PhD
Ecopsychologist, Registered Clinical Counsellor, True Nature Counselling & Psychotherapy
Associate Professor, School of Environment and Sustainability, Royal Roads University
The Work That Reconnects Facilitator
Animas Valley Institute Board Member

**lyrics from a new song

Here's how you can help!

Many people ages 18-24 don't have the money to attend a residential program such as Earth Craft, where they live and immerse for eight days.  

We are dedicated to making this program accessible to ANYONE who wants to attend, regardless of their ability to pay.  

We are behind on scholarship donations as we move toward summer. You can help by making a donation of any amount, or by sponsoring a young adult in full (tuition is 900 -1300 on a sliding scale).

Will you help nourish these seedlings, so they can root deeply and grow strongly and "spread their branches against a future sky?"*

You can click the donate button at the top right of this page or send a donation to:

http://paypal.me/SpiritHollow and put “Earth Craft Scholarships” in the memo.

Thank you so much, dear friend!

 With deep gratitude and so much love, 
Tracey Forest and the Spirit Hollow Board of Directors

*from David Whyte's "What to Remember When Waking"