The Ancient Cypress Trees of Louisiana.

Floating your way through a Louisiana cypress swamp is an eerie but a deeply spiritual experience. Silently drifting across the water, one gets the feeling of entering a lost world. It's as though you have tumbled into the past to wander the humid swamps the dinosaurs called home. The cypress trees are the ancient guardians of the swamplands. It is they who hold the secrets of our ancestors and you can feel that energy radiating throughout your core. It is an energy that gives much but it must be respected because the swamps are no place to forget that Mother Nature is in control of our destinies.

I have wandered down to Louisiana numerous times and I can always feel an older, stronger energy to the land. It is a realm that is saturated with history and marinating in archaic mysteries. It's not just Voodoo that senses the powers at work in the swamp lands. Anyone sensitive to metaphysical energy can feel it hang in the air like the warm humidity of the environment. Each time that I visit, there is an energy to the place that reminds me of the heart of Africa. It is like recognizing an old friend from my days living in West Africa. It is a place that transfixes me, which is what keeps me coming back year after year. It you want to experience some powerful energy while taking in some of the oldest and most spectacular nature and history in America, you must visit Louisiana.

~The Green Man has Spoken~

New Mexico: Land of Enchantments.

Following the trail of time, we arrived for a week's stay in the enchanted lands known as, "New Mexico" (also known as Nuevo Mexico). Our wander lust eventually led us to the ancient city of Taos Pueblo. There, we met the past; a timeless culture that defies the laws of mortals and dances near the threshold of immortality. The Taos Pueblo people have been continuously inhabiting this land since the year 1,000 CE. The energy of all those ages envelopes you upon falling under the shadow of the buildings. And, if your senses are alert, you can hear the walls speak to you of wisdom that was nearly sacrificed upon the altar of "progress."

As I curiously explored the wandering alleyways, a sense of belonging and peace washed over me; almost as if I had returned to visit family after being lost in time. There was indeed an energy that felt reassuringly familiar in that isolated but vibrant mud-walled village. Vibrant visions, dreams and shamanic interaction have often reveled to me previous lives lived as a Native American.

The sacred nature of Taos Publo was so impressively all-encompassing that I removed my hat upon entering any of the dwellings; just as I would in any religious temple or shrine. It was spiritually refreshing to have the privilege of exploring a sacred refuge built with the purity and fertility of Mother Earth's own fertile ground. Their respect for Mother Nature is such that every building in their town is a monument to her. It is a simple but powerful tradition of living in accordance with Mother Nature, rather than against her. This kind of humility toward nature is even more precious today since modern humanity has foolishly squandered and exploited our Mother's gifts.

~The Green Man has Spoken~

John Muir: Attached to the Rest of the World.

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." -naturalist, John Muir

John Muir was a tireless defender of Mother Nature, Mystic of the Woods, and Advocate for the preservation of our Sacred Temples of Earth. As with a shaman, Muir survived a brush with bodily harm, which beckoned him to a higher calling of the spirit. After a sawmill accident nearly left him blind, John received a revelation, "he saw the world—and his purpose—in a new light," wrote author, Amy Marquis in her book, "A Mountain Calling."



John Muir recalled, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." According to biographer Donald Worster's book, "Passion of Nature," he saw that purpose to be, "saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism." Thus, disillusioned by the addiction to materialism that belched forth during the Industrial Revolution, Muir disappeared into the woods to be embrace Mother Nature's spirituality. To many in that era, the idea that nature was spiritually on par with "God" was heresy. At the time, unlike past eras, much of Christianity saw nature as something to be tamed and exploited. It was a careless attitude that stemmed in large part from a ego-distorted view of the Biblical verse granting humanity dominion over the Earth.



As he wandered the land, John Muir stood at the feet of the cathedrals of nature and proclaimed that no temple made by the hand of man could compare to those within the environment. As he explored further, Mother Nature opened up and revealed a realm of such complexity, grandeur and interaction that Muir was understandably humbled. It was dramatically clear to him that humanity was but one spoke in a giant wheel of environmental interdependence and not its master. Mother Nature spoke to him through the whispering pines and the singing rivers that these natural sanctuaries could heal the wounds of the world. It was a world that was poisoning itself with urban pollution, dehumanized by rampant greed and spiritually lost.



Yet, the magic of these natural worlds were quickly disappearing within the so-called jaws of "industrial progress" and John Muir understood what was to be done. He hoisted the banner of Mother Nature and beckoned a war-weary country to be healed by her powers; and the people came. He extolled the virtues of the land and guests to those temples left converted protectors of those rediscovered treasures of Earth. I guess you could say that John Muir was the Savior of the American Wilderness. May we honor the gift he has given us by passing on his wisdom to future generations.

~The Green Man has Spoken~

The Sacred Pines.

Having been raised in the alpine region of Colorado, USA and spending countless hours camping or backpacking within the vast pine forests here, I have grown very fond of those trees. In European nature based spirituality, the pine trees are symbols of immortality. This makes sense given they survive year round. They never experience the mass loss of leaves like deciduous tree leaves that shrivel up and blow away, which is otherwise quite the visual portrayal of death.

Years of backpacking have taught me how to live as close to nature as possible living my the principle of "Leave the land how you found it." The sacred pine tree offers the initiate an infinite number of useful tools in the wilderness. The most essential thing to accomplish when first backpacking in the deep wilderness is to get your shelter up. You might be hungry but the weather can turn from 78 degrees to 45 degrees really quick at high altitude. Or you can easily be enjoying the blissful rays of the sun god before minutes later the rain gods empty the sky as though someone tore a gash in the sky. Besides, most tent shelters these days come with a small vestibule to cook under with a backpacking stove when Mother Nature decides to storm about in unpredictable turmoil. The last thing you want up in the alpine is to caught out in a chilling storm without shelter.

In preparing my shelter I often sweep the ground area to be used with a pine branch--the bunches of needles splitting off from the branch are great for using as a broom. Then I discover in my researching of old, dusty, websites online that pine was often used to sanctify outdoor ritual areas by sweeping the ground clean. Interesting. Yeah, I always had a feeling when I swept the ground clear for a camp site that I was making a grounding, spiritual gesture with the Earth. Especially with the strong, fresh, cold, cleansing smell it emits, like an incense offering wafting through a contemplative spiritual gathering. I'm going to remember this the next time I go backpacking. It will mean even more after learning additional information about the sacred connections.Whole, dense, forest of pine trees sway in patterns at times like waves. An ocean of eternal green. At other times the vast stands of trees seem like a city of green skyscrapers. Yet always, a stoic and often silent army of the animal and plant communities of the labyrinth style forest floor. Haunted by the grey ghost that is the mysterious and elusive lynx--my favorite species of cat with whom I feel a strong connection to. If I could morph into cat form it would be the lynx. The pine forest is a netherworld of secrets, wisdom and mystery--and the lynx is the recluse of that world.May the scared pines remain dense and strong, so that they will reveal their secrets of life to the next generation, and further still down the rabbit hole of the future. Hail the great pines!! Respect.

Thanks, but I'm Just Passing Through.

Though I walk amongst them I am a visitor to this world of the humans--at least that's how I often feel. I can't relate much to the people around me because they're not on my level and it's frustrating to have to live amongst beings who seem to do everything in their power to destroy this world. I feel like I'm a visitor from a further evolved world that is stuck having to live with peoples' ideologies that were long-ago abandoned by the evolved civilizations in the vast, mysterious Universe. It often feels like I was kidnapped in another dimension, brainwashed, cursed and shipped off to be stuck on this world of backwater humans. Forced to spend the rest of this existence as an adult living amongst kindergarten or primary school level beings. I don't mean to sound condescending, it's just that I feel so completely different than where most of humanity is on the the deeper things in life.

I didn't plan it this way but in nearly every aspect of my life I don't fit in with the greater society. I live in America, which is a country that is traditionally conservative--I'm as liberal as they come. I live in a country that is predominately Christian--I'm not. I live in a part of the world that rejects the arts, which is where my talents lie. I honor nature and understand the importance of protecting it, yet I live amongst environmental cannibals. They are like parasites that shed anything green, swallow it into the belly of materialism and shit out black, acrid smoke. I have a rare, severe mental illness called schizoaffective disorder in a society that shuns, hides and ignores people like myself. I'm a sensitive male who isn't afraid of expressing emotions and celebrating my feminine side in a society that finds that kind of male behavior to be defective and something to be mocked.

I feel like a stranger in my own species, and people wonder why I like being alone and spending so much time amongst nature. Nature isn't difficult to understand--nature doesn't reject anyone. Nature doesn't ask questions nor condemn you. As long as you can live in harmony with her, she will care for you. And while nature can through you some real difficulties at least she does so without making it personal. I can't think of a more natural death then having it occur out in the wild. Let the animals live off my carcass--It would be my last gift to the cycle of life.

PHOTO: Painting from one of my favorite artists, surrealist Salvador Dali. Titled, "Geopolitical Child Watching the Birth of the new man, 1943.

~The Green Man has Spoken~