ELIZA'S FOREVER TREES:
Where has mother gone? Mothers don't leave. Mothers stay, forever. Mothers are like redwood trees, those special forever trees that grow hundreds of feet high and live for thousands of years. Mothers read storybooks aloud. They know the power of a story. Power that can even make the wrong-beats of a child's heart go away.
Maybe the monarch butterfly was right? Perhaps they should make the journey. The one that was too long, and too far, for a girl with a wrong-beating heart. Yet there was someone in the redwood forest that Eliza just knew could help. Not just any someone. Another mother. The first mother. The one, Eliza's own mother had spoken of. Great Mother Redwood. The very first, the oldest and wisest redwood tree of them all. She, who started the forest thousands of years ago, might know where mother had gone. It seemed impossible. To find one who had never been seen, one who had only been spoken of? Yet. Mothers dont leave. They are like redwood trees. They stay, forever.
Eliza decided she must try. She would put one foot in front of the other, slowly. She would take small steps. She knew the butterfly would be patient alongside her. Down the path. To the forever trees.
To find Great Mother Redwood.
~
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
My ten year old daughter and I often hike through the redwood forest which is just outside our home, here in Northern California. One of our favorite spots in the forest is a magical occurrence called a redwood fairy ring. Mother redwood reproduces by throwing off roots, sprouts, burls from her body. Child-redwoods form a circle around her, they are her, created from her very body. The children are as ancient as the original mother. This ring of trees is said to have a very powerful energy and magic. And I can certainly declare that when Maddie and I sit inside a fairy ring...we definitely can feel it.
With Love,
Stephanie Lisa Tara
San Francisco
June 2011
~
SCIENTIFIC NOTE:
Albino Redwood Trees
At first sight, you may not quite believe your eyes. From a distance, these trees look like young redwoods flecked with snow or frost. But as you get closer, you realize that the tree itself is white. These white redwood trees are rare albinos, also called ghost trees. One of the biggest, a thirty-foot tree that is one of the easier specimens to find, is called the Christmas Tree. It's also one of the prettiest. Like albino animals, albino redwoods do not have pigmentation, so their needles are white, not green. About fifty albino redwoods are believed to exist. They range from trees that resemble little clumps to ones that are seventy feet tall. There are six albinos in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, in the Redwood Empire on the Northern California coast.
