Forest Keepers

My mother once told me an ancient story about a tree so big that to look at the highest point of fit, it’s as if you’re looking right into the sky above your head. It’s also very wide, sturdy, as if the greatest earthquake can never do any harm to it. The thing is, this ancient tree has an actual beating heart, a gigantic heart that the thumping can be heard from miles and miles away, like a steady eternal drum hymn that can actually be the faeries that live inside the tree, but we never know. You can see the pulse carry itself from the center of the tree to the grey branches, roots, and until it reaches the tip of the grey leaves. A pulse so powerful, that you can actually see the power that lights the vein in every beat of the heart, the contrast of the pulse and the grey colored skin of the tree. The veins look so fragile, so thin, but it roots itself strongly on the thick grey skin of the tree, the branches, even the grey leaves, and it shines dimly but with every beat of the heart, the power it carries make the veins shine a hundred times more brightly.

Some say the heart has lived longer than the tree, my Grandmother told my Mother that the heart was once belonged to an Earth God. They say that the pulse carries something more than an energy, it can actually be the essence of life itself. Many tried to harm the tree, to take the pulse of life to save loved one from death, but the tree is not something that you can steal from, and of course, death is not something you can escape from. My Grand Grand Grandmother, who is the first shaman of our tribe believed that the pulse of the heart carries the life of Earth, so basically the tree is the beating heart of the Earth.

So, why did the Earth God cursed himself to an eternal life as a tree? That’s a mystery that no one can ever solved. Still, so many people make up ridiculous stories of the eternal damnation of a God. Something like, the Earth God had a fight with the God of the Forest and as a result he was turned into a gigantic tree, which is ridiculous because the God of the Forest is only a minor god compared to the Earth God, so the rumor died out like everything else along the way. And our tribe is still here, living just outside the deep forest that holds the roots of the Tree, but we still don’t know how the Tree works, all we can do is pray in the face of the Tree.

Secluded as we are, meaning the tribe, I am more secluded than any of them. From the first parents of our tribe, our family has been chosen to bear the heavy duty as the forest keeper. We have been living inside the forest since the first generation of the family, secluded to the rest of our tribe just outside of the forest. No one in our tribe actually likes to go deep into the forest because, well, for a gigantic tree to live in a forest, then the forest has to actually be more gigantic than the Tree. Now you know the idea, and that’s where we, the forest keepers, come in. We guard the life of the forest and we keep the Tree sacred from any harm.

For a tree to hold so many power and life, the hard challenges come in something like the hunters, the scientist, the civilised people whose life is empty and far from the magic of the earth. They build planes, aircraft, cars, and boats, but for what? For living a better life? The Tree carries life, the living essence itself more than you or me, or any human being. It’s standing there, really still, strong, silent, but it’s living, it’s alive. So being alive doesn’t have to mean that we have to build, invent, study, and make more and more advanced technology, it’s as if we don’t have enough of that. To be alive means to give and give and give without asking for anything in return, just like the Tree.

The Tree keeps everything around it alive, the animals, the plants, the insects, the forest faeries and guardians, and the human beings, like us. So whenever we take something from the forest, like water, seeds, plants, and animals to make food, we also give our thanks. There’s a mantra that has been passed down to generation after generation of forest keepers. Simus grati, humiles sumus, revertamur quae post vitam accipere. It’s a prayer actually, it says, “thankful as we are, humble as we are, we return what we take in the after life.” It means someday we give back everything we take from earth after our death. After the death, our soul is for the earth’s heart to take, to keep it alive, to keep the heart beating.