{"id":5531,"date":"2016-09-04T09:56:43","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T16:56:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atheopaganism.wordpress.com\/?p=5531"},"modified":"2026-11-02T05:01:06","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T05:01:06","slug":"mythology-the-guardian-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/mythology-the-guardian-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"Mythology: The Guardian Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is another in my series of mythological stories about Sonoma County (see “Storytelling and the Mythic Landscape”<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

What if this happened, long ago?<\/p>\n

Now, everyone knows that the Sacred\u00a0Earth gives birth to all of us, and takes us back into itself\u00a0and makes new creatures when we die.\u00a0 This is the way of Life: \u00a0those whose time has come are eaten to sustain the living, and when our time comes, we get eaten, too.\u00a0 But what some people don’t<\/em>\u00a0 know is that the Earth does the same thing with the very lands themselves, like our Sonoma.\u00a0 When their time is done, they, too, go back into the ocean, the source of all Life, and new lands arise\u00a0from the ocean and have their time to live and thrive and create.\u00a0 Now, this all takes a very long time, of course, and we will all be long gone by the time our Sonoma returns to the ocean, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.\u00a0 The Earth is patient.<\/p>\n

And as anyone who has been on a hunting trip or seen a cat catching a mouse also knows, it is the way of the living to try to keep living until they are old.\u00a0 This is why it is important, when you take some wood from a tree or berries from a bush, to thank it and tell it why you need it.\u00a0 And never to take more than you need.<\/p>\n

It’s the same with our Sacred\u00a0Sonoma.\u00a0 When she was new and green, already the ocean began to claw against her\u00a0edges, pulling her body back down into the Great Ocean\u00a0where life begins and new dreams are always taking shape.\u00a0 But Sonoma wanted to live, and to have her time to dream and create.\u00a0 And because she was blessed enough to live very near the source of all life, she was also endangered by its hunger.<\/p>\n

One of the Animal People\u00a0that was there was Red-tailed Hawk.\u00a0 He swept far over the skies above Sonoma, and a red feather from his tail fell into her hands.\u00a0 Sonoma took the feather and planted it in the earth on the cliffs above the ocean.\u00a0 The feather grew into an enormous tree, a warrior tree, and the tree breathed a fog that covered the beaches all along Sonoma’s flanks until she was hidden, and the ocean couldn’t find her.\u00a0\u00a0 And that tree grew old and thick, and had daughters who circled around her to protect her when she was old, so that even after that first guardian tree was gone, you can still see the daughter trees standing in a ring.<\/p>\n

They had so many children that all the cliffs along Sonoma’s flanks were covered, and they all breathed fog.\u00a0 Only when the wind came and opened the fog a little, or when the day was so hot that the guardian trees could breathe no fog, could the ocean find Sonoma and start to take Her back into the great ocean’s\u00a0womb.\u00a0 So she is going, but very slowly.\u00a0 And this is why the redwood trees are the protectors of Sonoma, and why she is still here today to give us Her many blessings.<\/p>\n

You can still see the color of Hawk’s tail feather if you peel off the bark a little.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is another in my series of mythological stories about Sonoma County (see “Storytelling and the Mythic Landscape”.) What if this happened, long ago? Now, everyone knows that the Sacred\u00a0Earth gives birth to all of us, and takes us back into itself\u00a0and makes new creatures when we die.\u00a0 This is the way of Life: \u00a0those whose time has come are eaten to sustain the living, and when our time comes, we get eaten, too.\u00a0 But what some people don’t\u00a0 know is that the Earth does the same thing with the very lands themselves, like our Sonoma.\u00a0 When their time is done, they, too, go back into the ocean, the source of all Life, and new lands arise\u00a0from the ocean and have their time to live and thrive and create.\u00a0 Now, this all takes a very long time, of course, and we will all be long gone by the time our Sonoma returns to the ocean, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.\u00a0 The Earth is patient. And as anyone who has been on a hunting trip or seen a cat catching a mouse also knows, it is the way of the living to try to keep living until they are old.\u00a0 This is why it is important, when you take some wood from a tree or berries from a bush, to thank it and tell it why you need it.\u00a0 And never to take more than you need. It’s the same with our Sacred\u00a0Sonoma.\u00a0 When she was new and green, already the ocean began to claw against her\u00a0edges, pulling her body back down into the Great Ocean\u00a0where life begins and new dreams are always taking shape.\u00a0 But Sonoma wanted to live, and to have her time to dream and create.\u00a0 And because she was blessed enough to live very near the source of all life, she was also endangered by its hunger. One of the Animal People\u00a0that was there was Red-tailed Hawk.\u00a0 He swept far over the skies above Sonoma, and a red feather from his tail fell into her hands.\u00a0 Sonoma took the feather and planted it in the earth on the cliffs above the ocean.\u00a0 The feather grew into an enormous tree, a warrior tree, and the tree breathed a fog that covered the beaches all along Sonoma’s flanks until she was hidden, and the ocean couldn’t find her.\u00a0\u00a0 And that tree grew old and thick, and had daughters who circled around her to protect her when she was old, so that even after that first guardian tree was gone, you can still see the daughter trees standing in a ring. They had so many children that all the cliffs along Sonoma’s flanks were covered, and they all breathed fog.\u00a0 Only when the wind came and opened the fog a little, or when the day was so hot that the guardian trees could breathe no fog, could the ocean find Sonoma and start to take Her back into the great ocean’s\u00a0womb.\u00a0 So she is going, but very slowly.\u00a0 And this is why the redwood trees are the protectors of Sonoma, and why she is still here today to give us Her many blessings. You can still see the color of Hawk’s tail feather if you peel off the bark a little.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5531"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22829,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531\/revisions\/22829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mgreen.atheopaganism.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}