Captured

Three Ravens, Three Trees, Three Fingers the Stump and the Three Headed Dog

English Forest - Yew Tree

Last summer on a pre-dawn run, I was greeted by three ravens landing and lining up in sequence on a fence, according to size, as I ran by. They eyed me intensely from their perches, gleaming black wings flapping. An unusual encounter and the first close interaction with the ravens in the park. Unsettled, I kept running, intrigued by their odd behaviour. What was going on? I had a foreboding.

A few months after the raven encounter, I received distressing news from my only sister, her cancer had returned, a serious turn of events involving a twelve-year battle with the disease. Our family entered a dark time, the possibility of death a common theme also reflected in world events. For six months family and friends occupied a surreal zone of hopeful remediation; nevertheless, early this year she chose to enter hospice. I flew to California to be with her, as I had promised her, in this eventuality, many years before.

Communicating, creating art, writing, and connecting on socials felt trite. None of those activities remotely as important as the departure of my oldest friend, soul twin, my first partner in exploring the wild magic of the world. Only music provided some relief, allowing me to enter a wave-like stream of consciousness and disappear, connecting with the sonic flow of life. My sister and I loved to dance, music a common language, and so I dived into music creation, immersing in sound.

Redwood Woman

Dancing and nature her life breath, she spent her last years working steadily in the forests of the Coastal Redwoods of California, felling trees, naming others, clearing, and burning brush, and creating new paths named after family members, as our maternal grandparents did on their property many years before. Love of forests resided in our genes, our paternal grandparents hailed from the same area, my grandmother growing up in one of the older redwood groves; now a State Park full of majestic trees named after friends and family. Sometimes working solo or with others for the benefit of the land; the forest was my sister’s go-to earth place of beauty and peace and held years of family memories. A ritual of waking at dawn to watch the sunrise over the trees, the smell of strong coffee brewing, grabbing cups and walking the trails before breakfast echoed routines from years past. We reviewed old roads and newly cleared areas, discussing tree health, excited about the next beautification project but also dismayed at the number of trees infected with sudden oak death.

At times I wanted to move, and we considered the future as two old forest crones: scaring the hell out of young hikers with our bonfires, saws, shovels, and aging wrinkled beauty. As night fell, we soaked naked in the jacuzzi under bright stars, commenting on the play of coloured lights on the ‘Seven Dwarves’ - seven redwood friends each with a name and lit up respectfully, guarding the magical clearing at the centre of the property first visited over fifty years earlier. Discussing the possibilities of Sasquatch presence and listening to the scream of a mountain lion down the road, reminded us to be cautious and the creeping feeling of being watched often ended with a quick retreat to the comfort of the cabin. A wild land, with steep ravines, and empty of people all the way down to the coast, one corner kisses the San Andreas Fault. She named a trail for me, and I created a picture of her as a tree person, symbolising her dedication to the health and beauty of this forest. My sister was lovely and incredibly strong, the picture was strange, but she liked it. It was wood-like and dark, like some of the land.

Forest Guardian

A few hours from the towering evergreens three huge Modesto Ash trees stood in front of my mother’s house in a small Northern Californian town. Planted in the 60’s when the house was built, my sis and I could see them from our bedroom windows, a symbolic representation of us three, as my dad left for another residence and wife in a haze of sixties rebellion and exploration. In July, my mother asked the city tree department to prune them, but they never responded. So, there I was eight months later, sitting by my sister’s bed in her final days when the tree crew, out of the blue, arrived. I went outside to talk to the foreman. He motioned to one tree and said, “this one is diseased, the internal structure is broken, and it could fall, I think we should take it out”. My mother had previously decided it needed to be removed for safety reasons, so she agreed.

I sat by sister’s bed as she slept and when she regained consciousness explained to her that she would feel right at home with the sound of chainsaws and a chipper outside, machinery she worked with frequently. A beautiful glass medallion of the Tree of Life hung from the window above her – sparkling, catching the sun, she smiled, drowsy from painkillers, and listened to the buzzing of saws. I went outside to watch the felling of the tree. I felt it symbolised her, this transition tree, with cancer now in her bones, we were in the end days, and the tree spirit would accompany her on her next journey. She left us the next morning with the sun on her face and her favourite song, ‘Morning Sun’ by Jesse Colin Young playing. And now there are two trees in front of the house standing for my mum and I, and a white rose for my sister by the stump. The wheel of life and death turns, and the cycle is reborn in our children and grandchildren. We are of nature and no one more so than her.

But there was more, a total of three family members journeyed to the other side during the first half of 2024: my only sister, then three weeks after - my step-aunt (my age thus a ‘stepsister’), and in early summer, my maternal aunt. The number three … I thought, a strange unwelcome theme.

Cerberus and Hercules

Intrigued by numerous dreams of her communicating, I wondered if I could cross the nebulous, shadowy, liquid emptiness of the river Styx to contact her, riding the ferry to the other side to say goodbye. Named after a boat, a friend of hounds, and unafraid of snakes, I had no problem imaging travelling on etheric water, guarded by Cerberus, the three headed, snake adorned dog. Unlike Hercules, I wouldn’t use a club to capture the hound, but tasty morsels, traversing the sacred Milky Way path to the stars and back, maintaining communication through an intricate web of empathy and disengagement from tasks and superficial relationships on the living side. During our lives my sis and I developed a honed telepathic ability, and in dreams she felt alive … real … like she was attempting to notify me she was still present -somewhere. Perusing our library here in the UK, I coincidentally found several fascinating books from the early 1900’s about Spiritualism and well documented sessions of contacting the dead. In dreams she was young, cancer free and appeared to be having quite a time. WTF? I was glad. More odd occurrences experienced by several of us, pointed to something mysterious beyond the veil. Connecting to the Underworld is a gift.

During the following months, I had repeated unusual encounters with ravens and other animals (and an unusual number of dead animals), so now, on each run, I leave three hazelnuts in the forest harvested from our trees the year she died. A beautiful white dove rose in flight before me on a run before my aunt passed, and two days later I found it lying dead, whole and unblemished on the same running path. This Samhain as I wrote this essay, I encountered Common Bonnets (rosy-gill fairy helmets) on my gifting stump, after having placed three hazelnuts there two days earlier. Mushroom hunting was one of the last pastimes we participated in as a family. The world is much more magical and connected than some realise.

Mushroom Love

On my sister’s birthday this autumn, my partner and I visited the forest above our tiny UK town. After a lovely walk we sat down on a bench, watching low moving clouds and above them, higher silver white clouds, through the clouds a hole bursting with sun rays and the sparkling blue sky. I said, “that’s where she is now, she’s up there looking down”. I tearfully finished the sentence and the alarm on my mobile phone in my pocket went off. I hadn’t bumped it or set it; shocked, at first thinking it was my partners. I looked at the alarm time which read 2:00 – which was not the time, nor the time any previous alarm had been set. As we walked to the car through the forest, I felt her walking with us as we did hundreds of times in ‘real life’. Yes, I thought later, are only two ‘trees’ now from our first family; me, and my mum.

I have great affinity for capturing trees in their elemental state in art and photography. Trees are family friends and I imagine they also mourn my sister, in a tree way, as she worked tirelessly for their benefit and survival. A few years ago, hiking in the UK forest here, I saw a tree that reminded me of an old redwood stump my grandparents named ‘Three Fingers’ which stood proudly on the side of the dirt road to their cabin, and it occurred to me that the older family members could ‘meet’ at ‘Three Fingers’ when we passed over, convening at the one tree personality we affectionately remember. At the time, I told my sis and she ‘got it’ and perhaps when I leave this life she will be waiting at that astral stump, with our grandparents and those who have gone before, and we will drink the sweet water out of old tin cans from the heavenly spring and catch salamanders and tadpoles in the stream; smiling at the echoes of childhood laughter and delighting at the magic and beauty of the redwood forest and the creatures who call it home. ‘La te da’ grandpa will say punctuated, by his parrot Chief screaming ‘Cazadero’, while grandma checks us for astral ticks. My cousins, who lost their mum as well, may join us, with our shared happy memories of the Northern Californian coast, primitive and devoid of people. A time when we explored the wilderness with excited abandon, soul-kin to the deer eating apples from the orchard above the cabin, to the bear and boar roaming freely, and the snakes hissing and shaking their rattles by the porch.

And so, to accompany the top picture I wrote:

The hidden interplay of light in a forest - a distillation of gold and green, blues. 
Earth and dawn - what is beauty? 
A moment in time, an upwelling from a secret source, a natural alchemy. 
Captured, resonant, alive. 
An offering to the soul - redemption, peace - eternal. 

My sister captured by death, resonant and alive on the other side whispering to us through the creaking forest, the wind in trees, in the far call of the seals, the play of a sunbeam, the twinkling of stars and the cawing of ravens. ‘Cherrrrieeeee’ she calls, playfully taunting me from the heavens, and I just cry.

Forest Walk

*A thank you to the many friends and family who accompanied us on this difficult journey, who came and visited regularly, helped with treatments and hospital visits, prayed for her, sent flowers and food, and supported us. A special mention to YoloCares for their incredible hospice support & her end of life carer and angel - Solame Waqatairewa.