Voices

My first unusual experience with a plant occurred when I was a baby. I had been set upon a blanket and left in the summer sun. Above me a large sunflower bowed her head. As I gazed up at the disk it suddenly began to expand growing larger and larger and then shrunk again, over and over. What I remember best is that it seemed to be pulsing both inside and outside me at once..
 
I don’t remember when I started to talk to plants but I was gathering flowers as a toddler. By the time I reached adolescence I knew that my love for plants was reciprocated; but I certainly couldn’t talk about this intimacy because high school science taught me that these relationships didn’t even exist. Secretly, I reached the conclusion that I must be crazy.

​It wasn’t until my late thirties that I began to hear tree and plant voices. They either spoke to me through dreams or through that same peculiar physical sensing or feeling/sense that seemed to come from inside and outside me at the same time. When they began uttering a simple word or phrase in response to questions I was thinking about or asking I was non – pulsed, dis-believing.
 
I rarely understood what the plants were trying to tell me. Trees were the exception; they told me in dreams (and through my physical senses by that peculiar pulsing) that because of humans whole forests were dying. I was also warned that the animals were going to disappear for good. These dreams and thoughts terrified me and I kept them to myself.
 
 And then one day almost 40 years ago I became a plant. The dream seemed so utterly fantastic that I never forgot it:
 
I was a beautiful green vine that hugged the earth even as I crept along the ground; my tendrils seemed to be directing my movement along the forest floor but I had no idea what kind of plant I was or where I might be going.
 
By mid-life I was still dreaming catastrophic dreams about dying trees plants and animals but I had become a writer and began to advocate for nature in a creative way, an endeavor I continue today. Writing grounded me in my body and helped me to believe that someone might be listening. Maybe I could help the animals and plants survive?
 
I received a grant to study medicine plants with local healers in Peru on one of the tributaries of the Amazon (I had become an herbalist early in my adult life), and two nights before my departure I dreamed a second vine dream:
 
 I was the emerald green vine hugging the ground as I moved only this time each of my leaves had huge eyes that were combing the forest floor.  
 
 During the course of these trips (I made three in all)  the healers “saw” that I was seer, someone who could read the future. Their recognition stunned me, especially since I didn’t really believe it myself. I eventually gained enough confidence to ask my teachers what the vine dreams might be trying to convey to me. Each healer told me I needed to take Ayahuasca to find out. Dismay overwhelmed me. Two early experiences with marijuana had resulted in my having hallucinations in safe places. Here, I was alone in the jungle of Peru. I backed out.
 
A few months after my return to the states my neighbor gave me a passionflower cutting. I was thrilled! I had seen so many passionflower vines cascading over the river intertwined with a fantastic forest of trees and shrubbery. I kept passionflowers in my room in Peru and attempted to bring one home but the cutting froze en route.
 
There was something about the vine with its spiral tendrils that pulled me into a deeper relationship than I had previously experienced with any plant – or at least I was more aware of the strength of this particular relationship between the plant and myself. Some mornings I watched my passionflower climb through thin air her tendrils waving as she stretched towards the light. During these times it almost seemed to me that we shared a single mind. She moved almost imperceptibly and I would slip into a light trance to breathe with her as she crept along a ledge or window.
 
By the time I arrived in the desert I had a daughter plant and both mother and daughter vines came with me. I gave one away to a friend, and then the other one lost leaf after leaf, lingered, and finally died ‘inexplicably.’ During this period I was also in personal crisis and eventually became ill. It was impossible to escape the sense that this vine and I shared not only a mind but also a body.
 
 I took a cutting from the “mother plant” and it rooted. Passionflowers re – entered my life and I was profoundly relieved. Now I understand the meanings of the dreams I had long ago. I am a passionflower woman who must keep her ear to the ground! I notice that although I love the flowers, that these days, it’s the presence of the vine that is so important to me, or so I thought until this summer when my passionflower put out so many blossoms at once that I was bewildered. This pattern is still occurring after a three - month continuous bloom. I talk to my plant every day telling her I love her even as I bring in blossoms to scent the cabin in citrus… Traveling back and forth from NM to ME twice a year has resulted in me leaving almost blooming plants behind until this summer. I truly believe my passionflower wants me to enjoy all the flowers I missed, and I do!
 
The philosopher David Abrams talks about developing the grammar of animacy. What he means by this is that all living beings have a voice but that in our culture we have forgotten how to listen. I think when we allow nature to become the foreground it is then that she begins to speak, as my passionflower is doing right now through profuse flowering. However, when we relegate nature to the background of our lives she falls silent. Nature needs reciprocity in order to be heard. For me this is another way of saying that I have to keep my eyes, nose, all my senses open and my ear to the ground so I can continue to learn…