Missing Witches - You Are Beech Tree Kin：＂Each Branch Reaches to Other Branches As The Gail Rises.＂

00:00:00.000 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:06.540 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:11.460 This story begins in a dark place, but I promise it doesn't stay there. 0.64

00:00:21.040 There is a place on the turning of the wheel of the year that always feels more like death to me than autumn.

00:00:30.000 The decay of autumn hums with rot life, fungal life, the hot fuzz of compost.

00:00:37.800 But after the big celebrations around the solstice, we take the lights and paper decorations down and reality sets in.

00:00:47.000 The reality of warmongers, greedy profiteers, stolen elections, stolen children, stolen land, and up here a world sunk deeply under snow.

00:00:58.800 Not just snow

00:01:00.900 Ice

00:01:02.240 Hard, slippery, and dangerous

00:01:06.280 Ice nights where people go missing steps from their door

00:01:11.520 Ice that captures and disappears without warning

00:01:16.480 Without charges

00:01:18.600 Did you know that not all trees lose their leaves in winter?

00:01:25.520 I don't mean evergreens

00:01:27.440 I mean the decidedly deciduous, those glamour trees, green and frothy with new leaves in the

00:01:34.020 spring. There is a class of these kinds of trees who do not do as the others do and shed with ease.

00:01:43.740 In the woods I live by, in the death part of winter, I come across these, startling for the

00:01:50.700 sound they make, a dry shuffle commenting on the wind. I remember their name because of the sound

00:01:57.920 they make and always call them Speech Beach because they don't go quiet into that good night.

00:02:05.380 They hold on to their memories, their past lives, their dead, and these dry leaves keep them from

00:02:12.900 becoming voiceless. Hello, listener. Hello, speech beach kin. Hello to all who are haunted.

00:02:27.040 Welcome to the circle we make here in the dark between our ears.

00:02:31.660 A spell whispered into the roots of a beech tree is said to come true.

00:02:57.520 A curse spoken underneath beach boughs will be effective if the tree approves

00:03:04.800 A vow written on a beach leaf and buried can draw forth the support of the earth gods

00:03:12.520 I have what one might call a consent-based relationship with ghosts, gods, spirits

00:03:21.680 I need them to keep their distance

00:03:24.820 I have the kind of imagination that can see things too vividly, conjure ideas, feelings,

00:03:32.240 worlds between my ears and before my inner eyes with the slightest suggestion, and then feel the

00:03:38.140 whole feeling of the imagined thing till I am crying unconsolably. My mind can spill over,

00:03:45.340 take me over. I'm the kind to be too easily possessed.

00:03:50.620 there are different kinds of imagination my friend isabel can't see things when she closes her eyes

00:03:58.840 if you ask her to picture an apple she doesn't know what you mean but her jaw might move with

00:04:05.000 the act of biting through she might involuntarily wipe sweet juice from her face she feels but

00:04:13.420 doesn't see. Maybe you're like Isabel, or maybe you hear things clearly inside your mind, different

00:04:21.780 voices, different music. Maybe you see sketches of black and white. Maybe a whole forest of apple

00:04:29.980 trees bloom into being and take your breath away. Maybe it was being raised by mental health

00:04:37.920 professionals, but I've always sensed that if I'm not strict about boundaries, I could too easily

00:04:44.400 lose my mind to the idea of ghosts. I'm afraid if I let them or the imagination of them in,

00:04:53.240 I'll never sleep again. I'll lose my solitude, my inner self, my mental health.

00:04:59.480 so i tend to my ancestor altar laying flowers and baked goods and candy and booze and tea

00:05:08.180 before photos of my beloved dead look them in the eye and feel them around me but i keep a circle

00:05:17.120 of distance steady in my mind and invite them to come only so close only when i'm writing

00:05:23.800 I don't accept seeing or hearing them elsewhere

00:05:27.560 This is the place we can fuse or collaborate

00:05:32.620 Here, with each spurt of thought turned to gentle tapping

00:05:38.660 Manifesting in strings of light

00:05:42.600 Dark marks stored in light

00:05:46.740 In what might one day be printed on the bodies of trees

00:05:51.160 this is where i hear the rattling of the dry leaves kept lovingly close long after the green

00:05:57.680 quickness in them is gone this is where i send my prayers here and into the roots of trees

00:06:05.500 in beach trees this behavior of ghost keeping is called

00:06:17.420 marsessence. Biologists theorize that this behavior evolved in certain tree families

00:06:24.380 maybe as a means of protection. The leaves rattle and startle in the quiet winter woods

00:06:30.860 and scare off nervous deer who, starving, would pull off the bark of trees when no other sweeter

00:06:38.320 food is available, and in doing so damage the tree's thin defenses against insects and rot,

00:06:45.080 which can mean death come spring.

00:06:50.300 Beach can keep our dead close for protection.

00:07:08.600 They make us bigger and louder than we are on our own.

00:07:12.360 When we are skin and bones and out in the cold, we are not alone

00:07:18.140 In the wind we hold our arms up and our ancestors use the wind to speak

00:07:24.520 To cackle, to roar, to keep our own death at bay

00:07:30.080 While we stay and complete our turning of the wheel

00:07:34.040 Canadian Jasmine Moody, held by ice for two weeks 0.97

00:07:42.840 detained in a freezing concrete cell

00:07:45.660 because her visa was incomplete

00:07:47.560 wrote down the stories of the other women she met there

00:07:51.320 carried their letters to the media, to their families

00:07:54.580 none of the people she met had a criminal record

00:07:58.540 people just trying to make a life

00:08:01.980 disappeared and tormented without due process

00:08:05.220 by guards who didn't themselves know why,

00:08:09.700 didn't know what was going on,

00:08:12.900 knew what they saw and did was wrong.

00:08:19.340 I met a woman who had been on a road trip with her husband, wrote Moody.

00:08:24.080 She said they had 10-year work visas.

00:08:27.280 While driving near the San Diego border,

00:08:29.100 they mistakenly got into a lane leading to Mexico,

00:08:32.680 They stopped and told the agent they didn't have their passports on them,

00:08:36.060 expecting to be redirected.

00:08:38.380 Instead, they were detained.

00:08:40.740 They are both pastors.

00:08:43.100 I met a family of three who had been living in the U.S. for 11 years with work authorizations.

00:08:48.980 They paid taxes and were waiting for their green cards.

00:08:52.760 Every year, the mother had to undergo a background check,

00:08:55.620 but this time she was told to bring her whole family.

00:08:59.120 When they arrived, they were taken into custody.

00:09:01.980 and told their status would now be processed from within the detention center.

00:09:08.880 There was a girl from India who had overstayed her student visa for three days before heading back home.

00:09:15.140 She then came back to the U.S. on a new valid visa to finish her master's degree,

00:09:20.560 and was handed over to ICE due to the three days she had overstayed on her previous visa. 0.62

00:09:26.320 There were women who had been picked up off the street 0.77

00:09:30.600 From outside their workplaces 0.92

00:09:32.880 From inside their homes

00:09:35.500 All of these women told me that they had been detained

00:09:38.720 For time spans ranging from a few weeks to ten months

00:09:41.880 One woman's daughter was outside the detention center

00:09:46.900 Protesting for her release

00:09:49.740 Trust me, the very trees scream their fury at this and every injustice

00:09:58.060 They lend their voices and their strength to the incantation, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness

00:10:06.720 Justice, they whisper

00:10:10.040 Justice

00:10:19.740 Where others close off the veins of the sap of life, we don't let go so easily.

00:10:28.300 Witches, tree kin, beach people, we make a link of sweetness instead.

00:10:35.620 We hold on to each other, even the missing, even our ghosts, even the disappeared, and we get loud.

00:10:45.580 i know it's terrifying i read these things and feel the cold concrete against my skin

00:10:53.820 the trauma the inhumanity the walls closing in i know you do too there are so many layers of

00:11:02.260 cruelty happening all at once the goal is our numbness fear our submission but listen

00:11:08.660 listen to the leaves

00:11:12.720 the wind

00:11:13.860 the waves

00:11:15.320 the great pulse of life

00:11:17.660 humming through the air

00:11:18.940 the ground

00:11:19.800 and the gathering crowds

00:11:21.860 we are everywhere

00:11:34.720 we are everywhere

00:11:35.860 indigenous leaders

00:11:38.160 taught us to look for the medicine that shows up. Mr. Rogers 0.98

00:11:41.980 taught us to look for the helpers. The spiders that live with the

00:11:46.100 beech tree teach us to infiltrate and hide in plain sight.

00:11:50.400 They protect their eggs with two different colors of silk for

00:11:53.900 camouflage. Trees send you this breath

00:11:57.640 and the next with the message

00:12:01.920 we are everywhere.

00:12:03.380 everywhere. There are more of us who still remember empathy and love and care than there

00:12:13.100 are of them. Imagine. A layer of sap shining amber around you like a circle of protection.

00:12:26.340 Your past selves, your beloved dead, a rainbow of your distant friends.

00:12:31.180 stay close and whisper and roar only kin with your highest good in mind are permitted to come

00:12:38.620 close to you walk the circle of your body encase it in shining sweet hard sap with your mind

00:12:47.380 trace your body gently with your hands and know you extend beyond what you can feel

00:12:54.080 and everywhere you hum with past and present and future potential layered like so many green

00:13:01.600 seasons walk the circle of your space shake something that sounds like dry leaves brush

00:13:09.180 your hands together shake your hair sing rattle hum a song to all your protectors all your guides

00:13:17.180 all your most loving grandparents, all the 10,000 generations of survivors in your family lines,

00:13:25.160 tall trunks tending small seedlings, and the earth and her atmosphere above and below,

00:13:31.840 the living presence who sparkles through you with that flicker of caught lightning that is

00:13:36.980 signals cascading through neurons called action potentials, what neuroscientist Siddhartha

00:13:44.040 Ramakrishnan calls the fundamental energy of life. Feel into your kin and let them strengthen you.

00:13:59.480 This is the season of just a little more light. Spring is pages we flip past on a calendar.

00:14:07.600 The earth is under six feet of snowpack

00:14:11.480 We walk on the lake and my kid says we are walking on clouds

00:14:16.640 And she's right

00:14:18.000 The wind is material, is ice

00:14:22.340 Change is in the degree of light

00:14:26.360 Making mornings fill up with a hope longing

00:14:30.000 The idea of melting, if not the melt itself

00:14:34.100 enchantment is an unforgetting

00:14:37.920 after the season of death

00:14:41.120 is the season of soon now

00:14:42.740 but not yet

00:14:43.940 the underground is alive

00:14:47.580 you have to believe

00:14:50.260 and breathe

00:14:51.880 and wait

00:14:54.080 can you hear

00:14:59.320 that inland sea

00:15:02.700 It's slow explosion

00:15:06.200 It's slow explosion

00:15:11.140 When spring does come

00:15:13.780 and a new bud gently, adamantly makes a place for itself

00:15:18.820 and the dry leaves finally do fall

00:15:21.920 They offer nutrients to hungry, thawing soil

00:15:26.320 and create a protective layer around the base of the tree

00:15:30.220 so water won't evaporate as quickly

00:15:32.720 and fungi can grow and carry the messages of the fallen leaves

00:15:37.140 into communication pathways at the roots of the tree.

00:15:43.420 The tree is not a metaphor.

00:15:46.100 The tree predates us and the concept of metaphor by millions of years.

00:15:52.380 The beech tree is the genus phaggis, 0.98

00:15:55.380 the etymological origin of the word phag or faggot. 0.73

00:16:00.220 A bundle of beech branches wandered through time and became hate speech. 0.97

00:16:05.640 But it rests my heart a little to know that in their root words,

00:16:10.280 queer kids and singing ancient beech trees are kin. 0.90

00:16:15.100 The genus Phagus has an exceptionally complete fossil record.

00:16:20.140 They are record keepers dating back to the late early Eocene,

00:16:24.820 a period roughly 52 to 47.8 million years ago.

00:16:31.220 A time when the world was free of ice and covered in forests.

00:16:38.240 Eocene means new dawn and earns its name

00:16:41.540 because of all the new fauna that emerged at this time.

00:16:46.140 This period ends with mass extinction events

00:16:49.500 as the planet's climate changes and slips into ice.

00:16:54.820 Beaches remember all of this. 0.96

00:16:58.840 there is a common myth of binary sexuality being the norm in nature but this is like

00:17:23.060 deeply wildly untrue the diversity of sex identity in plants and animals is mind-blowingly diverse

00:17:31.920 beaches with their 50 million year old wisdom belie the lie of simple binary gender they are

00:17:40.500 both female and male in the same body and maybe that's why beach are both the queen of trees

00:17:47.740 and a tree god, guardian, named Phaggis, revered at a hilltop sanctuary in the high Pyrenees.

00:17:57.900 Beaches are monoecious, bearing both male and female flowers on the same plant.

00:18:05.620 How can you not love all this science, history, tree mythology?

00:18:11.100 Maybe it's the weird words that trigger anti-science anger in minds that know, in a secret place inside, that they are missing something.

00:18:22.540 Angry that they don't understand, that they weren't taught, that they struggle to have the time, focus, support to get to know.

00:18:31.800 The gap widens as fields radically specialize

00:18:35.540 and opens sharp caverns of danger between people,

00:18:40.000 especially in places with politicized education systems.

00:18:44.560 What the sciences have discovered,

00:18:46.780 each in their rapidly advancing domains,

00:18:49.660 digging deep into the earth, into language, into cells,

00:18:53.240 standing on shoulders of giants with long digital arms

00:18:56.280 and robot legs racing them forward,

00:18:58.460 gets harder for the uninitiated to wrap our minds around,

00:19:02.140 and millions of people get left behind in lead-painted, underfunded classrooms,

00:19:09.300 angry at the injustice of not getting to know to, to go to,

00:19:14.600 and that anger has to go somewhere.

00:19:17.720 The anger of the knowledge poor,

00:19:21.000 systematically disenfranchised from science and culture

00:19:24.400 and collective action requires our radical empathy,

00:19:28.460 but the people put in physical danger by that anger

00:19:33.280 deserve, by rights, the blazing heart of our protection.

00:19:38.200 Each person has a right to safety,

00:19:41.320 and when violence is threatened or enacted,

00:19:44.200 the victims have got to be kept at the very center and heart

00:19:48.400 of protection and of our revolutionary action,

00:19:52.500 and that's why we're loud about trans rights,

00:19:55.360 about indigenous women, about poverty, the rights of immigrants and refugees and people with

00:20:02.380 disabilities, and about the importance of teaching the history of slavery. The evidence is clear

00:20:10.820 violence disproportionately affects vulnerable populations such as women, children, lesbian,

00:20:18.520 gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and intersex individuals and those living in poverty.

00:20:25.360 It's not because we are woke.

00:20:28.040 It's because their lives are at stake. 0.78

00:20:31.960 And witches know about stakes. 0.99

00:20:35.300 And beaches know about becoming awake.

00:20:40.680 In the backflower remedies, spells for healing of a non-scientific kind,

00:20:47.080 beach is used against mental rigidity, fault-finding, intolerance, arrogance, and lack of sympathy.

00:20:56.360 Meditation with the beach helps us relax and let go of fixed ideas which hinders us and our development.

00:21:04.120 The tree will help us get in touch with our ancestors, their knowledge passed down through time and the deep wisdom within, which can help us see ways forward for the future.

00:21:16.220 beaches with their 50 million year old wisdom the lie the lie of simple binaries

00:21:24.540 even in the black white of winter their yellow leaves sing of something more they can hold

00:21:31.200 opposites and contradiction male and female life and death in their arms all winter long

00:21:38.660 beach's small flowers are unisexual the female flowers born in pairs the male flowers wind

00:21:48.360 pollinating catkins beach trees can pollinate themselves with the help of the wind maybe this

00:21:57.140 is part of why they keep their leaves to sing with their wind love until it's time for spring

00:22:02.500 beach males and females live together in one tree they don't just live together they are physically

00:22:11.560 one just as you and i are physically one on this being that is earth even though i know it's hard

00:22:21.560 to feel that tiny as we are and isolated in our busy working waking minds with our default mode

00:22:29.620 networks in high alert all the time. I can only see what I can see from here. I can only imagine

00:22:37.920 so far with the thought structures, symbols, dreams, and ideas I have accessed so far.

00:22:44.780 But out there, beyond the reach of all my roots and branches, everything I've read and experienced,

00:22:51.520 the web is vast. And beings are loving in myriad ways in order to keep life unfolding.

00:22:59.620 and my little life force is a part of that

00:23:03.260 and if anything is divine, it's that.

00:23:07.560 The limitless, cascading mesh of ongoing.

00:23:17.500 To be clear, I'm not a witch who is convinced about the sacred.

00:23:22.960 Call me animist agnostic most days.

00:23:26.180 there may be a god and it might be the lake

00:23:29.900 the trees, the song the wind makes

00:23:32.740 if you want to call anything divine

00:23:37.100 that's fine, but I don't mind if

00:23:40.160 instead, as theoretical cosmologist

00:23:43.040 Chanda Prescott Weinstein told

00:23:45.340 the co-host of the Medicine for Resistance podcast

00:23:48.860 Patty, that's just physics

00:23:51.600 seek the truth

00:23:54.760 believe in physics or tree gods

00:23:58.980 whatever you need in order to survive the turning of the wheel

00:24:02.000 so long as you are kind and harm none

00:24:05.580 so long as you are kind

00:24:09.320 and harm none

00:24:11.100 when you feel battered by the turning of the wheel 0.98

00:24:16.560 take our covenmate granny witch's advice 0.97

00:24:20.040 and come closer to the center 0.97

00:24:24.100 come away from the wild swinging spokes

00:24:27.860 the flailing branches

00:24:29.280 come home to the hub of all yourself

00:24:32.700 and sensing

00:24:33.980 the heartwood

00:24:36.000 strong as steel in the core of each tree

00:24:39.880 holding still while the universe spins around it

00:24:44.160 come back to center

00:24:47.640 where the spin's trajectory is smallest

00:24:51.100 Come back, calls the beach

00:24:54.580 And even the dead leaves carry her song

00:24:58.180 Beach gives wind speech

00:25:02.460 Beach gives wind speech

00:25:06.160 Beach gives wind speech

00:25:09.900 Beach gives wind speech

00:25:13.580 Beach gives wind speech

00:25:17.300 Last night I had a dream about my friend's son.

00:25:34.600 Today I received a card from them in which they wrote,

00:25:39.440 Heartwood to Sapwood, this long road I travel.

00:25:42.460 Time layered in scars

00:25:45.160 Intrusions barked over

00:25:47.340 All part of my armor

00:25:49.140 I won't make it easy

00:25:51.900 To cut me down

00:25:53.140 Trace all my seasons

00:25:55.640 Number my battles

00:25:57.340 My years of plenty

00:25:59.340 Those years

00:26:01.680 With so much love around me

00:26:03.340 I see clearly

00:26:05.480 Ahead of me

00:26:06.980 Each branch

00:26:10.180 Reaches to other branches

00:26:15.420 As the game rises

00:26:21.180 Each leaf dances with other leaves

00:26:30.560 As the storm crashes

00:26:35.640 last fall we walked along the wide sunny path through the forest on the far side of the little

00:26:44.400 lake where we live out here north of montreal on unceded anishinaabe territory

00:26:51.060 it was warm and the leaves had just begun to turn some crackled beneath our feet

00:26:59.200 our kiddo ran ahead and Mark and I walked slowly

00:27:03.260 I was still healing from my bilateral mastectomy

00:27:07.380 and turning the coming chemo days over in my mind all the time

00:27:11.560 feeling the fear of them

00:27:13.840 maybe trees feel winter coming

00:27:17.360 and the ice that will still their veins

00:27:20.340 and all the riotous life green and glamorous

00:27:23.300 along their limbs that will die

00:27:25.240 as they become slow inside

00:27:27.700 Chemo kills all your fast-moving cells

00:27:32.200 You slow, and it is a kind of winter

00:27:36.980 Anyway, we were walking along this autumn path

00:27:42.540 when something fell from a high height above us

00:27:45.400 and clunk crashed right at our feet

00:27:48.000 Mark bent to pick it up

00:27:53.260 and it was a large, heavy seed pod

00:27:55.760 covered in prickly spines, a beach net.

00:28:00.400 As we held it, passed it back and forth between us,

00:28:04.060 another hit the ground, paces away, and then another.

00:28:07.260 Were we under attack?

00:28:09.660 We looked up and saw a small red squirrel,

00:28:13.020 easily 60 feet above us,

00:28:15.460 diligently moving from branch to branch,

00:28:18.360 snipping stems, sending seed pods pounding to the forest floor below.

00:28:25.760 we moved a little ways away, noticing now the dozens, hundreds of spiny beech-nut pods along the path,

00:28:33.280 and watched the squirrel work at harvesting the bounty of this massed year.

00:28:39.860 It seemed manic, wasteful, to send so many nuts to the ground,

00:28:45.060 more than they could find and gather and hoard for the winter.

00:28:49.960 Squirrels leave caches everywhere and abandon them often.

00:28:52.860 in the days after the paths stayed thick with abandoned seed pods and we thought why don't

00:29:00.140 they maximize their profits why don't they strategize better and deputize some underlings

00:29:05.540 to work the path and arm them with tiny ak-47s to defend the piles also alternately why don't

00:29:14.340 they just take what they need and live in better sacred harmony why don't they listen to me i have

00:29:21.720 so many opinions. My ego painted itself all over the forest, and I felt a little ashamed.

00:29:34.720 J.K. Anderson writes, I will never comprehend a tree as a footpath like a squirrel can.

00:29:43.980 I can't understand the sky the way a vulture riding a thermal does.

00:29:48.540 i can't know what a pond is the way a musk turtle knows but i will sense the presence of these 0.96

00:29:56.800 hidden perspectives and feel grateful that my human ways of knowing the world do not hold a 0.52

00:30:02.660 monopoly on reality there's comfort in my certainty that the scope of natural perception

00:30:09.360 is not tethered to my own limitations perhaps it's worth imagining ourselves from the perspective

00:30:16.480 of squirrels. How brave we are to walk boldly across the ground in full view of hawks and

00:30:24.580 foxes. How impossibly giant. How remarkably long-lived. How magnificent it must feel to

00:30:34.500 be too heavy to be carried off by grasping talons and beating wings. We can all imagine

00:30:42.060 the biting words of make-believe critics. So we can also imagine the accolades of admiring

00:30:48.940 squirrels. We are, after all, storytellers. Make sure that some of the stories you tell yourself

00:30:56.820 are kind. A little further on in his heartbreaking, mending memoir,

00:31:05.640 Something in the Forest Loves You, Derrod continues, as with most invisible wonders,

00:31:11.700 the problem is that we don't take the time to notice,

00:31:15.040 to interrogate our typical viewpoints about squirrels.

00:31:19.040 If we don't willfully opt out,

00:31:21.520 we default to the standard stories of our culture.

00:31:25.840 Yes, they will empty your bird feeder.

00:31:28.980 They are also the most effective

00:31:30.920 and essential forest regenerators in North America,

00:31:35.480 compulsively burying nuts,

00:31:37.520 many of which they never retrieve.

00:31:39.760 Some assume this is an accident, but I doubt accident is the correct word for an ancient process

00:31:45.400 that expands forests and enriches species beyond count.

00:31:51.280 It's amazing what humans will dismiss as happenstance in the absence of an anthropocentric story of clear intention.

00:32:00.440 Some gray squirrels have been observed pretending to bury a nut if they think they are being observed.

00:32:06.720 A faint to fool would-be robbers.

00:32:10.180 They are one of a very few mammals that can climb down a tree headfirst.

00:32:15.380 They can live two decades, leap ten times their body length,

00:32:20.880 transform the landscape and ultimately the climate.

00:32:25.240 Yet few people will pause to give one a second look.

00:32:29.160 The relationship between squirrels and trees is harmonious in a way that is lovely to consider.

00:32:36.500 Instinctual gardeners living in their generational gardens.

00:32:41.060 In the dynamic of squirrels and trees, it's hard to say which is the shepherd and which is the flock.

00:32:48.960 There's a wonderful lesson in that.

00:32:52.280 Disparate creatures thoughtlessly caring for one another.

00:32:56.720 As natural as breathing.

00:32:59.740 End quote.

00:33:00.320 Beech trees are being herded north by squirrels and mice

00:33:09.400 Cardinals and blue jays

00:33:12.020 At rates of at least 200 to 300 meters per year

00:33:16.440 The bright birds and clever soft mammals

00:33:20.400 Are moving in a dance with tree flocks

00:33:22.980 Both shepherding, both tending

00:33:26.120 Both homesteading and home to each other

00:33:29.620 and to me, too.

00:33:32.900 It eases my mind in ice times

00:33:35.940 to remember that you are tended by flocks of trees.

00:33:41.440 Their knowledge works its way into everything you touch.

00:33:45.620 They offer you every breath

00:33:47.180 and they take as a gift your every exhalation.

00:33:52.420 Beach trees are in the beams of your house,

00:33:54.600 in your bookshelves,

00:33:56.180 and in the history of every book you've ever read.

00:33:59.620 Beaches are right at the heart of human knowledge.

00:34:02.720 They carried our first stories.

00:34:05.380 In many languages, the word for beach and book is the same.

00:34:10.200 The bark of the beech tree was used by Indo-European people for writing,

00:34:15.280 especially in a religious context,

00:34:18.700 before the development of paper.

00:34:21.180 Ancient texts describe beach tablets inscribed with runes.

00:34:27.300 The Old English bach has the primary sense of beach, but also a secondary sense of book,

00:34:34.380 and it is from bach that the modern word derives.

00:34:39.280 In modern German and Dutch, the word for book and beech tree are almost identical.

00:34:45.140 There is a similar relationship in Russian and Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene.

00:34:51.840 In Swedish, the words are the same.

00:34:56.360 Beaches speak and carry speech,

00:35:23.480 and know about how to make ideas material.

00:35:28.520 In their bodies, they carry the stories of the dead

00:35:31.520 and the quickness of the living.

00:35:35.180 Storykeepers, truth-tellers, we are beachkin.

00:35:40.160 Imagine yourself from the perspective of squirrels,

00:35:43.880 of trees.

00:35:46.020 Imagine how they love your bravery.

00:35:53.480 We watched the squirrel tend the beach flock in the fall, in the before chemo time, and now it's frozen spring and we are in the after chemo.

00:36:04.060 The pain has almost entirely left my legs and fingers.

00:36:09.460 I feel moments of pure euphoria at being alive no matter what, no matter how many body parts I must sacrifice on the altar of my survival.

00:36:20.940 I'm like the giving tree. 1.00

00:36:22.360 Take these breasts, branches, ovaries, womb, fuck it, I am alive. 1.00

00:36:28.320 Beach trees can regrow from stumps. 1.00

00:36:31.440 No matter how terrifying the greedy maw of oligarchs,

00:36:34.820 the would-be murderers of human empathy,

00:36:37.760 the anti-science, anti-care machines of dictators, 1.00

00:36:41.160 fuck you all, I am alive right now. 1.00

00:36:45.040 I rage with the glory of a heart still pumping 1.00

00:36:47.820 And the trees scream and whisper the same

00:36:51.200 We are still here

00:36:52.600 We are legion

00:36:54.240 We are allied with all that wants to live

00:36:57.700 And all that ever has been

00:37:00.200 Hear us on the wind

00:37:02.680 Each leaf dances with other leaves

00:37:11.400 As the storm crashes

00:37:16.460 can you hear that inland sea its slow explosion its slow explosion

00:37:33.700 I'm speaking to you from the days before real spring and before radiation begins

00:37:40.620 when the hot waves, the heat in your skin,

00:37:45.000 chases away the last microscopic cancer cells

00:37:48.500 that have gone deep underground,

00:37:51.240 buried in the flesh, hidden in the lymphatic system.

00:37:55.600 Certain tailored beams of light will seek them out.

00:38:00.020 But I'm not ready for it yet.

00:38:02.420 I want to run into the new world, the new body,

00:38:06.060 but deep inside my cells are working on microscopic recovery.

00:38:10.620 repair, prepare.

00:38:14.400 I stand underneath the beech trees,

00:38:17.900 listen to the messages from last season's leaves.

00:38:22.420 I think about the people I lost this winter.

00:38:26.800 My wise friend Robin.

00:38:29.840 My sweet Uncle Ron.

00:38:33.020 Fierce grief goddess Tara.

00:38:35.060 In the leaves I see a hope for keeping those ghosts close

00:38:40.940 And I see their spiky little buds as well

00:38:45.100 Their new leaves come in like tiny blades

00:38:48.720 Tightly curled

00:38:49.800 Sharp but downy soft as well

00:38:53.000 And their catkins like tiny cudgels

00:38:56.400 Packed tight with all their potential future pollen

00:38:59.440 Kings and queens on the same tree being

00:39:02.900 a message of millions of years

00:39:05.920 a way forward together

00:39:08.640 and I hear in their wrestling

00:39:11.280 pages turning

00:39:12.560 fabric moving softly against skin

00:39:15.780 like a child

00:39:16.760 dancing before a mirror

00:39:18.680 reveling in the joy of a gown, a cloak

00:39:28.860 in our family all our garments are thrifted

00:39:31.820 my grandmother is a thrift witch and she taught us the ways of returning to the hordes regularly

00:39:37.680 calling what you need to you but even when clothes are new they hold the ghosts of many hands

00:39:44.800 many patterns many stitches and dyes and weavings beech tree teach me to listen to the stories in

00:39:54.120 my clothes. Make every object that comes close to our skin animate, so that it speaks of how we

00:40:02.040 might contribute to the weaving of care for the stitch makers of the world. 0.87

00:40:09.100 My grandmother's in the hospital. The sack of liquid around her heart is infected,

00:40:16.920 pushing in on her painfully, but they say the medication is working.

00:40:20.540 they'll just increase the dose one more time and at 92 the careful caretakers say

00:40:27.460 one more day don't worry she'll be home soon where she belongs under a blanket crocheted

00:40:35.480 by her mother or quilted by mine sitting in state over puzzles queen of the scrabble board 0.99

00:40:42.920 playing dolls with my daughter dressing them in all the tiny handmade clothes she made last

00:40:49.540 Christmas. She is my mother tree. I spent a long time struggling to feel in my bones

00:40:58.900 that I was loved. Love never seemed to quite make it past my blades and cudgels, all my

00:41:07.460 tightly curled defenses. I knew it on paper and I pretended, but not with her. She didn't

00:41:17.120 have to slip past my defenses. Around her, they were just gone. She is love, like a protective

00:41:23.700 layer around my heart, like messages under the ground moving through my whole system.

00:41:36.420 If I know how to love now, and I do, and I am determined to beam it outward at the whole world,

00:41:43.680 adamant with my bright optimism like a flock of red birds.

00:41:48.680 It is because of her and seeds she plant in.

00:41:54.740 My grandmother loves cardinals.

00:41:58.060 We went and had a sleepover with her at her tiny house after chemo

00:42:02.260 before she got sick

00:42:03.480 and counted 37 cardinals in her 10-foot-by-10-foot living room.

00:42:09.360 When I was in labor, a cardinal landed on the beech tree.

00:42:12.680 I rocked and moaned beneath, and after my daughter was born, Cardinal sat outside my window while I

00:42:19.380 healed. I spoke to her today from the hospital, and she said she spent the days watching the

00:42:25.260 world go by from her window, and just this morning she swore she'd seen a Cardinal flashing past.

00:42:33.140 I say this to say that even when evil casts an illusion of our isolation,

00:42:38.300 we are surrounded by good grandparents.

00:42:42.820 Beaches can live 400 years.

00:42:46.580 If you don't know your grandmother or if she was not kind,

00:42:50.760 you can borrow mine.

00:42:53.480 She is tiny and humble and wears slippers that say glam. 1.00

00:42:59.320 She laughs easily and likes a little afternoon ginger and whiskey.

00:43:03.840 she is cupping her soft pale delicate hand gently to your face and saying i love you love you my

00:43:13.180 darling she is medicine for the softest part of you of me together we will keep a light a legacy

00:43:22.680 of kindness and empathy we will be warriors for birdsong and tender saplings hi this is great

00:43:32.000 grandma calling. I'm calling to tell you how wonderful my children are. I love all you people.

00:43:39.580 I love all my family. Be brave and accept things as they are. I love you all very, very dearly.

00:43:50.020 Right to the end, I love you. You're so sweet, so caring, so loving. You brought me a lot of

00:43:57.920 happiness in my day.

00:44:00.380 Have a long life, guys.

00:44:02.740 Love ya.

00:44:16.840 Take these messages

00:44:18.280 and bits of stories

00:44:19.800 like leaves falling close,

00:44:22.720 covering your roots,

00:44:24.760 swirling in protection

00:44:25.700 with your own ghosts.

00:44:27.920 Dreaming a world dream of bounty and love and life and all its mad myriad unfolding, a dream still held like tight potential in your heart and every heartbeat and every heartwood.

00:44:42.040 The possibility of a new dawn, Eocene, a kind of heaven on earth, not a place of exclusion

00:44:50.320 or manic piles of cryptocurrency, but a living tapestry in mutual tending, life in chirping

00:44:58.420 joyful balance, in brilliant multicolored harmony.

00:45:02.440 Can you hit that inland sea?

00:45:10.200 That's the spell still written all along your skin and trunk

00:45:15.720 Like the blue-green lichen circles that walk along the faces of the beach

00:45:20.740 That's the song of every ancestor who kept the tiny seed of life alive

00:45:26.140 Of every drop of water and beam of light working in astonishing harmony

00:45:32.200 We could live well together

00:45:35.680 We could prosper kindly

00:45:39.320 it's spring and we are beech tree kin

00:45:47.520 tender and potent in the crosshairs of then and what's to come

00:45:53.960 whisper it into the roots write it on the leaves may we keep faith with the living world

00:46:03.860 may we live in honor of all our most loving ancestors while we are alive

00:46:09.000 And earn our place among the sunlight and the tide

00:46:13.560 This, or better 0.99

00:46:16.540 Blessed fucking be 0.98

00:46:19.200 Beach gives wind speech 1.00

00:46:24.780 Beach gives wind speech

00:46:28.480 Beach gives wind speech

00:46:32.220 Beach gives wind speech

00:46:35.880 Each branch reaches to other branches

00:46:58.500 as the gate rises.

00:47:05.880 Each leaf dances with other leaves as the storm crashes.

00:47:19.880 Can you hear that inland sea?

00:47:27.880 It's slow explosion

00:47:31.880 It's slow explosion

00:47:36.880 It's slow explosion

00:47:43.880 High in the hillward's huge surf breaks

00:47:50.100 Far from any ocean

00:47:53.660 this kinship episode of the missing witches podcast was written and produced by risa dickens

00:48:08.720 the song beach was composed and produced by cosmo sheldrake with lyrics from a poem by

00:48:15.120 robert mcfarlane and was included here with kind permission the missing witches podcast

00:48:21.760 is listener supported

00:48:23.080 if you'd like to support the project

00:48:25.640 share this episode

00:48:27.160 help us find our kin

00:48:28.340 check out missingwitches.com to find out more

00:48:31.700 I love all you people

Missing Witches - March 27, 2025

You Are Beech Tree Kin：＂Each Branch Reaches to Other Branches As The Gail Rises.＂

Episode Stats

Transcript

Missing Witches - March 27, 2025

You Are Beech Tree Kin： ＂Each Branch Reaches to Other Branches As The Gail Rises.＂

Episode Stats

Transcript

You Are Beech Tree Kin：＂Each Branch Reaches to Other Branches As The Gail Rises.＂