Dear readers this post is from the archives of AskGCW.

Rumors of the demise of Mother Earth have been greatly exaggerated. This planet will endure, she will continue spinning on her axis, orbiting the sun. Day will follow night. The sun will rise in the East. The ancient cycle of seasons will endure, the moon will wax, become full, wane, then begin again in darkness.

Full Moon

The ancient cycles will endure even if humans are no longer here to witness the beauty, to name the seasons, and study the stars

Humans are slowly committing suicide as they ignore the warning signs of the stressed and overtaxed environment and atmosphere. I ask you to slow down and listen to your Great Grandmother the Earth. Learn her language. Pay attention to her signs, symbols, her distress call.

When you learn her language, the language of the web of life, you will learn the ancient ways of survival on this planet. You will learn to respect the amazing intelligence built up over eons of time within every living thing and every living system.

Tuning in to the messages and intricate interconnections of the web of life and hearing the voices of all living things here on this planet still means survival.

Technology in your pocket, shiny objects, expensive homes will not save or buffer you from the reality that you are a part of this web of life, a part of nature. We survive together!

Take action to divest yourselves and your human cultures of greed and corruption. Stop over-consuming our precious resources and hoarding wealth for only a few. These things damage the web of life.

Learn to use only what you need. Learn to be humble. Learn to love each step you take on Mother Earth, each breath you take into your miraculous body, each beat of your heart.

Wake up and embrace your precious life on this precious Earth!

Choose life! Slow down, live simply.

Find your sweet spot

You as humans are creatures of the light. But you need the dark to be healthy and thrive. You must create a balance.

First you must sleep in the dark, dreaming, recharging and renewing your bodies and minds, then waking and soaking in the light, acting, getting things done, creating the life you dream of.

Within this balance of light and dark, action and rest, you find your sweet spot so you can create and sustain a thriving life.

I as a towering cottonwood tree must find my balance between spring growth and winter rest, between roots and branches.

Grandmother Cottonwood

I would not want to topple over in a windstorm for lack of roots, top heavy with huge and heavy limbs. I would not want to waste my energy sending cottonwood sized roots deep and wide into the soil to support a small and modest crown the size of an apple tree.

To be healthy, the Earth and her atmosphere must strike a balance between hot and cold, wet and dry, storm and calm, ebb and flow, flood and drought, summer and winter, health and sickness…

All living creatures, the Earth among us, must find our balance, our sweet spot for thriving and living in our world of cycles and seasons, of fear and love.

Climate change

Our world is heating up and we are stressed!

Our ancestors became acclimated to a cooler world. The capacity to survive within those parameters has been passed down through thousands of generations of all animals, plants, humans birds, insects, sea creatures from the blue whale to tiny one celled organisms from desert sage to all manner of mushrooms, to towering cottonwood trees.

Grandmother Cottonwood

All of us live and thrive here on our home planet within a limited range of conditions.

We are slowly being pushed out of our comfort zone. Our home is becoming a stranger to us.

The seasonal changes become erratic, the timing is off. Trees maintain their leaves later in the year, and become vulnerable to ice and freezing rain. The weight of thick ice on thousands of leaves and branches can topple and crush a huge tree.

You might be comfortable in climate controlled buildings or cars. You might not get outside much or tune yourself closely to nature’s subtle rhythms and harmonies, so you might not know with the evidence of your own senses that our world is shifting out of balance.

I speak for the great web of life. I speak for the rooted ones, the four legged fur bearers, those with wings, the six and eight legged communities, all living creatures that form our web of life with intricate interconnections and relationships.

Squirrel and walnut tree

We are all in this together! We need each other to survive!

Dear humans, please find a way to work together, heal your animosities, your grudges and resentments. Release your emotional baggage in healthy ways, heal once and for all your ancestral enmities.

Clear yourselves so you can be at your full light and power, at the highest vibrations you are capable of. You are needed here and now to heal this Earth and bring our home back into harmony and balance between all beings…

…between hot and cold, day and night, summer and winter, give and take, life and death, resistance and flow, fear and love.

We will endure!

We plant spirits, the spirits of nature, and living plants in our hundreds of billions have endured, persevered, and adapted over the lifetime of our home Mother Earth.

Vine tendril

Some of our number have gone extinct only to be replaced by new plant life forms better adapted to new and different climatic conditions.

We plants adapt and endure even now with the warming oceans, super-storms, human alteration of our valleys, rivers, plains, mountains, and forests.

We will endure into the future as we’ve endured for billions of years trusting our seeds, spores, runners and roots to the future.

We are constantly changing and adapting to our home, interwoven with all life in the vast and complex web of existence.


You stand on the forefront of great change. The very earth beneath your feet, the atmosphere that permeates your world are all shifting. You have heard the tired old words about change – that it is inevitable. These words, while tired, are true.

Even great cottonwoods fall, as the earth is washed away from their roots, the wind rises, lightning strikes. The great tree, reduced to splinters. The physical body, living creatures, trees, are all subject to the eternal laws of nature.

DSCN3400 (480x640)

Grandmother Cottonwood

All things come into being, all things die, all things are transformed into the earth beneath our feet; food for rooted things, reminders of things and loved ones past. Even the stones will wear away to sand and dust.

Do not weep over what has been. Set yourself firmly in what is now. Embody your life now, even if it is not what you hoped for, dreamed, of, planned. Gather your courage, heart and strength to live in this world as it is now, created from the ever changing web of all things.

Your higher self alone is unchangeable, the one true constant in your life. Some call it spirit, or soul.  While all around you changes, your spirit, the core of your being remains steady, rooted, strong.

A shift in the weather

Those who pay attention with hearts as well as minds will know and feel a change in the weather, a shift in the air. The greater heat in summer, the northward migration of warm loving species, the wetter snows, the thawing ice, the balmy winters, the unsettled weather as the earth warms.


Dying tree

Growing things, winged creatures, 4 legged ones are stressed by this disruption to our age old fabric of existence, the climate in which we have all learned to thrive over eons of time.

Our atmosphere is heavy with exhaust of human creation beyond her limits and capacity to cleanse. Dear ones it will take your collective wisdom will and heart to cease the pollution of your planet; to clear the air, purify the water, to bless the earth once again with a healthy balance of interests between all living things.

What good are your billions of dollars when the earth herself can no longer sustain the life we have known for millennia?

Life itself is the prize. Preserve and protect and nurture all living things.

Heal the web of life! Begin the healing within yourself.