“Nurse Log” © by Carolyn Treadway

Carolyn writes about this image:

“Nurse logs” are common in Pacific Northwest forests. Giant trees fall, and as they decay over decades they provide habitat and nutrients for seedlings to root into and around their huge trunks and grow into new giant trees. In their slow dying, these logs constantly give birth to new life. 

To me, nurse logs are an image for this journal issue, and for our times. Amidst the uncertainty and chaos of the Great Unraveling now upon us, can we come together to rise anew—like the trees do as they grow from the dying mother log–to create the Great Turning that we are so committed to?

In this photo, the mother log has rotted away, but at least six trees now grow tall. The tangled roots represent struggle and chaos, while the new trees express strength, resilience, and endurance.

Creating the header from mirror images of this photo was magical. In joining the images together, new dimensions appeared that did not previously exist: a wide central path, a doorway of curved branches, and a written invitation into Deep Times.  

Indeed we are stepping into and walking the profound path of Deep Time. May we persist, and may LOVE guide our way.

Carolyn Treadway is a therapist, pastoral counselor, social worker, and life coach, now retired after more than 60 years of facilitating change and growth in people’s lives.  She “speaks for Earth” however she can—as a climate leader and mentor (trained by Al Gore and the Climate Reality Project) since 2007, anti-nuclear activist, conference planner, workshop facilitator, writer, editor and photographer. She and Molly Brown co-edited Held in Love: Life Stories to Inspire Us Through Times of Change. Since the early-1980s she has been part of the Work That Reconnects. With her husband Roy, she lives in Lacey, Washington. Their three children and four young grandchildren constantly fuel her motivation to preserve our precious Earth. Contact her at Carolyn@PlanetCare.us.