'Live in what will outlive you' are the words spoken by this child at the #treecricus at the #lacountyfair last month. The words are written on a tree tag that he has hung on a tree in California where someone will come upon the tag and read those words, too. The words come from my novel, Tree Dreams, which found their way onto the page after a walk in the redwoods when I was trying to make sense of the 2,000 year old life of a tree that supports everything around it through signals it sends through its roots and oxygen converted from co2 and water and I found myself wondering what it means to live in a way to give life to what will outlive us. ​​​​​​​​

Treedream

Keith Rondinelli, 2020

All dreams matter, even the little ones. 🥰 . . . . This dreamcatcher will be added to a larger project that will be available Earth Day April 22, 2020 . . DancingTreec.Co to add your name to our fast growing list to be among first to know. . . #dreamcatcher #treedreams #dream_catcher #handmadedecor #wipart https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2Zk3LhzGt/?igshid=ked1aw8lxoso

Last ray #nightwalk #landscape #narrativelandscape #treemagic #treedream #memory #woodland #fengshuiwood #darkhour https://www.instagram.com/p/B29WmbJAAs-/?igshid=1a2271vhz7cce

Art for breakfast #sahbashereart #treedreams 30x40 on canvas #etherealworld

My friend Tracy’s May Day gift in 2012 inspired a dream collaboration that exploded into people writing their Tree Dreams around the globe. And Tree Dreams still keeps spreading—now to the writers of the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. 🌲🤩 Always in awe of what can be accomplished with persistence + patience + interconnection… 

・・・ layered story here from @bridgeworksoregon: starting with a labor of love with my dear friend @heykristinkaye and her beautiful novel #treedreams. We made a project together with tagging kits for people to write offerings to trees--those wishes faded in sun and rain and eventually degraded in the shadow of the trees--@treedreamstags holds the history. Years later, a stack of books arrived from Kristin as a gift for our writing project at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility. At last, we are able to join our writers in person for this @regionalarts funded project (persistence and patience have been key as we've waited three years to officially meet!)   

The moment when one of the lines from your novel makes it onto a bookmark that will be distributed far and wide = exploding heart!

Thank you to my favorite ringleader, Timmy, from the one and only Tree Circus. You made my day 💚 If you're on the west coast and can see these guys in action this summer, GO!!

🌲 LIVE in WHAT WILL OUT LIVE YOU 🌲~ Tree Dreams

Tracy, from Cumbersome Multiples, was my collaborator and the designer of the Tree Dreams Field Guide to Interconnection. She also does powerful work in the prisons in Oregon. Here are some of the latest tags from writers in Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, and an update from Tracy. 💚🌲

"On the return from @bridgeworksoregon visit to Lakeview's prison, I tied some @treedreams tags written by our writers at Coffee Creek who are participating in the @regionalarts sponsored writing program Hecate's Lantern. The wonderful @heykristinkaye sent us her novel Tree Dreams to read, which spurred this writing exercise. The trees in this part of the Dechutes Forest wear the licks of fire on their trunks, some will not survive and will sink back onto the forest floor, and some already support the bright new life of moss. What a place to release these voices!!"

I gasped aloud when I saw these photos of students at the Ngora Girls School in Uganda sitting outside and discussing my novel Tree Dreams. They are part of an #EcoHeroes club sponsored by @ISNADAfrica and one of many schools in Nigeria, Malawi, Kenya and other African countries that will be reading and Tree Dreaming together.​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​ 

That heartbreak over clearcut hillsides can turn into connection with beautiful people across the world, all of us dreaming together with trees and creating a greener, healthier future gives me a shot of hope just when I needed it most. 

 ​​​​​​​​ Thank you @isnadafrica for choosing to read Tree Dreams and thank you EcoHeroes for your passion and exuberance, for dreaming with trees and for your plans to plant more. 🙏🏻🌲💚

The best lesson on the gifts of forests from my recent Zoom with the #EcoHeroes at the Ngora Girls School in Uganda. We were discussing my novel Tree Dreams 💚💚💚 "The questions about how good to see the green green grass of home. He says, “It is so quiet and so long alive.” He is describing the beauty of the trees. That they are quite long. They're alive lying there on the soft ground. This takes him somewhere else and that’s all he needs to block out the noise. When he’s out in the woods. I also tried to experience that. I said, “Let me try to be like this guy now.” I want to be out in the woods and I feel that good fresh air coming into me, yeah. Because when you’re in the woods it’s just the sounds. You hear the birds chinkling and maybe you can hear echoes, the wind. Yeah, it makes you fresh. That’s why I say that when you feel all that it blows your mind somewhere.” · 6w

My novel TREE DREAMS has run away with the circus---the @treecircus that is. The Tree Circus spreads tree love far and wide with performances for all ages. The circus happens to be at the @lacountyfair through the end of May (SoCal friends go climb some trees, have some fun and say 'hi! to the ringmaster @timmy_womick for me!).​​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​​ Tickled pink (or green ;) -- where does that saying even come from?) that they are weaving Tree Dreams into their show and tagging trees with dreams of interconnection. They'll be hand delivering novels to add to the collection at the Pomona County Library, too. 💚

The word ‘tree’ and the word ‘truth’ come from the same root. ~ Richard Powers

Of course I had to do a little investigating—the root is *dreu, a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "be firm, solid, steadfast”

What an exquisite koan in today’s world. To what do we remain firm, solid and steadfast? What do we let go of? And what does it mean to do both at the same time?

"Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world." ~ John Muir

Love this quote—how true!—and love when our young ones go tagging!⠀💗🌲

@franchescaa_s Tree Dreaming with Joseph Campbell: ‘I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive....so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.’

About 10 years ago I was driving thru a beautiful forest on a two-lane road in Oregon when clearcuts suddenly appeared just feet from the road. . . My then four-year-old daughter asked from the backseat, ‘Mama, why do the hillsides look so sick?’ This question and those hillsides launched me on a journey that would evolve into my novel #TreeDreams and a global tree tagging campaign celebrating interconnection. . . Today I sat on the 4th floor of the Mechanics’ Institute as part of a book panel to talk about the unexpected evolution of Tree Dreams. Just before the event began the street below us roared with the voices of young people who had walked out of SF schools to demand that the rest of us wake up to havoc we are wrecking on the world. My now 14-year-old daughter was marching in that crowd. . . I wrote Tree Dreams in part because barely anyone was protesting anything in 2010. We were collectively sleepwalking and acting as if our actions were without consequence. . . But today my body went full chills to hear the swell of that crowd. To feel a kind of mysterious full circle. And to know that those kids are awake. They see. They know how to use their voices. And thank goodness because we need every single one.

#spokane is a perfect host city for #naaee2018. Environmental educators, policy makers and administrators are here from 30 different countries working together to create a healthy future for all. Meanwhile, the colors of Nature’s costume change make me ECSTATIC 🤗