the songs of usnea

Trigger alert - this post is about as "woo-woo" as it gets. If this sort of thing isn't your cup of tea .. then really, nothing on this blog will be helpful to you. For you see, this is what the Medicine Plants are all about for me, and stories like this are the background to everything I write.

Once upon a time, it was winter, a sparkling day. We were on a ramble. We'd just crossed the little wooden bridge over the Picanoc river, wondering how far we'd be able to get up the Polish Hills road. As it turned out, we didn't get far at all, but the place we stopped to turn the car around was as nice a place as any to get out and stretch our legs, and so we did.

Paul was taking pictures (I guess, I don't really remember) while I looked up at the big white pines and breathed in the snowy air and let my feet pull me whichever way they wanted, which is always a good way to find something interesting.



Wolf tracks! Okay, that's interesting, and I followed them, first through the cleared space at the side of the road and then up some sort of trail, into the forest, up the hill a ways. Paul and I have a deal that I don't completely disappear on him - it makes him nervous, and rightly so - and as those wolf tracks were pretty fresh I didn't really want to go much further anyway, so I stopped walking and just stood, just .. waiting. Not waiting for anything in particular, mind you, just waiting.

Waiting is another good way to find something interesting.

It was then I first heard it .. a crystalline sound, like the sound of snow falling - but it wasn't. And as I listened it became melodic, and laughing, like the way a brook laughs as it falls over rocks. It was bell-like. It was choir like. It was multiple voices, of that I was certain, singing in a crystalline, bell like, laughing harmony and they were definitely calling me .."can you hear us? We're over here! over here!"

An old fallen branch of some conifer, needles long gone, covered with puffy pieces of old-man's beard lichen, lay partway across the path a little ways up, the wolf tracks going around it. It was steep there, easy going for the wolf, tricky for me. The sound seemed to be coming from the branch, something that made no sense to me at the time but I approached it anyway .. and yes, it was coming from the branch, or more specifically from the puffy pieces of old-man's beard lichen. Usnea, it's called.

I can't tell you if I was hearing that sound with my ears or some other sense that we humans have but have forgotten how to use. But it was beautiful, and it was friendly, and it was - frankly - communicating to me a sense of delight. And a story of long ago. These creatures were both singing to me and teaching me that such things are not only possible but were, once upon a time, accepted fact.

I was one part stunned, one part delighted and ..

(damn this is hard to write about!)

and above all, humbled. The world literally changed in that moment as the past came rushing forward at me, into the present, and I received a lesson that it will take me the rest of my lifetime to fully understand. These creatures, the usnea, were not only sentient and able to communicate, they were happy to have found a human who could hear them (again).

And as I laughed with sheer delight as I began to understand, their song intensified, and within those crystalline notes came their joy, their something-like-affection for humans, and their stories, all enmeshed in that sound. They told me that they are made of light. That they are more awake in the winter. That they dream. That they are the record-keepers, the story-keepers, the song-keepers. That they are travellers, blown off their branches by the wind they land on the snow, tumble across it until they reach the iced-over rivers, then when the rivers melt they flow downstream. They told me more than this but I haven't got the words to tell it to you, yet. Some day, perhaps.

Since that time I have never looked for usnea when we're out on our rambles, I don't have to, it/they will sing to me and I follow the song to find them. Not always, in dry hot weather they're dormant, dreaming I suppose ..

They don't all "sound" like that first little colony I met, each one has been a little different. Sometimes they sound like violins, not little crystalline bells. Sometimes they have deep voices, like a far off thunder. They all have stories for me, stories of the place they live, or of the river they live next to, that flash into my mind as fully formed images that I could never have come up with on my own. I just don't know enough to be able to create stories like those.

Once, I was scolded - oh that was funny - by an "usnea tree". It was a still standing but long dead pine, huge, and absolutely covered with the creatures, some old and as long as my forearm, some small and puffy. I was looking to collect some for medicine that day, but I was so in awe of the size and integrity of that ancient colony that I hesitated. The voices, that time, came as one almost human voice, I "heard" actual words rather than the usual images, which unnerved me (as you can well imagine) and they spoke like an old woman. "You're human", it/they said, "humans hunt", it/they said. "You must hunt!"

I actually argued, which embarrasses me now - who would argue with so ancient a being? - and in doing so I gave myself away as the sentimental, white-man's guilt ridden woman that I am. The usnea tree deepened her tone to the grandmotherly, almost severe, and planted in my head an image of the Order of Things so that I knew, if I was to be fully human, I must understand that I have as much right to take what I need as any other creature in the forest does. No more, of course, but certainly no less.

I decided it was time to tell this story, of the songs of usnea, because of a song I heard on the radio a few days ago. It led me to a young man who would probably accept what I've just told you as perfectly reasonable. This is Jeremy Dutcher, and his story, his work, is much like that of my first experience with the usnea, the past coming rushing up into the present.

He's Native, from the Tobique First Nation in Eastern Canada. He's also an opera singer, of all things. Thanks to very old wax cylinder recordings, and one woman - a song-keeper - he's bringing the old songs of his people back in an extraordinary fashion, making them relevant to our time, and to my ear, gorgeous.

I think the usnea would like him very much.