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sure I’d freeze to death, literally! Being in the

Rex and I often share a simple celebration that wild always excited me and brought on feelings
carries us to places of joy and appreciation. For a of vulnerability. Nature was so huge and I was so
recent Thanksgiving dinner, we were alone. We little. I stayed out as long as I dared because of the
enjoyed a delicious meal of chia seed tostadas exhilarating forest smells and the quiet and peace

with a topping of sunflower seed cheese (both in that seeped into my pores like a healing balm.
The Healing Feast archive, www.thehealingfeast.
com), and some tangy, cranberry-orange sauce Soaking up the dampness of moss and ferns, and
you’ll find on page 34. For the simplest dessert, I the smell of evergreens filled me in deep and
blended persimmons to make a velvety pudding mysterious ways. The family often found what
with the most gorgeous orange color, and topped to me was the perfect tree, but Dad always said
it off with a handful of walnuts and a few dates after looking it over that it was good, but not quite

that were ground up in the food processor into a right. He would forge off alone, and after losing
crumble. Food like these, along with our humble sight of him we could still hear twigs and branches
decorations, help us to honor the holidays. All the cracking under his boots. We’d head back to the
while creating health as we usher in the new. car because by then we were chilled to the bone.
When he returned, rosy cheeked and breathing

Winter and Christmas memories as hard, hauling a huge tree, we’d say, it’s too big,
a child are some of the most vivid, often centering and he’d say, no it isn’t! And it never, ever, fit
around the tree. From my earliest childhood on, in the house. Getting it home always made me
trees have found their way into my heart and I’m nervous, because I was sure that even with the
deeply happy when smelling the scent of fir and endless feet of prickly rope that was tied around
pine. Forests nourish my soul in winter and in the tree to the hood of the car, it would fly off and
summer, when resins rise to the air and are carried be lost on the highway. Then came the inevitable

on the winds. Trees, the breath of life for man, sawing off of several feet from the base of the tree,
are sacred and eternal bearers of beauty, healing and making good use of the extra branches for the
energy, and deep peace. front door, over the mantle, and around the windows.
The smell of evergreens were intoxicating as they
Trekking into the forest with the family to chop filled every nook and cranny of the house. Maybe

down a tree imprinted deeply. I’d trudge through that’s what Dad had in mind all along.
the underbrush, climb over fallen logs, navigate
through huge ferns and salal bushes. My short legs Back home, decorating the tree often became a
were barely able to keep up with my father’s long chore because of my mother’s insistence on how
strides that were propelled by his powerful energy tinsel had to be applied. She wanted the tree to
and focused intent. After less than an hour I was become a mass of shimmering and resplendent

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