Category: Little Pine

Little Pine fell asleep with the sights and sounds of the day whirling inside him.

How magical it all had been! It was more beautiful than anything he had ever experienced.  

Yet inside him, questions mixed with the images.  What was it all about?  What did it all really mean?

He sensed that he was right on the edge of understanding.  But before  he could find his answers, the dancing images of the day spun him off to the world of dreams.

The dreams finally faded to darkness as Little Pine entered a deep, peaceful sleep.

And that is when the beautiful bird appeared.

“I have heard your heart’s questions, dear Little Pine,” it cooed.  “And I have come to unravel the mysteries for you.

“Everything in your world is but a reflection of something greater.  Only a portion of who we are takes on earthly form.

“Think of the love that you feel in your heart.  Think of the friendships that you hold dear.  Think of the way that music stirs you, and of the thrill that beauty provides.  These things are all a part of you.  And yet you cannot see them.  They do not show themselves in earthly form.  They are too large, too pure, too high.  And yet you know that they are more real than anything that your eyes can see or ears can hear.

“Behind the sweet earthly being who is Little Pine is a vast, magnificent Pine that you might call your soul.  Only a sliver of it can become dense enough to experience this earthly adventure.  And that little sliver is you.

“You know that your Festival celebrates the sun.  Well, the Sun behind the sun is Love, a love so deep and vast and pure, that it causes worlds upon worlds to come into being, worlds as small as the tiniest particle and as large as all the heavens.  This is the source of light, this Love, and of life itself.  And the miracle is that it lives within us, and is us, and calls us by our names.

“And that is what we celebrate, Little Pine.  That is the reason for our ecstatic joy.

“We forget, when we descend into the darkness of our heavy earth forms, that we are the children of this Love and its Light.  We get lost in our illusions of separateness and suffering.   And so, every year, just when the night is longest, Nature sings anew the eternal promise of the Light’s return.   It reminds us that the Light can never die, for it springs from the Love that is everything, and beyond all things and within them.

“And that is why we dance, Little Pine.  That is why we sing.”

And when it had spoken, the beautiful bird faded away, and Little Pine sank into a deep and  dreamless sleep and floated in its peace.

The first song that Little Pine heard as he stepped outside was the caroling of his friend, Holly, dancing across the water from the opposite bank of the lake.  The melody spilled across the gently rippling waters and rose from them, filling the air with its sound.

He stood still and drank in the clear, sweet notes.  They filled his heart with tenderness, and once again he was entranced by the beauty of the world and felt its joy and peace.

He bowed to Holly, and she laughed in delight.  He laughed, too, and ran off to see what other treasures the day would hold.

The rows of tall pines stood at attention while chickadees and red-headed woodpeckers played their fifes and drums.  And accompanying them, he heard the merry tapping of fairy feet dancing on the decorated drums that the elves had prepared.  The sound seemed to come from everywhere and thundered joyfully through the whole forest.

Before long, Little Pine came to the slope where the Queen of the Fields stood, more radiant than ever with her light dusting of snow.   “Hello, Little Pine,” she sang to him.  “Have a lovely Festival Day!”  He stopped to chat with her a bit, telling her how lovely she looked.  He asked if she might know how he could find the Snow Queen.  He wanted to thank her, he explained, for her beautiful gift of snow.

She told him the Snow Queen herself couldn’t take on an earthly form, but that she would happily pass along his thanks when she spoke with her later.

“Have you been to the ballet yet?” the Queen of the Fields asked.  Little Pine told her that he was headed there right now.

As he turned toward Holly Trail, Little Pine came to the great oak that had given birth to his friend Red Leaf, and stopped to thank the mighty tree for that gift, which had so blessed him throughout the past year.  From high in the oak’s branches, he heard the happy chatter of the squirrels, who were munching away on their Festival Day breakfast.

Little Pine traveled on, and as he rounded the next bend, he caught his first glimpse of the delicate tree performing her graceful ballet.  The elves were right. Her dance itself seemed to create the wondrous music that surrounded her.   Her leaves were snow-capped now and glistening as she leaped and twirled, the very picture of grace and joy.

He took a seat by his elf friends who had come to see the show, and they erupted in applause and loud whistles when the little tree took her final bow.

Then, to Little Pine’s amazement, the elves themselves took to the stage and danced a jig so fast and intricate and lively that the whole audience broke into laughter and clapped until they could clap no more.

Just as the clapping came to an end, the howling of a pack of coyotes echoed through the trees, signaling that it was time for the Great Procession of the Animals to begin. Suddenly everyone headed to Holly Trail to take their places. Even the critters who were tucked in for the winter came forth to celebrate Festival Day. Mice and moles, mink and ground hogs, raccoons, squirrels, skunks, beavers, foxes, rabbits, coyotes and deer paraded through the forest singing their praises to the returning Light. It was a magnificent parade, ending at the base of Grandfather Pine, where everyone enjoyed a grand feast together.

By the time the festivities ended, it was growing late. But the elves asked Little Pine to join them as they delivered presents to the birds.  Their mother had packed pretty bags full of nuts and seeds for all the cardinals and blue jays, and chickadees and sparrows, and for all the other winter birds who kept the forest singing in the winter.  And so they trooped off, the elves whistling their merry tunes.

A light snow was falling as Little Pine turned toward home.  What an extraordinary day it had been!  He could hardly wait to share its adventures with his mother.

As he neared the door, he smelled the fragrance of the special meal that Mother had prepared, and heard Holly’s evening carol, still wafting from the lake.  And his heart was filled with tenderness and joy.

Little Pine drifted to consciousness from a dream of stardust swirling through the sky.  Before he even opened his eyes, he sensed that some kind of magic had happened.

Then he noticed a bright tingling on his needles, and he was instantly awake.  “Snow!” he shouted.  “Mother!  Look!  It snowed!”

Mother Pine laughed and said, “Yes!  Isn’t it beautiful?”

Little Pine stared around in wonder.  The whole forest was shimmering with light.

“Little Pine,” Mother said, setting a bowl of hot porridge on the table, “Do you know what today is?”

Mother looked so pretty with the layer of sparkling snow on her branches that Little Pine could hardly think.  “What day is it, Mother?” he asked.

“It’s the day that the Great Festival begins,” she sang.  “Today the Light starts its return!”

“That’s why it snowed, isn’t it!” Little Pine said.

“Yes,” Mother said.  “I think it’s a special gift to us from the Snow Queen.  If you see her today, be sure to tell her thank you.”

Little Pine loved the special note of happiness that he heard in his mother’s voice.  He could tell that she was as excited about the great celebration as he was.  Every creature in the woods had been preparing for this day.  The fairies would dance and the trees would march and do their ballets, and all day long the air would be filled with singing.

Mother Pine smiled at her little one’s eagerness and gave him a special lunch she had packed for him to take with him today.  He thanked her and almost ran toward the door.  But at its threshold, he suddenly stopped and turned, and looking into her beaming face, he said, “Mother, I love you so much.”

And Mother, her eyes nearly spilling over with joy, said, “Little Pine, I love you, too.”

It wasn’t only his vision that seemed to have new clarity.  Little Pine’s hearing was more alive now, too.

As he walked through the woods, almost drunk with the beauty around him, he found himself thrilling to the calls of the blue jays and crows, to the whistle of the cardinals.

The wisp of a breeze that murmured through the boughs of the pines and spruces carried the wordless stories of the trees.

The air seemed filled with music.  He thought of the elves, whistling in the far end of the forest as they worked.  And he smiled at the story they’d told him about the ballet of the little tree and how music came from nowhere when she danced.

Little Pine had never felt so alive.  It was as if the whole world was awakening around him.   He wondered where this wondrous stirring was coming from.  Was it the blessing that came with the gift his mother had given him?  Or was it something more?

But he let the thought go as soon as it arose.  He didn’t need to know where all this beauty came from; it was enough to be living it.

As he neared the lake, Little Pine heard a music that he hadn’t heard in a long while.  Yesterday’s rain had filled the lake enough to send its waters over the spillway, and the cascading waters were filled with song.  He ran to them and stood on the slope breathing in their music.   “The Light is near!  It’s nearly here!  Let your heart rejoice!  It brings us life.  It brings us cheer.  To the Light, we raise our voice.”

“That’s it!” Little Pine said, right out loud.  “I’m being filled by the Light!”  No wonder, he thought, that we hold a Festival!  No wonder that the whole earth sings!

As he fell asleep, Little Pine thought about the young human girl who came to the forest to make paintings of the lake and trees.   In his dreams, he imagined seeing the forest through her eyes.  He paid attention to the shapes and colors of the woods as he never had before.

The next day, as he strolled through the woods after breakfast, it was as if he was seeing everything with new eyes.   Colors that he never noticed before suddenly came alive.   He saw new depth in the textures of things.  Patches of tree bark looked like little masterpieces.

He walked in a trance of wonder, feeling almost as if he were in a different world.

A moss-covered tree stump caught his eye, and he looked at the collection of fallen leaves, twigs and pine needles nestled in its hollow.  It reminded him of a bird somehow, landing on its nest.  How beautiful all the colors seemed to him, and how perfect their arrangement!

When he came across a patch of the drums that the elves had decorated for the Festival, he was amazed by their artistry.  He had liked them before, and thought they were quite pretty, but now they nearly took his breath away and filled him with so much delight that he began twirling and twirling, and shouting “YeeeeHah!” just to release his joy.

The blessing in the gift that his mother had given him last night—the painting of his ancestor’s pine cone, the story of the little human girl—was larger than he had supposed.  It brought with it a whole new vision of his world, one filled with more beauty than he had ever imagined a world could contain.

Little Pine was reading one of his favorite story books after dinner when his mother came into the room.  She was holding her arms behind her back and wearing a mysterious smile.

“Little Pine,” she said, “Come here and sit beside me.  I have a gift for you.”

“Shut your eyes,” she said when he was seated.  He felt her lean forward and set something on the table in front of them.

“Okay!” Mother whispered. “Look!”

When Little Pine opened his eyes, he could hardly believe what he was seeing.  It was a framed painting of the most beautiful pine cone that he had ever seen.  It looked as if it had just fallen from heaven.

“Is that an angel, Mother?” he gasped in wonder.

“In a way,” Mother said.  Then she told him a story. 

“One summer, a long, long time ago, before Grandfather Pine was born, a human little girl started visiting the forest.   She liked to sit beneath Great Grandmother’s boughs.  Sometimes she would bring a book with her and read.  But often she brought canvasses and paints, and she would sit for hours, singing and painting pictures of the lake and of the trees.

“She was a sweet little girl who always greeted Great Grandmother as she seated herself by her side.  And when she left, she would always say goodbye and thank Great Grandmother for her shade.

“Late that autumn, she came with a basket and gathered the pine cones that Great Grandmother had released to spill their seeds.  When her basket was full, she walked over to Great Grandmother and pressed her body against Great Grandmother’s trunk, stroking her bark with her free hand.   ‘Thank you!’ she whispered to Great Grandmother.  And then, as she skipped with her basket from the woods, she turned and waved and shouted, ‘Thank you!  Merry Christmas, beautiful tree!’

“The weather turned cold and the days grew short and the human girl didn’t come to read and paint any more.  But Great Grandmother often thought of her and the thought made her heart smile.

“Soon all the forest beings were preparing for the Festival of Light.  And on the day that it began, the most amazing thing happened.  The little human girl came singing through the forest, carrying a large basket in her arms.  ‘Happy Christmas, great tree!’ she said to Great Grandmother.  ‘I brought some presents for you!”  And, laughing, she hung dozens of little portraits of angel pine cones all over Great Grandmother’s lower boughs.  ‘May your seed grow and fill the land,’ she sang.

“And then she left, and Great Grandmother never saw her again.  When the squirrels came by, she asked them to tuck the paintings carefully away, and to cover them with leaves to protect them.

“Over the years, her seed grew and covered our whole section of the forest.  And when each of her offspring reached a certain age, she gave them one of these paintings as a blessing,  that their seed might grow and continue to fill the land.

“Now you have reached that certain age, Little Pine.  And it is my honor to give this gift to you, and to pass on its blessing, in memory of your Great Grandmother, and of a little human’s love for our kind.”

Little Pine’s heart was filled with wonder and joy.  “What a beautiful gift!” he thought.  “What a treasure!”  He thanked his mother and snuggled against her.  And the two of them sat gazing at the painting of the angel pine cone long into the night.

The elves, of course, were still busily decorating the forest for the Festival.  When they weren’t making drums for the fairies’ dance, they fashioned garlands of the colored, fallen leaves to decorate the pines’ boughs, and draped strands of ivy around the hardwoods’ trunks. They were happy and industrious workers, mostly because, to them, their work was play.

Today they were into the piney section of the forest.  The air there was filled with the wonderful fragrance of the trees.  They started as soon as the morning light broke.  But because the days were so short now, they had to work quickly to meet their day’s goal before the darkness fell again.

That didn’t mean skipping lunch, though.  Elves let nothing interfere with their meals.  Food keeps them happy so that they can whistle merry tunes as they work.

Just before noon, they put aside their tools and found the lunch sacks that their mother had packed.  They were talking amongst themselves, trying to decide where they would like to rest, when the youngest one heard a sound off to the east.

“Listen!” he said.  “Do you hear music?”

The elves fell silent, and sure enough, a lilting melody was drifting through the trees.  They decided to follow it.  The only thing better than lunch, after all, was lunch with music.  So they skipped through the woods, in search of the sound.

Before long, they came to a clearing where the music completely filled the air.  In its center, a young tree dressed in her fine autumn leaves was pirouetting joyfully.

She stopped in mid-twirl when she saw them.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t expecting an audience!  I was just rehearsing for the Festival.”

The elves giggled at her shyness and the elder one introduced himself and his brothers and explained that they were taking a lunch break from decorating the fairy drums.

“You’re the ones who do that?” the tree said.  “I’ve been seeing them all over the forest.  You do such beautiful work!”

“And you do such beautiful dancing!” the elder elf said.  “We would love to watch you rehearse while we dine, if you wouldn’t find it an intrusion.”

“Please do!” the tree said.  “I dance much better, actually, when I’m dancing for someone.  You just took me by surprise.”

So she danced, and the elves ate, elated to be treated to such a wondrous show.  And when at last she took her bow, they applauded and whistled until she blushed.   They gave her a cup of the morning’s fresh dew and shared their cakes to thank her.

When the last crumbs were gone, they bid her farewell and returned to their work.  And she danced on and on.

It was raining when Little Pine woke in the morning.  He loved the way the round little drops slid down his green needles and hung at their tips like pearls, reflecting the world all upside down.

After breakfast, he decided to visit the lake.   In a way, he giggled to himself, the lake was like a giant raindrop.  It held the world upside down, too.  He found his favorite spot, next to a big granite boulder, and sat down to watch the show.

It was a light, gentle rain, and the drops drew little circles as they slipped below the lake’s surface.  Then the circles spread themselves out in wonderful curving ripples that grew larger and fainter until they finally disappeared.  It was really quite beautiful, Little Pine thought.

But even more beautiful was the rain’s song.  It was a soothing sound, almost a whisper, like the sound of a faint breeze dancing through summer leaves.

Little Pine stilled his breath to hear it more clearly, listening with all his being.  The song made the world seem more luminous somehow, and larger.  The boundaries that separated him from the lake, the forest, and the sky almost seemed to disappear.

He sat listening for a very long time, lost in the beauty of the sight and the song.  His heart filled with a sweet and spacious tenderness that he couldn’t quite name.

But when he finally rose to return home, he noticed the tiny waves lapping against the lake’s shore.  And listening very closely, he heard their clear, small voices singing, “Peace.  Peace.  Peace.”

On the morning that Jack Frost sparkled the woods, Little Pine set out to visit his cousins at the far end of the forest.

As he neared their neighborhood, he heard a deafening, buzzing sound unlike anything he had ever heard before.   It frightened him a little, but his curiosity drove him onward.

Just as he got to the edge of the neighborhood, he heard humans loudly yelling.  He stood absolutely still, remembering the First Rule was never to let a human see you move.

Then, to his amazement, one of his cousins fell to the ground, making a mighty crash.  Looking around, he could see that others had fallen before him, large and small, young and old.  The humans were fastening giant chains to the trees and hoisting them on a big truck.  They laughed as they worked and steam came in great clouds from their mouths and noses.

As soon as the humans left, Little Pine ran back home to tell his mother what he had seen.  He was confused and dismayed.

Mother Pine told him that this happened every year.   She told him that Grandfather said that he learned from the birds that the humans took the fallen pines into their homes.  They hung tiny, brilliant lights and decorations from their branches and laid gifts at their feet.   It was the way, he said, that some humans celebrated the return of the Light.

That night, when Little Pine fell asleep, a snow owl came to him in his dreams.

“It is a great blessing, dear child,” the owl told him, “to be an evergreen tree.  With your bright needles, you sing to the world that life can endure the days of cold and of darkness.  You are a messenger of comfort, and hope, and promise.

“Those cousins of yours who gave their lives to be part of the humans’ celebrations receive special honors as their spirits return Home.  They expressed love beautifully through their earthly forms, and they offered them with thanksgiving.

“And while none of us knows in advance how long our earthly stays will be, or how our adventures will end, what a privilege it is to be one of those who gets to visit here.  Let your heart be glad, Little Pine, and your days filled with joy.  For we are all children of the Great Yes, and we are all dearly loved.”

Jack Frost was a little peeved with December.  (He had the temperament of an artist, after all.)

He had planned to start work in the forest two weeks ago.  But December let the warm weather go on and on.  Didn’t she know that he had to have cold?  Didn’t she care about his schedule at all?

He needed to create his jeweled designs!  He had orders from the Christmas elves for new ones, and they were up against an absolute deadline.  They had brooches to make, and earrings and pins.  She was holding up the whole show.  His reputation was on the line.

December, of course, hadn’t forgotten Jack, or Christmas, or the elves.  She laughed affectionately at his tantrums.  Someday, she sighed to herself, he will learn to trust that all things happen just as they should.

But now his day had finally come, and Jack rushed in, his irritation replaced with excitement.   He danced and laughed throughout the long night, tossing his frosty magic everywhere.  And when the sun rose in the morning, all the world shimmered with Jack’s jeweled designs.

The Christmas elves flew in to collect them, giggling their ooohs and aahhhs at every turn.  This was Jack’s finest work yet!

They returned to their workshop brimming with inspiration.  They could hardly wait to fashion their wares.

And as Jack slipped away from the day’s warming sun, he whispered, “Thank you, December.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Frost,” December said.  “You did a spectacular job.”