My Tree Family

Hello, my lovely Nettles!

This is a catch up post from some writing I wrote in August but never got around to posting, I wrote it after going to Activate, the tree planting festival that I talked about in this post "POST HERE"

There we were dancing together in the pouring rain, a jig you could say, mud clinging to our boots, our soaked high-neck jackets and drooping beanies with matching patches, twirling with pottiputki’s in hand and our buckets of saplings strapped to our hips. The cold wind making our noses and the tips of our clapping hands pink, whipping around us, saying, “you belong, these are your people”.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I went to my second Activate, to volunteer for 3 days and about exactly a year before that, I went to my first. That first time, I expected nothing more than a cold campground in the peak of winter. But what I found was the magic of Activate, a family of people who made feasts of vegan tofu curries with giant wooden spoons, plopped piles of steaming porridge and stewed pears and apples(that I cut) into your bowl, with bands(the flipping Nomadics gave my love and I a hand written note signed CD), artists, and a family of tree planters.

For me, a community like this, the feeling of belonging has been hard to find as a young person in a small, Australian country town. I've lived there my whole life, a town with one skatepark, one shop, surrounded by fields of canola and where the main demographic of people are older, tough farmers. Where, even though I've lived there my entire life, I still feel a slight bit of imposter syndrome. When I go to the one shop, that feeling of awkwardness sets in, or when we used to go to the club on Friday nights before realising that the same conversations about the footy, rainfall and darts weren't ones that we could be a part of. It's that unexplainable feeling of being an outcast in your own town. Maybe it's a feeling synonymous with rural life, or perhaps it's a part of being a young person finding your place, but it's like you have to earn your way in and feeling like you never will, like youve never been there for long enough or it will always be to hard.

That's a part of why Activate is different to anything I’ve had before. It's a place where the crochet sign that I made( I stayed up at 2am the morning off threading the wire through the mandalas) and hung up above the hall doorframe had been silently wrapped in fairy lights and a big purple LED light hung up near it, by members of the crew, to illuminate it, to make the sign, and I feel seen. They didn't have to, no one asked them, but it was like they were thanking me and with their small gestures, softly, subtly saying “you belong here” and thats one of the most special, unique feelings I’ve ever felt.

(Ignore my blushing I was embarrassed everyone was looking at me and my signs)

I’ve often been told, especially by my family(especially my grandad) and even my friends, when I talk about Activate, that it sounds like I’ve joined some kind of cult with dirty-faced kids, drum circles, and people singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire. And yes, we did sing and dance around campfires, we did share songs, poems, and stories, we did fall asleep to the rhythmic beating of drumheads in our tents, we had long, lingering hugs and drank this funny really strong cocoa that felt like it went straight to my head. But that’s the point, the very things people laugh at are what make it powerful and special, the things that people think I’m silly for wanting or more craving are what makes me feel the most myself, the happiest.

That family feeling is made through all the little things. In the smoking ceremony and throwing sand over our shoulders, in the moments we sang in a field full of saplings we’d just tirelessly planted with the whipping, winter wind, in the circle singing them up so they can grow. Laughing together, eating together (purely vegan food because it's heaven there), teaching, creating, and learning, I was a part of the Boodalang(Pelicon) grow, and I was South East, we were the visionaries, who were tasked withh asking the people around us and the new ones we met, what there vision is. Over the short weekend, it begins to feel like you have spent a whole lifetime together.

The people there model to me the person that I want to become, someone full of knowledge about the environment, experts in conservation, people who have dedicated their lives, protectors, mentors, blockaders. And in the way they conduct themselves, the way they never rush, with mindfulness in every word, those who skip past the small talk, and immediately call you “my friend” upon meeting you.

I like to think of all these people I meet as different mosaics, lots of tiny intricate, but also big pieces of themselves, and these pieces get shared and taken away, broken into smaller pieces and glued back together, swapped and replaced, always changing an eternal sharing. That's how it is with the people within Activate, each interaction, each conversation, feels like the person is sharing their most precious pieces of their own being's mosaic, like a living artwork.

A moment that will never leave me came by the big crackling fire, standing in a wide circle listening to Ollie, one of the main crew members, telling us how grateful he is, how an experience like this is so special, how we are “a mob” and as he said those finishing words the dark sky lit up with giant flaming comet, with a greenish streaking tail, that you could see the twinkling sparkles within it fly through the stars, lasting for almost a whole minute, making sure we all saw it. As we ran, yipping and cheering for the sight, it was like the comet was almost joining us, binding us together, like it was saying that even the stars were a part of our mob as well.

A moment that will never leave me came by the big crackling fire, standing in a wide circle listening to Ollie, one of the main crew members, telling us how The people at Activate describe themselves as a family, more specifically “Our Tree Family” or “Ngala Boola Moort”, and that's really how it feels. When a big group of people can come together and become so interconnected, it feels like you are one big mycelium network with interwoven roots, one big ecosystem, a Tree Family.

I come back from there feeling so tired, a bit sore, but so incredibly fulfilled, filled with joy and peace, a feeling of serenity, feeling nourished, and every time slightly changed. When I come back to what feels like the real world out of this dream, I get that same feeling of imposter syndrome, a feeling of needing to earn my place. The jokes about vegan food, getting called an “extremist” a few too many times, a “greeny” or “treehugger” or even a “commie” or being treated like you don’t understand things, becasue your young, those looks that people give you like “this is just the way of the world, you’ll understand one day” that shocking jolt back to reality. In this “real world”, it can be a little too easy to lose faith, to feel like you will never find your space. But Activate feels like it restores all the parts of yourself that you start to put to rest in this so called “real world”.

I, like a lot of rural young people, used to think that I needed to leave the country, my little hometown, to find my people, but going to Activate makes me realise that my people are all around me already; it's just when they all come together that you can see, like rivers, lakes and puddles running into one great ocean. When you're with them, it doesn’t just feel like you belong, that you've found a family, but it also magically teaches you who you are and who you want to be.

With mud cracked into my skin, in the beauty of Lake Nunijup, dancing in the pouring rain, honouring spirits on the land, around the fire, in smoke, with echoing singing voices, I found my belonging from the people and from nature itself.

Go well, and spread your magic into the world.

All my love!

Nettle