You are nested on the soft pine needles and warm sand under a pine tree. The wind is music in the canopy, swaying limbs its instruments. 
Your face is tickled by the shade of the long pine needles that are nestled together. 
Two monarch butterflies catch your eye. In their courtship dance, they twirl and spirale out of sight until they come back again.
Mesmerized by the colors of a blue summer sky, green pine needles and the distinguished Monarch orange you are taken in.
You close your eyes for a restful nap and you are dreamed back to life as a Pine Sister on an ancient mountain grove.

You are bursting with life. 
You are so much more than yourself.
A witness of the past and provider for the future. 
You are a home. 

There are song birds nesting in your tree tops of which you have seen many generations come and go.
Where there used to be your fingers, you find cobwebs between your twigs. There is an ant street tickling its way up your trunk, meandering where your vertebrae used to be.
You are dressed in lichen, your new coat. Your new scent reminiscent of bourbon and vanilla that now is emanating from you.

And that lets everyone in its reach take a few very deep breaths.

This scent is your enticing perfume now. It has the power to slow down, which bypassing wanderers have done. Time and again.
Around you is the soil that nourishes you. And that speaks of your friend sandstone.
The soil that is held together by your roots. The soil that is also remembering the pieces of you. Needles. Cones. Bark.

You also remember the times when you and your sisters were on fire.
You remember the times when you burnt. You burnt for this world and you burnt for life.
Black scars on your bark still tell those stories. And yet, you did not burn to the ground
You are still standing. Taller than ever. And you have seen the new life that has been coming forth of the seeds that burst open. Finally releasing their future.

And you have seen that future sprout, grow, bloom, bear fruit. May you hold that vision of a future.
A phoenix. A beacon. A better tomorrow arising from the ashes.

As you are slowly waking up from your dream, you are returning to your own skin and the boundaries of your body.
Let us be present under this very pine tree. Let us grow roots from our feet to the pine tree so that they may be intertwined.
May we be grounded firmly in the presence of each other and the resident pine sister.
May we let those roots be a net for whatever comes up tonight.

This meditation came to life for two things. First: my fascination for Pine Mountain in Ventura County. And my hope that the pine trees will be rescued from a proposed logging project from the Forest Service. Secondly: I was asked if I could share a meditation for our Women’s Circle that we held the night before the election. While thinking about it, I came back to the life-death-rebirth cycle of things. For our Circle I asked everyone to bring a piece of pine to hold on to during the meditation. Afterwards we held a little burning ceremony for the things we wanted to release. With the clear intention to let go of emotions, thoughts, habits, relationship patterns that didn’t serve us anymore or that needed to be released for something new to thrive, we burnt our pieces of pine after we shared. We moved to a song as the smoke transformed our pieces of pine to ashes.