The other day I went to visit The Scowl, a tree fungus that appears to be making a horrendous face.  I hadn't visited it since last year.  It's still on its stump, in a bog, a decent walk from home.  It was my first long walk of Autumn, to a destination I associate with the declining year, and it was calling to me.  The swampy area where The Scowl grows is a beautiful mess of willows and alders, black spruce, bluish alpine fir, and silvering aspen.  Nature has reclaimed the area from human use, which makes it all the more powerful.  I strongly feel that the whole area is Inhabited, by what I don't know.  Tree spirits or Otherfolk, who tolerate humans up to a point, then advise them it's time to leave.  I have felt this every time I have been there.  The pine peninsula is downright creepy in a wind.  Su-u-ure, it's just the wind making the trees creak, just when you're wondering if it's time to head home.  Right.

I will continue my studies of local trees, starting with those I saw on today's walk at the bog.  I'm glad that the approach I'm using is used by at least one other person on the planet, but I'm also puzzled at how different sources can come up with such completely different correspondences for the same tree.  After I'd made my own observations about trembling aspen, I looked up a couple of sites' opinions.  One said that the aspen represented transformation and vision; the other said that it was odious, and aspen wands were used for cursing!  I have not yet cut a wand to see how it feels in the hand, but I do remember handling wands of different woods and noticing, against my disbelief, that they had very different energetic feels.  I tucked the evidence of my senses away in a safe place for some other year, and that year has arrived.

From observing the aspen trees' habits, I notice:

-they like areas that are open to the light.

-they grow in clonal stands, but as they mature, they show individuality, with strange twists and bends at the tops of their columnar white trunks, just before they start branching.

-a waxy bloom covers the trunks, making them appear a dull, metallic, greenish grey in youth and when moist.

-the leaves tremble in unfelt breezes.

-leaves turn true yellow in autumn--primary yellow.

-leaf miners are the cause of the green leaves silvering, and turning white-gold in autumn.

-most of a tree's leaves can be so inhabited, while the tree shows no ill effect overall.

-leafminers make labyrinthine tunnels in the leaves, no two leaves appearing to have the same maze.

To me, trembling aspen represents life's journey:  individuating; undertaking the unique journeys of the sacred labyrinth and its apparent ordeals that do no actual harm; undergoing alchemical transformation to silver and gold; and attuning to spirit, which must be what moves the leaves when there's no wind.