Have you ever spoken to a non-human before? Have you ever admitted doing it anyway? By non-human I mean a stone, tree, bird, or animal. An animal that is wild, not the dogs, or cats that you care for, a real wild animal, a real wild living being. A living being who isn’t domesticated, or dependent on the civilised.

I am not ashamed to admit that I have. The most important conversation I had with a non-human was with a tree. I had had some talks with a wild Crested Pigeon who used to come into my yard because I gave him (him I think, I didn’t ask him/her if he/she was a male or female) seeds. The talks didn’t really amount to much more than hello and goodbye, and from him/her, please give me something to eat.

The really important conversation was with a very old River Red Gum tree. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy my little chat with the pigeon. He/She was lovely. I love the company of birds. The River Red Gum stands in a Kaurna owned park called Warriparinga in a southern suburb of Adelaide. The Kaurna people had to struggle very hard to get the land back from the white civilised psychopaths. Land that they always owned. This tree is old enough to have a scar on its side that was made from a Kaurna warrior cutting out a bark shield. Somehow the tree survived being on a white farm, and then on a white civilised corporate/government brainwashing institution/prison for children, called a school.

I have cared about the destruction of living beings, and the living landbase for years now. For quite some time I have also been aware of how insane most civilised people are. They have been driven crazy by the system. It took quite a while to discover that. I realised that civilised people who are sane are quite rare in Adelaide. At times I thought that I had found one or two, but they turned out to be crazy as well. The few truly sane people I have found are at the other end of books, and living in other countries. Like Derrick Jensen, or John Zerzan.

So, I felt that civilisation was destroying the living landbase, and most of the civilised people I knew were too insane to either want to do something about it, or too insane to care. I also didn’t know what to do to save the landbase myself. Derrick Jensen’s advice was to ask a tree or wild river what to do. So I did.

It took me some time to gather the courage to actually do it, because it’s insane to talk to trees, or rivers isn’t it? It is schizophrenic isn’t it? Or, is it? George W Bush claimed to have spoken to god, and god told him to kill innocent civilians in Iraq, so if he can do that, then talking to trees must be a bit normal, right?. If George W Bush can talk to a pure abstraction, something that I don’t believe exists, then me talking to a tree, a real living being, must not be so crazy. The tree is a survivor of the holocaust by civilization against all living beings. A holocaust that will not end until all life is exterminated on earth, unless it is stopped. So is talking to a beautiful River Red Gum tree so crazy? I don’t think so anyway.

On the Internet I read about the remains of a River Red Gum in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens. Before the white invasion of the Adelaide Plains, there had been a River Red Gum forest around the what is now called the River Torrens which runs though the center of the CBD of Adelaide, well sort of the center. That dead tree was all that was left of that original forest. I visited that dead tree but didn’t talk to it because I didn’t think that a dead tree could, or would talk to me. Maybe I was wrong, I just might go and find out. I felt very inspired by being near that dead tree trunk though. I could imagine the Kaurna people sitting around it, or camping under its branches. What is left of that tree is hollow, and it has burn marks on the inside. Maybe some Kaurna people used that tree to camp in at some time. After that visit, I somehow found out about a tree that had a scar in the shape of a warrior shield on its side. The tree was still living, and I thought that it must be very old.

Then there was the weeks of procrastinating about going and talking to the tree, I finally got up the courage to go and see it, and talk to it. I wanted to know from the tree what I should do to help bring down industrial civilisation. When I asked that question, the tree gave absolutely no indication that I shouldn’t do something to bring down industrial civilisation. Maybe I hoped that it would, but it didn’t. Almost as soon as I started asking the tree questions, after I had said hello, and sat quietly next to it for a few minutes out of respect, the tree started talking back and answering my questions. I asked the questions inside my head, and the tree answered inside my head as well. I know that sounds crazy, but the tree has no way of making sounds on its own. Trees have no mouths. So it’s about being in a deep meditative state, being together with the tree, and letting two minds come together. That is what deep rapport is. Like two people who are deeply in love, not having to say anything to each other, but know what the other is thinking. It’s sort of the same thing. Any sense of embarrassment will get in the way of being in a deep relationship with the tree, and therefore block any communication. Which, come to think of it, is one of the reasons civilised people are so easy to convince that all non-humans are dead.

The tree gave me the answer. All you have to do is ask the landbase what you have to do to destroy the psychotic system that is killing the planet, and it will tell you.