Forest Canopy Quotes

Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.

There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxi cation so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.

All of these things had been stored away for her to pass along someday, relics to be carried up the branches of the family tree. But the family tree stopped growing long ago, its canopy thinned and frayed, not a single sap springing from the old rotting trunk. Some trees aren't meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.

But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered. And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination-in many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all!

I hope that you are a disaster. I'm sorry, but I do. I hope that you are thunder and lightning. I hope you are a forest fire, I hope you kill the dead wood and burn off the rotting leaves. With the canopy gone, the sun can get in. You need new growth. I hope you're terrible and broken and perfect.

Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.

A trail made of pine needles and thistles leads you into the green darkness. The canopy casts shadows on old oaks and dogwoods, and you think you can smell the sour breath of a witch behind you. The wind sighs like a sleeping girl, carrying her bittersweet dreams along the paths to attract any man willing to look for thorn-covered castles. A wolf darts between fallen, rotted wood; maybe he’s the one who can tell you where your heart is, how you’re still breathing.

Inkblot shadows of the canopy swayed and rolled on the forest floor in the cloudy light, almost as if the ground itself was moving.

Water fell from the sky and dripped from the branches, streaming down the gully of the trail. I walked beneath the enormous trees, the forest canopy high above me, the bushes and low-growing plants that edged the trail soaking me as I brushed past. Wet and miserable as it was, the forest was magical—Gothic in its green grandiosity, both luminous and dark, so lavish in its fecundity that it looked surreal, as if I were walking through a fairy tale rather than the actual world.

In many places along this narrow, curving strand of pavement, the forest threads tree limbs overhead in a latticework canopy that leads one to think of the sacredness of cathedrals.  Once you enter this hallowed space, the temperature drops dramatically and a world of virtual silence wraps you in a cocoon of serenity and grace.  For Kate, it is a destination in and of itself, this magnificent temple of embracing trees, limbs arching overhead with long arms of wooded skin, reaching for their beloved partners on the other side of the road, seeking communion and the joining of lovers.

If you’ve managed to keep a creature in your fridge for longer than most Americans remain married, you probably know a thing or two about it. Tardigrades are found on every continent and at nearly all elevations: in deep-sea trenches, burbling hot springs, forest canopies, and desert dunes.

As I sit, my back leaning against a damp, moss-covered tree trunk, my eyes sweeping the canopy above, my ears straining to catch the crack of a distant branch that betrays an orangutan moving in the treetops, I think about how we humans search for God. The tropical rain forest is the most complex thing an ordinary human can experience on this planet. A walk in the rain forest is a walk into the mind of God.

He looks up. Again, it is there in the sky. The planet of awesome size, lit by no sun. An invisible titan, all thick black forests and jagged mountains and deep, turbulent oceans. It is very close now. So close that he wonders if he could touch it. As he reaches up, he thinks he sees movement on its surface. Through the canopy of the forests and upon the slopes of the mountains and on the shores of the churning ocean. People maybe. Crowds of people all wrapped in white cloth. They are leaning into each other like dropped puppets. They sway lifelessly. He feels horror in the back of his throat, but still he reaches up.  He can’t help himself. It’s just what he does next.

Forest air is the epitome of healthy air. People who want to take a deep breath of fresh air or engage in physical activity in a particularly agreeable atmosphere step out into the forest. There's every reason to do so. The air truly is considerably cleaner under the trees, because the trees act as huge air filters. Their leaves and needles hang in a steady breeze, catching large and small particles as they float by. Per year and square mile this can amount to 20,000 tons of material. Trees trap so much because their canopy presents such a large surface area. In comparison with a meadow of a similar size, the surface area of the forest is hundreds of times larger, mostly because of the size difference between trees and grass. The filtered particles contain not only pollutants such as soot but also pollen and dust blown up from the ground. It is the filtered particles from human activity, however, that are particularly harmful. Acids, toxic hydrocarbons, and nitrogen compounds accumulate in the trees like fat in the filter of an exhaust fan above a kitchen stove. But not only do trees filter materials out of the air, they also pump substances into it. They exchange scent-mails and, of course, pump out phytoncides, both of which I have already mentioned.

She was a wonder junkie. In her mind, she was a hill tribesman standing slack-jawed before the real Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon; Dorothy catching her first glimpse of the vaulted spires of the Emerald City of Oz; a small boy from darkest Brooklyn plunked down in the Corridor of Nations of the 1939 World’s Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere beckoning in the distance; she was Pocahontas sailing up the Thames estuary with London spread out before her from horizon to horizon. been voyaging between the stars when the ancestors of humans were still brachiating from branch to branch in the dappled sunlight of the forest canopy. Drumlin, like many others she had known over the years, had called her an incurable romantic; and she found herself wondering again why so many people thought it some embarrassing disability. Her romanticism had been a driving force in her life and a fount of delights. Advocate and practitioner of romance, she was off to see the Wizard.

In a designed economy there would be no trees, or certainly no very tall trees: no forests, no canopy. Trees are a waste. Trees are extravagant. Tree trunks are standing monuments to futile competition - futile if we think in terms of a planed economy. But the natural economy is not planned. Individual plants compete with other plants, of the same and other species, and the result is that they grow taller and taller, far taller than any planner would recommend.

There may be ten million different species on the earth, or a hundred million species. The forest canopy is the earth's secret ocean, and it is inhabited by many living things that don't have names, and are vanishing before they have even been seen by human eyes.

Imagine,” Tyler said, "stalking elk past department store windows and stinking racks of beautiful rotting dresses and tuxedos on hangers; you’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life, and you’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. Jack and the beanstalk, you’ll climb up through the dripping forest canopy and the air will be so clean you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn and laying strips of venison to dry in the empty car pool lane of an abandoned superhighway stretching eight-lanes-wide and August-hot for a thousand miles.

Do you know why the leaves change colour, Makin?" They did look spectacular. The forest had grown around us as we traveled and the canopy burned with colour, from deepest red to flame orange, an autumn fire spreading in defiance of the rain. "I don't know," he said, "Why do they change?" "Before a tree sheds a leaf it pumps it full of all the poison it can't rid itself of otherwise. That red there—that's a man's skin blotching with burst veins after an assassin spikes his last meal with roto-weed. The poison spreading through him before he dies.

Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance. When thick silver-gray beeches behave like this, they remind me of a herd of elephants. Like the herd, they, too, look after their own, and they help their sick and weak back up onto their feet. They are even reluctant to abandon their dead. Every tree is a member of this community, but there are different levels of membership. For example, most stumps rot away into humus and disappear within a couple of hundred years (which is not very long for a tree). Only a few individuals are kept alive over the centuries, like the mossy "stones" I've just described. What's the difference? Do tree societies have second-class citizens just like human societies? It seems they do, though the idea of "class" doesn't quite fit. It is rather the degree of connection-or maybe even affection-that decides how helpful a tree's colleagues will be. You can check this out for yourself simply by looking up into the forest canopy. The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn't grow any wider because the air and better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there's quite a shoving match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other's direction. The trees don't want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of "non-friends." Such partners are often so tightly connected at the roots that sometimes they even die together.

You are a child no longer, whatever you might wish. You are a woman with a woman's body, and you do not think or feel as you did back there at Sevenwaters, when you ran wild in the forest and the trees spread their canopy to shelter you. Men will look at you. Come to terms with it, Sorcha. You cannot hide forever. They will look at you with desire in their eyes. You were taken against your will, and it damaged you. But life goes on.

The moss on the forest floor comforted her bare feet, and she had felt protected by the canopy of leaves, had felt the wind to be a voice that rushed through her hair for no other purpose than to speak to her alone. How well she had known God, then. How unknotted her soul. How easy to be.

The canopy of trees overhead is so thick that only bits and pieces of blue sky can be seen overhead. Narrow rays of sunshine slice their way between the tree branches; slanted silver swords lighting my way.

He was a loving god. Together, we were a man and a woman, making love in the forest, unconcerned with the snapping of nearby twigs or the passing of time as the sun peeked through the thinning forest canopy.

We’re all honorary citizens of that primal forest, and our burdens and weaknesses always remain. They are an ineradicable part of ourselves; they are our humanity. But when we bring light, the day becomes ours and their power to determine our future is diminished. This is the way it works. The trick is, you can only brighten the forest from beneath the canopy of its trees . . . from within. To bring the light, you must first make your way through the bramble-filled darkness. Safe travels.” Excerpt From: Born to Run

Only these four eyes can see the reflection of us, for the soul never lies confronted with its truth. Like the forest that's hiding the secrets in thick canopies, but the string of light always makes its way through.

Standing beside her grandmother's deathbed, woolen dress still smelling of black logwood dye, Ade had felt the way a sapling might as it watched one of the old forest giants come crashing magnificently to rest: awed, and perhaps a little frightened. But when Mama Larson's final breath rattled from her ribs, Ade discovered the same thing the young sapling would have: in the absence of the old tree, there was a hole in the canopy above her.

— If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills, with warm blood and cold. With feathers and scales. Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy you’ll want to breathe with the spiral calls of birds, while your lashing tail still gropes for the waes. You’ll try to haul your weight from simple sea to gravity of land. Caught by the tide, in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments suffocating in both water and air. If love wants you, suddently your past is obsolete science. Old maps, disproved theories, a diorama. The moment our bodies are set to spring open. The immanence that reassembles matter passes through us then disperses into time and place: the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons. The mother who hears her child crying upstairs and suddenly feels her dress wet with milk. Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew before we were loved there, the places left fallow when we’re born, waiting for experience to find its way into us. The night crossing, on deck in the dark car. On the beach wehre night reshaped your face. In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet, moss like velvet spread over splintered forms. The instant spray freezes in air above the falls, a gasp of ice. We rise, hearing our names called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon an escutcheon on the shield of sky. The current that passes through us, radio waves, electric lick. The billions of photons that pass through film emulsion every second, the single submicroscopic crystal struck that becomes the phograph. We look and suddenly the world looks back. A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky. — But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate by the rear-view mirror of the moon; if we continue to reach both for salt and for the sweet white nibs of grass growing closest to earth; if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also driving through the canyon at night, all around us the hidden glow of limestone erased by darkness; if still we sish we’d waited for morning, we will know ourselves nowhere. Not in the mirrors of waves or in the corrading stream, not in the wavering glass of an apartment building, not in the looming light of night lobbies or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen or in the motel where we watched meteors from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open, turned stars to rain. We will become indigestible. Afraid of choking on fur and armour, animals will refuse the divided longings in our foreing blue flesh. — In your hands, all you’ve lost, all you’ve touched. In the angle of your head, every vow and broken vow. In your skin, every time you were disregarded, every time you were received. Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field, mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem. The branch that’s released when the bird lifts or lands. In a summer kitchen. On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.

Mossflower lay deep in the grip of midwinter beneath a sky of leaden gray that showed tinges of scarlet and orange on the horizon. A cold mantle of snow draped the landscape, covering the flatlands to the west. Snow was everywhere, filling ditches, drifting high against hedgerows, making paths invisible, smoothing the contours of earth in its white embrace. The gaunt, leafless ceiling of Mossflower Wood was penetrated by constant snowfall, which carpeted the sprawling woodland floor, building canopies on evergreen shrubs and bushes. Winter had muted the earth; the muffled stillness was broken only by a traveler’s paws.

All of these things had been stored away for her to pass along someday, relics to be carried up the branches of the family tree. But the family tree stopped growing long ago, its canopy thinned and frayed, not a single sap springing from the old rotting trunk. Some trees aren’t meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.

When you enter the woods of a fairy tale and it is night, the trees tower on either side of the path. They loom large because everything in the world of fairy tales is blown out of proportion. If the owl shouts, the otherwise deathly silence magnifies its call. The tasks you are given to do (by the witch, by the stepmother, by the wise old woman) are insurmountable - pull a single hair from the crescent moon bear's throat; separate a bowl's worth of poppy seeds from a pile of dirt. The forest seems endless. But when you do reach the daylight, triumphantly carrying the particular hair or having outwitted the wolf; when the owl is once again a shy bird and the trees only a lush canopy filtering the sun, the world is forever changed for your having seen it otherwise. From now on, when you come upon darkness, you'll know it has dimension. You'll know how closely poppy seeds and dirt resemble each other. The forest will be just another story that has absorbed you, taken you through its paces, and cast you out again to your home with its rattling windows and empty refrigerator - to your meager livelihood, which demands, inevitably, that you write about it.

The pale morning sun filters through the forest canopy around us. I imagine my dewy rosebush soaking it up, photosynthesizing like crazy. The coo of a mourning dove echoes, somehow soothing my heart. Sometimes I feel so entangled with the West Virginia seasons, it's like I'm breathing through them.

It was rapture, the oldest feeling, a sensation like rising from the thick canopy of forest and turning, looking out over the treetops, seeing the world again, for the first time.

Quinn’s expression deepens from forest to fire, the black of midnight canopies and rotten mulch.

The road goes west out of the village, past open pine woods and gallberry flats. An eagle's nest is a ragged cluster of sticks in a tall tree, and one of the eagles is usually black and silver against the sky. The other perches near the nest, hunched and proud, like a griffon. There is no magic here except the eagles. Yet the four miles to the Creek are stirring, like the bleak, portentous beginning of a good tale. The road curves sharply, the vegetation thickens, and around the bend masses into dense hammock. The hammock breaks, is pushed back on either side of the road, and set down in its brooding heart is the orange grove. Any grove or any wood is a fine thing to see. But the magic here, strangely, is not apparent from the road. It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway, to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind. By this, an act of faith is committed, through which one accepts blindly the communion cup of beauty. One is now inside the grove, out of one world and in the mysterious heart of another. Enchantment lies in different things for each of us. For me, it is in this: to step out of the bright sunlight into the shade of orange trees; to walk under the arched canopy of their jadelike leaves; to see the long aisles of lichened trunks stretch ahead in a geometric rhythm; to feel the mystery of a seclusion that yet has shafts of light striking through it. This is the essence of an ancient and secret magic. It goes back, perhaps, to the fairy tales of childhood, to Hansel and Gretel, to Babes in the Wood, to Alice in Wonderland, to all half-luminous places that pleased the imagination as a child. It may go back still farther, to racial Druid memories, to an atavistic sense of safety and delight in an open forest. And after long years of spiritual homelessness, of nostalgia, here is that mystic loveliness of childhood again. Here is home. An old thread, long tangled, comes straight again.

Like sparks of light bursting from the earth, Peaches and her spirit animal dove up from the root system all at once, then ran over and through the leaves on the forest canopy, as water-worn rocks appeared beneath their feet the closer they got to the creek. A moment or so later, they were diving underneath the fast current of the shallow water, spiraling downward toward a bright beam of light emanating from the very bottom of the creek.

Trees stand at the heart of ecology, and they must come to stand at the heart of human politics. Tagore said, Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. But people—oh, my word—people! People could be the heaven that the Earth is trying to speak to. “If we could see green, we’d see a thing that keeps getting more interesting the closer we get. If we could see what green was doing, we’d never be lonely or bored. If we could understand green, we’d learn how to grow all the food we need in layers three deep, on a third of the ground we need right now, with plants that protected one another from pests and stress. If we knew what green wanted, we wouldn’t have to choose between the Earth’s interests and ours. They’d be the same!” One more click takes her to the next slide, a giant fluted trunk covered in red bark that ripples like muscle. “To see green is to grasp the Earth’s intentions. So consider this one. This tree grows from Colombia to Costa Rica. As a sapling, it looks like a piece of braided hemp. But if it finds a hole in the canopy, the sapling shoots up into a giant stem with flaring buttresses.” She turns to regard the image over her shoulder. It’s the bell of an enormous angel’s trumpet, plunged into the Earth. So many miracles, so much awful beauty. How can she leave so perfect a place? “Did you know that every broadleaf tree on Earth has flowers? Many mature species flower at least once a year. But this tree, Tachigali versicolor, this one flowers only once. Now, suppose you could have sex only once in your entire life. . . .” The room laughs now. She can’t hear, but she can smell their nerves. Her switchback trail through the woods is twisting again. They can’t tell where their guide is going. “How can a creature survive, by putting everything into a one-night stand? Tachigali versicolor’s act is so quick and decisive that it boggles me. You see, within a year of its only flowering, it dies.” She lifts her eyes. The room fills with wary smiles for the weirdness of this thing, nature. But her listeners can’t yet tie her rambling keynote to anything resembling home repair. “It turns out that a tree can give away more than its food and medicines. The rain forest canopy is thick, and wind-borne seeds never land very far from their parent. Tachigali’s once-in-a-lifetime offspring germinate right away, in the shadow of giants who have the sun locked up. They’re doomed, unless an old tree falls. The dying mother opens a hole in the canopy, and its rotting trunk enriches the soil for new seedlings. Call it the ultimate parental sacrifice. The common name for Tachigali versicolor is the suicide tree.

He had entered an endless subterranean cavern, where jeweled rocks loomed out of the spectral gloom like marine plants, the sprays of glass forming white fountains. Several times he crossed and recrossed the road. The spurs were almost waist-high, and he was forced to climb over the brittle stems. Once, as he rested against the trunk of a bifurcated oak, an immense multi-colored bird erupted from a bough over his head, and flew off with a wild screech, aureoles of light cascading from its red and yellow wings. At last the storm subsided, and a pale light filtered through the stained-glass canopy. Again, the forest was a place of rainbows, a deep, iridescent light glowing from within.

Alice haunted the mossy edge of the woods, lingering in patches of shade. She was waiting to hear his Austin-Healey throttle back when he careened down the utility road separating the state park from the cabins rimming the lake, but only the whistled conversation of buntings echoed in the branches above. The vibrant blue males darted deeper into the trees when she blew her own 'sweet-sweet chew-chew sweet-sweet' up to theirs. Pine seedlings brushed against her pants as she pushed through the understory, their green heads vivid beneath the canopy. She had dressed to fade into the forest; her hair was bundled up under a long-billed cap, her clothes drab and inconspicuous. When at last she heard his car, she crouched behind a clump of birch and made herself as small as possible, settling into a shallow depression of ferns and leaf litter.

Sophie picked her way through the forest, stepping over tree roots, and pushing aside low-lying branches, letting them snap back behind her with reckless abandon. The sun barely squeaked through the canopy of leaves above her, and down at ground level, it felt more like dusk than midday.

Much as the sweeping canopy of the oak draws its vitality and luster from its roots, majesty draws its power from the hidden things that both feed it and inspire it. Therefore, we would be wise to attend to the hidden things as without them majesty might venture into a forest, but it will never grow one.

Great stems rose about me, uplifting a thick multitudinous roof above me of branches, and twigs, and leaves-- the bird and insect world uplifted over mine, with its own landscapes, its own thickets, and paths, and glades, and dwellings; its own bird-ways and insect-delights. Great boughs crossed my path; great roots based the tree-columns, and mightily clasped the earth, strong to lift and strong to uphold. It seemed an old, old forest, perfect in forest ways and pleasure. And when, in the midst of this ectasy, I remembered that under some close canopy of leaves, by some giant stem, or in some mossy cave, or beside some leafy well, sat the lady of marble, whom my songs had called forth into the outer world, waiting (might it not be?) to meet and thank her deliverer in a twilight which would veil her confusion, the whole night became one dream-realm of joy, the central form of which was everywhere present, although unbeheld. Then, remembering how my songs seemed to have called her form the marble, piercing through the pearly shroud of alabaster -- "Why," thought I, "should not my voice reach her now, through the ebon night that inwraps her." My voice burst into song so spontaneously that it seemed involuntarily:

According to Massimo Maffei from the University of Turin, plants-and that includes trees-are perfectly capable of distinguishing their own roots from the roots of other species and even from the roots of related individuals. But why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never reach old age. Regular fatalities would result in many large gaps in the tree canopy, which would make it easier for storms to get inside the forest and uproot more trees. The heat of summer would reach teh forest floor and dry it out. Every tree would suffer.

The woods were definitely changing. Aurora and Phillip could no longer see the sky at all because of the ancient tall trees that stretched far overhead. Pines and other shaggy-barked species shot a hundred feet straight up on massive trunks, some of which were as thick around as a small house. The canopies that spread out at their tops blocked out most of the sun; only a rare dappled shaft made it through. But it didn't feel claustrophobic. The absence of light kept the underbrush low: moss on ancient fallen logs, puddles of shade flowers, mushrooms and tiny lilies. It was airy and endless like the largest cathedral ever imagined.

I cannot concern myself with the intolerable affections and frivolous actions of a cruel, selfish, and litigious society. I must treasure the invisible muteness and inherent intelligence that nature blessed me with at birth. I shall endeavor to find beauty in living, striving, suffering, and dying in nature’s glorious wonderland of grasslands, forest, rivers, and seas situated under an of infinite canopy of glittering stars. Perhaps when I reach the end of this long scroll I will finally leave behind me the tragic sense of ignobly that haunts my nights and begin living in a world filled with infinite sunshine and boundless delight.

But that was how it had to go, for the death of a rotten tree is always rapid: one violent shake and over it goes. Its broad canopy, which for many years rose up in its place in the forest, has suddenly vanished. For a while there is a space in the forest cover, but soon the space is filled by new growth, as if nothing had happened.

Giant hogweed is considered extremely dangerous because its sap, in combination with ultraviolet light, can burn human skin. Every year, millions are spent digging up plants and destroying them, without any great success. However, hogweed can spread only because the original forested meadows along the banks of rivers and streams no longer exist. If these forests were to return, it would be so dark under the forest canopy that hogweed would disappear. The same goes for Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed, which also grow on the riverbanks in the absence of the forests. Trees could solve the problem if people trying to improve things would only allow them to take over.

They weave between the trees and bracken, leaves and sticks cracking beneath their feet, grey flints and white chalk jutting like shards of bone glinting through the soil. Out of the direct sunlight, the air is soft and green, as if they walk through cool water. The further they go, the thicker the insidious ivy scaling the beech tree trunks and the denser the canopy.

I explored the literature of tree-climbing, not extensive, but so exciting. John Muir had swarmed up a hundred-foot Douglas Spruce during a Californian windstorm, and looked out over a forest, 'the whole mass of which was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-fire!' Italo Calvino had written his The Baron in the Trees, Italian editionmagical novel, The Baron in the Trees, whose young hero, Cosimo, in an adolescent huff, climbs a tree on his father's forested estate and vows never to set foot on the ground again. He keeps his impetuous word, and ends up living and even marrying in the canopy, moving for miles between olive, cherry, elm, and holm oak. There were the boys in B.B.'s Brendan Chase, who go feral in an English forest rather than return to boarding-school, and climb a 'Scotch pine' in order to reach a honey buzzard's nest scrimmed with beech leaves. And of course there was the realm of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin: Pooh floating on his sky-blue balloon up to the oak-top bee's nest, in order to poach some honey; Christopher ready with his pop-gun to shoot Pooh's balloon down once the honey had been poached....

... neither the metaphor of ‘melting pot’ nor of ‘salad bowl’ can accurately explain Indian culture. My preferred metaphor is that of the Rain Forest. The ‘tropical rain forest’ characteristically has a number of layers, each with a variety of flora and fauna adapted for life in that particular layer. The layers include the uppermost ‘emergent’ layer that rises above to form the canopy of the forest, the ‘under-story’ and finally the ‘forest floor’, the foundational core. This emergent layer has its roots in the forest floor that is full of shrubs, vines and fungi... A ‘bird’s-eye view’ cannot reveal this rootedness, the underlying substratum, the under-stories and the forest floor. If the metaphor of ‘tropical rain forest’ is applied to the Indus Valley Civilization, the citadels, the rulers, and the rich merchants with their maritime wealth, the urban structure and its finesse are comparable with the ‘emergent canopy’. Yet the bulk of the demography was at the root – the substratum, from which the mature urban cities emerged... The nature of its religion, the cultural practices, cockfights and bull-vaulting visually represent the ‘under-story’ of the IVC.

There was something wonderful about the atmosphere at Stony Cross Park. One could easily imagine it as some magical place set in some far-off land. The surrounding forest was so deep and thick as to be primeval in appearance, while the twelve-acre garden behind the manor seemed too perfect to be real. There were groves, glades, ponds, and fountains. It was a garden of many moods, alternating tranquility with colorful tumult. A disciplined garden, every blade of grass precisely clipped, the corners of the box hedges trimmed to knife blade crispness. Hatless, gloveless, and infused with a sudden sense of optimism, Annabelle breathed deeply of the country air. She skirted the edge of the terraced gardens at the back of the manor and followed a graveled path set between raised beds of poppies and geraniums. The atmosphere soon became thick with the perfume of flowers, as the path paralleled a drystone wall covered with tumbles of pink and cream roses. Wandering more slowly, Annabelle crossed through an orchard of ancient pear trees, sculpted by decades into fantastic shapes. Farther off, a canopy of silver birch led to woodland beds that appeared to melt seamlessly into the forest beyond.

that he had begun to long for clearings, fields, or even a mountain, instead of the endless tree trunks and meager underbrush. His flights with Saphira provided no respite as they only revealed hills of prickly green that rolled unbroken into the distance like a verdant sea. Oftentimes, the branches were so thick overhead, it was impossible to tell from what direction the sun rose and set. That, combined with the repetitive scenery, made Eragon hopelessly lost, no matter how many times Arya or Lifaen troubled to show him the points of the compass. If not for the elves, he knew that he could wander in Du Weldenvarden for the rest of his life without ever finding his way free. When it rained, the clouds and the forest canopy plunged them into profound darkness, as if they were entombed deep underground. The falling water would

There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut. There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness. The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine. On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy. Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair. The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?

The place on your back.” Dorian puts a hand up to his shoulder, touching the topmost edge of the very elaborate, very real tattoo that covers his back. The branches of a tree, the canopy of a forest of cherry blossoms, star-sparkling with lanterns and lights though all of that is background for the centerpiece: a tree stump covered in books dripping with honey under a beehive with an owl sitting atop it, wearing a crown.

Why the difference? We are one! Yes, we are one! We are one because we breathe the same air no matter where we go! Just as the fingers lean on the same hand for survival, so are we! God knew why He created the fingers with spaces! We are one! Let us not harm ourselves just because you don’t understand me and I don’t understand you! Let us miss misunderstanding, and we shall surely see that understanding! We are one! Just as the fingers come together to feed the same stomach that gives the hand they all stand on strength, so are we! When it is time for work, some of the fingers are very active and some stay dormant, but they all receive the same nutrient from the body! When it is time for thumbs-up, the thumb rises for the approval and glory and all other fingers come together in support of it! All the fingers have their own unique function that is vital for the good functioning of the hand! Let one finger get hurt, and you shall see how the others would never be comfortable! We are separated for a purpose, and we are one for a purpose! The glory of the thick forest is not in how the trees stand alone when you have a closer view, but how it looks so beautiful like a canopy from a distance! The difference is in how we see it! The difference is in how we understand it! Hello, we are one! The love of God is for all!

The jungle bristled with life. There were sloths, pumas, snakes, crocodiles; there were basilisk lizards that could run across the surface of water without sinking. In just a few hectares there lived as many woody plant species as in the whole of Europe. The diversity of the forest was reflected in the rich variety of field biologists who came there to study it. Some climbed trees and observed ants. Some set out at dawn every day to follow the monkeys. Some tracked the lightning that struck trees during tropical storms. Some spent their days suspended from a crane measuring ozone concentrations in the forest canopy. Some warmed up the soil using electrical elements to see how bacteria might respond to global heating. Some studied the way beetles navigate using the stars. Bumblebees, orchids, butterflies—there seemed to be no aspect of life in the forest that someone wasn’t observing.

Whenever the fame and the fury became too oppressive, Jesus found peace speaking to his Father among trees. If Jesus is our teacher, model, and savior, then we should follow his example. When we are tired, when we are discouraged, when we are frustrated, when we are downcast, we need to do what Jesus did: seek solace in the woods. Go to the forest, sit under the trees, and pray. There, beneath the canopy of shade-giving branches, we, like Jesus, can be still and know God (Psalm 46:10).

Naturally, Wendell's apartments are absurdly comfortable, and somehow there is the atmosphere of a forest about them, though I know this makes little sense. The ceilings are very high, rather like the canopy of an ancient grove--- I suspect he has enchanted them somehow--- and always there is the sound of rustling leaves, though this abruptly ceases if you listen too closely. I would have expected a lot of luxurious frippery from faerie royalty, but his furnishings are simple--- a scattering of sofas, impossible soft; a huge oak table; three magnificent inglenook fireplaces; and a great deal of empty floor through which an impossible little breeze is always stirring, smelling of moss. For decoration there is the mirror from Hrafnsvik with the forest reflected inside it and a few silver baubles, sculptures and vases and the like, which catch the light in unexpected ways, but that's it. And, of course, the place is so clean one feels one may sully it by breathing too hard.

One day in Sumatra, Steve was climbing into the forest canopy alongside a family of orangutans when he fell. A four-inch spike of bamboo jammed into the back of his leg. As always, he was loath to go to the hospital and successfully cut the spike of bamboo out of his own leg himself. Ever since I’d met him, Steve had refused to let me dress or have anything to do with any of his wounds. He didn’t even like to talk about his injuries. I think this was a legacy from his years alone in the bush. He had his own approach to being injured, and he called it “the goanna theory.” “Sometimes you’ll see a goanna that’s been hurt,” he said. “He may have been hit by a car and had a leg torn off. Maybe he’s missing a chunk of his tail. Does he walk around feeling sorry for himself? No. He goes about his business, hunting for food, looking for mates, climbing trees, and doing the best that he can.” That’s the goanna theory. Steve would take into consideration how debilitating the specific wound was, but then he would carry on. A bamboo spike in the back of his leg? Well, it hurt. But his leg still worked. He continued filming.

I thought that good was to be found neither in man, nor in the predatory world of animals and insects, but in the silent kingdom of the trees. Far from it! I saw the forest’s slow movements, the treacherous way it battled against grass and bushes for each inch of soil. First, billions of seeds fly through the air and begin to sprout, destroying grass and bushes. Then millions of victorious shoots wage war against one another. And it is only the survivors who enter into an alliance of equals to form the seamless canopy of the young deciduous forest. Beneath this canopy the spruces and beeches freeze to death in the twilight of penal servitude.

Only birds and the chittering and rustling of small animals sounded as I entered the still green western forest. I'd never ridden through these woods on my hunts with Lucien. There was no path here, nothing tame about it. Oaks, elms, and beeches intertwined in a thick weave, almost strangling the trickle of sunlight that crept in through the dense canopy. The moss-covered earth swallowed any sound I made. Old- this forest was ancient. And alive, in a way that I couldn't describe but could only feel, deep in the marrow of my bones. Perhaps I was the first human in five hundred years to walk beneath those heavy dark branches, to inhale the freshness of spring leaves masking the damp, thick rot.

They reached the summit of a shallow incline and were greeted with a surprising vista of bluebells that blanketed the forest floor. It was like stumbling into a dream, the cerulean haze seeping between the trunks of oak and beech and ash. The smell of bluebells was everywhere, the perfumed air feeling heavy and rich in her lungs. Pausing by a slender tree trunk, Annabelle curled her arm around it loosely and stared at the stands of bluebells with surprised pleasure. "Lovely," she murmured, her face gleaming in the shadow cast by the canopy of ancient, interlaced branches. "Yes." But Hunt was looking at her, not the bluebells, and one glance at his expression caused the blood to tingle in her veins.

He can climb anything lightning fast and is the king of the forest insofar as using the canopy as a highway. While his favorite food is voles, caught on the floors of forest and meadow, he much enjoys squirrels of all kinds and is the only hunter of squirrels who can follow them to the highest, thinnest branches; not even the fisher, eing heavier, can achieve that dangerous elevation. He eats everything else he can find, of course, but given his druthers, like today's late-summer bounty, he would have a vole for breakfast and then some thimbleberries and a cricket as a midmorning snack and then another vole for late lunch, followed by huckleberries in the afternoon, most of a dead White-crowned sparrow, some early white-oak acorns...and then, delightfully a young flying squirrel...

Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.

It is quiet in the clearing, though gradually Lillian's ears attune to the soft rustling of insects and birds moving through the undergrowth, the faraway tapping of a woodpecker high in a tree. Down on the ground, a bronze-colored beetle tries to scale the side of her shoe. It slips on the smooth leather and tumbles back into the dry leaves, waggling its legs in the air. She shifts slightly on the tree trunk then watches as Jack pulls a strand of grass from a clump growing nearby and sucks on one end, looking about at the canopy overhead. "Wonderful light," he murmurs. "I wish I hadn't left my sketchbook at the house." She knows she must say something. But the moment stretches and she can't find the words so instead she looks about, trying to see the clearing as he might, trying to view the world through an artist's eyes. What details would he pull from this scene, what elements would he commit to memory to reproduce on paper? A cathedral, he'd said; and she supposes there is something rather celestial and awe-inspiring about the tall, arched trees and the light streaming in golden shafts through the soft green branches, filtered as though through stained glass.

We stood upon a hill, green and studded with pale stones. Below us was forest, bluebells undulating among the trees, a tide of purple dissolving into shadow. There was a lake-- no, two lakes, the second a mere line of glitter in the distance. At our back, behind the nexus and extending to the northern horizon, were mountains of indigo and layered shadow, some darkened to black by the moody sky overhead, some greyed and smudged by shafts of sunlight. Must I even say it? It was beautiful--- of course it was. The forest in particular, which glinted here and there with silver as the wind rode the branches, as if someone had clambered into the canopy to hang baubles. And yet I had the sense that I was not seeing the entirety of it, that the shadows were thicker here, more obscuring, than those in the mortal realm, and many of the details were clouded by a dreamlike haze. Even now, as I write these words--- I am still in Wendell's kingdom!--- I find the memory of that view trying to slip from my mind like a bird darting through the boughs, so that I catch only the flickering edge of it. Perhaps there is some enchantment embedded in the place, or perhaps it is simply too much for my mortal eyes to take in. Where the Trees Have Eyes.

She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.

However, Rothschild was easily the most scientific collector of his age, though also the most regrettably lethal, for in the 1890s he became interested in Hawaii, perhaps the most temptingly vulnerable environment Earth has yet produced. Millions of years of isolation had allowed Hawaii to evolve 8,800 unique species of animals and plants. Of particular interest to Rothschild were the islands’ colorful and distinctive birds, often consisting of very small populations inhabiting extremely specific ranges. The tragedy for many Hawaiian birds was that they were not only distinctive, desirable, and rare—a dangerous combination in the best of circumstances—but also often heartbreakingly easy to take. The greater koa finch, an innocuous member of the honeycreeper family, lurked shyly in the canopies of koa trees, but if someone imitated its song it would abandon its cover at once and fly down in a show of welcome. The last of the species vanished in 1896, killed by Rothschild’s ace collector Harry Palmer, five years after the disappearance of its cousin the lesser koa finch, a bird so sublimely rare that only one has ever been seen: the one shot for Rothschild’s collection. Altogether during the decade or so of Rothschild’s most intensive collecting, at least nine species of Hawaiian birds vanished, but it may have been more. Rothschild was by no means alone in his zeal to capture birds at more or less any cost. Others in fact were more ruthless. In 1907 when a well-known collector named Alanson Bryan realized that he had shot the last three specimens of black mamos, a species of forest bird that had only been discovered the previous decade, he noted that the news filled him with “joy.

My blood froze as a creeping, leeching cold lurched by. I couldn't see anything, just a vague shimmering in the corner of my vision, but my horse stiffened beneath me. I willed my face in to blackness. Even the balmy spring woods seemed to recoil, to wither and freeze. The cold thing whispered past, circling. I could see nothing, but I could feel it. And in the back of my mind, an ancient hollow voice whispered: I will grind your bones between my claws; I will drink your marrow; I will feast on your flesh. I am what you fear; I am what you dread... Look at me. Look at me. I tried to swallow, but my throat had closed up. I kept my eyes on the trees, on the canopy, on anything but the cold mass circling us again and again. Look at me. I wanted to look- I needed to see what it was. Look at me. I stared at the coarse trunk of a distant elm, thinking of pleasant things. Like hot bread and full bellies- I will fill my belly with you. I will devour you. Look at me. A starry, unclouded night sky, peaceful and glittering and endless Summer sunrise. A refreshing bath in a forest pool. Meetings with Issac, losing myself for an hour or two in his body, in our shared breaths. It was all around us, so cold that my teeth chattered. Look at me. I stared and stared at the ever-nearing tree trunk, not daring to blink. My eyes strained, filling with tears, and I let them fall, refusing to acknowledge the thing that lurked around us. Look at me. And just as I thought I would give in, when my eyes so much from not looking, the cold disappeared in to the brush, leaving a trail of still, recoiling plants behind. Only after Lucien exhaled and our horses shook their heads did I dare sag in my seat. Even the crocuses seemed to straighten. 'What was that?' I asked, brushing the tears from my face. Lucien's face was still pale. 'You don't want to know.' 'Please. Was it that... Suriel you mentioned?' Lucien's russet eye was dark as he answered hoarsely. 'No. It was a creature that should not be in these lands. We call it the Bogge. You can not hunt it, and you cannot kill it. Even with your beloved ash arrows.' 'Why can't I look at it?' 'Because when you look at it- when you acknowledge it- that's when it becomes real. That's when it can kill you.

raking the ground, sweeping the bushes, even darting up to the forest canopy.

If Mr. Darwin were to be believed, then it was from the timeless dapple of the forest's canopy that men had first descended, and it was the forest's roots that drank men's bodies when they died, returned their vital salts back to the prehistoric treetops in gold elevator cages made of sap.

To return to the peaceful forest, its healing green canopies. To return to the ashram community, where everyone trusts and accepts me,

This was true mountain country, now, and true wilderness. Valley meadows, leafy trees halfway up the slopes, then evergreens gradually taking over at the higher altitudes... their road wound its way up and down through tree-tunnels that only intermittently allowed them to see the sky. It would have been a lovely journey under other circumstances. The weather remained fair, and remarkably pleasant, even if the night was going to be cold. She had only read about the wilderness, never experienced it for herself, and she found herself liking it a lot. Or- parts of it, anyway. The way it was never entirely silent, but simply 'quiet'- birdsong and insect noises, the rustle of leaves, the distant sound of water. She had never before realized how noisy people were. And the forest was so beautiful. She wasn't at all used to deep forest; it was like being inside a living cathedral, with beams of light penetrating the tree-canopy and illuminating unexpected treasures, a moss-covered rock, a small cluster of flowers, a spray of ferns. These woods were 'old', too, the trees had trunks so big it would take three people to put their arms around them, and there was a scent to the place that somehow conveyed that centuries of leaves had fallen here and become earth.

But why are trees such social beings? Why do they share food with their own species and sometimes even go so far as to nourish their competitors? The reasons are the same as for human communities: there are advantages to working together. A tree is not a forest. On its own, a tree cannot establish a consistent local climate. It is at the mercy of wind and weather. But together, many trees create an ecosystem that moderates extremes of heat and cold, stores a great deal of water, and generates a great deal of humidity. And in this protected environment, trees can live to be very old. To get to this point, the community must remain intact no matter what. If every tree were looking out only for itself, then quite a few of them would never reach old age. Regular fatalities would result in many large gaps in the tree canopy, which would make it easier for storms to get inside the forest and uproot more trees. The heat of summer would reach the forest floor and dry it out. Every tree would suffer. Every tree, therefore, is valuable to the community and worth keeping around for as long as possible. And that is why even sick individuals are supported and nourished until they recover. Next time, perhaps it will be the other way round, and the supporting tree might be the one in need of assistance. When thick silver-gray beeches behave like this, they remind me of a herd of elephants. Like the herd, they, too, look after their own, and they help their sick and weak back up onto their feet. They are even reluctant to abandon their dead.

Ribbons of early morning light filter in through the thick canopy of leaves covering the forest and I realize that night is long behind me.

We were in the Crocodile Environmental Park at the zoo when Steve first told me the story of Acco’s capture. I just had to revisit him after hearing his story. There he was, the black ghost himself, magnificently sunning on the bank of his billabong. Standing there next to this impressive animal, I tried to wrap my mind around the idea that people had wanted him dead. His huge, intimidating teeth made him look primeval, and his osteodermal plates gleamed black in the sun--a dinosaur, living here among us. I felt so emotional, contemplating the fear-based cruelty that prompted humans to hate these animals. For his part, Acco still remembered his capture, even though it had happened nearly a decade before. Whenever Steve went into his enclosure, Acco would stalk him and strike, exploding out of the water with the intent to catch Steve unaware. Despite the conflict in Steve’s soul over whether he had done the right thing, I decided that Acco’s capture had to be. In the zoo, Acco had his own territory to patrol and a beautiful female crocodile, Connie, who loved him dearly. Left in the wild, somebody would have eventually shot him. If the choice is between a bullet and living in the Crocodile Environmental Park, I think his new territory was much more preferable. When I met Steve in 1991, he had just emerged from a solid decade in the bush, either with Bob or on his own, with just his dog Chilli, and later Sui. Those years had been like a test of fire. As a boy all Steve wanted to do was to be like his dad. At twenty-nine he’d become like Bob and then some. He had done so much more than catch crocs. In the western deserts, he and Bob helped researchers from the Queensland Museum understand the intricacies of fierce snake behavior. Steve also embarked on a behavioral study of a rare and little-understood type of arboreal lizard, the canopy goanna, scrambling up into trees in the rain forests of Cape York Peninsula in pursuit of herpetological knowledge. As much as Steve had become a natural for television, over the course of the 1980s he had become a serious naturalist as well. His hands-on experience, gleaned from years in the bush, meshed well with the more abstract knowledge of the academics. No one had ever accomplished what he had, tracking and trapping crocodiles for months at a time on his own. He would hand Bindi and Robert his knowledge of nature and the bush, just as Bob and Lyn had handed it down to him. This is what few people understood about Steve--his relationship with his family, and the tradition of passion and commitment and understanding that passed from generation to generation. Later on, that Irwin family tradition would bring Steve untold grief, when outsiders misjudged his effort to educate his children and crucified him for it.

When I met Steve in 1991, he had just emerged from a solid decade in the bush, either with Bob or on his own, with just his dog Chilli, and later Sui. Those years had been like a test of fire. As a boy all Steve wanted to do was to be like his dad. At twenty-nine he’d become like Bob and then some. He had done so much more than catch crocs. In the western deserts, he and Bob helped researchers from the Queensland Museum understand the intricacies of fierce snake behavior. Steve also embarked on a behavioral study of a rare and little-understood type of arboreal lizard, the canopy goanna, scrambling up into trees in the rain forests of Cape York Peninsula in pursuit of herpetological knowledge. As much as Steve had become a natural for television, over the course of the 1980s he had become a serious naturalist as well. His hands-on experience, gleaned from years in the bush, meshed well with the more abstract knowledge of the academics. No one had ever accomplished what he had, tracking and trapping crocodiles for months at a time on his own. He would hand Bindi and Robert his knowledge of nature and the bush, just as Bob and Lyn had handed it down to him. This is what few people understood about Steve--his relationship with his family, and the tradition of passion and commitment and understanding that passed from generation to generation. Later on, that Irwin family tradition would bring Steve untold grief, when outsiders misjudged his effort to educate his children and crucified him for it.

Not a squalid den of demons and indecency at the back of a beautiful great house, the mind is a vast and ancient wood, the density of its canopy allowing sunlight only now and then to reach through and touch the spiders and mushrooms in the leaf mould of the forest floor. This is who we are.

The low, white house nestled at the top of the meadows, its back against the hill that rose behind it, protecting it from the north winds. The slate room shimmered under the late August sun. Honeysuckle twisted up over the front door, knitting its way across the wall, heavy with butter-yellow blooms. A barn and a short run of stables formed a farmyard, which had mostly been put down to grass. Foxgloves grew at will. Dog roses spilled from the hedges and tumbled over the Payne's grey of the stone walls. Laura slowed the car as they skirted the oak woods before the final stretch of bumpy lane. Fractured light fell through the high canopy of leaves, picking out lemon yellow celandines and glowing violets on the dry forest floor.

The ancient green canopy of the rain forest rippled like the surface of a pond as trees crashed down.

The ancient green canopy of the rain forest rippled like the surface of a pond as trees crashed down.

All the world she needs is here, under this canopy—the densest biomass anywhere on Earth. Steep, steely streams scour through rickles of rock where salmon spawn—water cold enough to kill all pain. Falls flash over ridges turned jade by moss and tumbled with shed branches. In the scattered openings, shot here and there through the understory, sit secret congregations of salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry, snowberry, devil’s club, ocean spray, and kinnikinnick. Great straight conifer monoliths fifteen stories high and a car-length thick hold a roof above all. The air around her resounds with the noise of life getting on with it. Cheebee of invisible winter wrens. Industrial pock from jackhammering woodpeckers. Warbler buzz. Thrush flutter. The scatterings of beeping grouse across the forest floor. At night, the cool hoot of owls chills her blood. And, always, the tree frogs’ song of eternity.

Then they ducked under the canopy of forest, the others following, and let the dark green radiance embrace them.

Almost all of the big epidemics that we’ve seen in the last decade-plus have come from fruit bats that normally pollinate the rain forest. And as the rain forest is under stress and the upper canopies are getting overheated, desperate bat populations are moving closer and closer into human areas and passing their viruses to our livestock, and eventually to us.

The Amazon forest exhales a Lake Tahoe every five days. Many mornings you can see mist columns twisting up from the canopy as if from fairy campfires. This vapor coalesces into “flying rivers” that ride equatorial winds to the west, while at ground level the rivers flow down an extremely subtle slope eastward toward the Atlantic.

To climb in the canopy I must leave the ground. And such a decision will determine whether I will live a life of forest vistas, or an existence of dirt and leaves.

Four fucking days,' Cassian hissed from where he and Azriel monitored the castle. 'We've been sitting on our asses for four fucking days.' Azriel sharpened Truth-Teller. The black blade absorbed the dim sunlight trickling through the forest canopy above. 'It seems you've forgotten how much of spying is waiting for the right moment. People don't engage in their evil deeds when it's convenient to you.' Cassian rolled his eyes. 'I stopped spying because it bored me to death. I don't know how you put up with this all the time.' 'It suits me,' Azriel didn't halt his sharpening, though shadows gathered around his feet.

Why can’t we be like that frail stem, laden with roses and rose-buds?” the philosopher said, pointing at a beautiful rosebush. “The wind blows, it shakes, and it bends, as if it were trying to protect its precious charge. If the stem were to remain upright, it would break, the wind would scatter the flowers, and the buds would rot. The wind passes by and the stem straightens anew, proud of its treasures. Who would accuse it of folding in the face of such need? Look over there, at that giant kupang,170 whose high leaves sway majestically, up where the eagle makes his nest. I brought it from the forest when it was still a fragile cutting, with thin bamboo poles supporting its trunk for months. Had I brought it here when it was large and full of life, it would certainly not have survived. The wind would have shaken it before its roots could sink into the earth, before it could establish itself in its surroundings and develop the nourishment it needed for its size and stature. That’s how you’ll end up, a plant transplanted from Europe to this rocky soil, if you don’t find support and develop humility. You are alone, highborn, in terrible conditions. The ground shakes, the sky portends a storm, and the tree canopy of your family attracts lightning. To fight against everything that exists today is not

I am the canopy over their heads, the ground beneath their feet, the soft pile of leaves to land on. I am their forest. I am their home.

When one is in the woods, on a day like this, one feels altogether connected again to the very fabric of the world. The green, calming canopy of branches and leaves overhead lets sunlight trickle through from above in just the right dose, and the breeze is filtered through miles and miles of trees and bush and carries the scent of every flowering dogwood and every freshwater spring and pond, mingling with every lake and river and stream and every good creature that walks through the halls of the forest. In the woods, one senses there is no evil, no greed, no tyrant, no oppressor, no malady, but indeed a deep wellspring of meaning returns. To be connected to the woods is to be connected to the very art of life itself, and to walk along the stones and mosses, and under the tall trees and over the fallen trees and alongside the wet, rotten stumps is to be reminded of the great circus mystery and magic of being itself.

It means that we are loved, like all living things that Gaia sustains. There is a poetry in the canopies of forests and in the gentle roll of hills, a song in the wind and a benediction in the kiss of the sun. There are stories

River folk and river cottages had soon been left behind, replaced by slender willows which gave way in turn to thick, unruly forest with a canopy so dense that only the slimmest rays of daylight reached water.

A hush came over the world, and it grew dark. There was no sunlight at the bottom of the redwood forest, only a dim, gray-green glow, like the light at the bottom of the sea. The air grew sweet, and carried a tang of lemons. They became aware of a vast forest canopy spreading over their heads.

The Light shone shone from her skin,casting about the room in dancing beams that warmed all those that gazed upon her. A magnificent creature,so powerful,so distant,so wonderous and strange and out of reach. It almost seemed she did not belong to this world,she should walk instead through palaces in the heavens,or labyrinths of deep seas. Forests where trees stretched out of sight,with canopies that spread for miles;or mountains that glittered white and violet.

Ness Creek, Saskatchewan, Canada Haiku Under forest canopy: Hippie kids, Hippie parents, Hippie grandparents.

Beatrix was transfixed by the subtle changes in his face, the heightening color, the silver brightness of his eyes. Possibilities entered the quietness, like sun breaking through forest canopy. She wondered if he were going to kiss her. And a single word flashed through her mind. Please.

Pelewen still wanders the night Under the canopy of long-dead days, A knight sword-sworn to duty and might, A knight faith-sealed with truth and right.   Nerena still wanders the misty eve, Under the canopy of long-dead days, A witch evil-sworn to lies believe, A witch dark-sealed to darkness wreathe.   What brought you, knight, to wander that wood? What brought the thieves who cut you down? Where, dark witch, did you find the good, To succor he who for goodness stood?   With secrets whispered in secluded shade, She healed you, knight, your life returned, With kisses, witch, the first he gave, Your soul was healed and holy made.   Love, you too we see this night Under the canopy of long-dead days; A blessing sworn to the good and right, A love that sealed a witch and knight.   What partings made upon the morn, Under wind and sun and forest song: One body whole and one soul born, Four eyes wet and two hearts torn.   What drove you, Knight, to the distant glade? What drove you to confess, dear maid? Why, Knight, did heart turn horse ‘round again? And why, Pureman, could you not forgive her stain?   One maid burned at morning’s light. One horse rides through ash at night. One soul to tell the Knight the tale. One Knight upon his sword impaled.   Death, you too we see this eve, Under the canopy of long-dead days; A death dark-sworn to love bereave, A death dark-sealed to sadness wreathe.   “Well, that was depressing,” Chertanne derided

The Giants rarely express interest in a human. But when their leader, The Mother, has spoken, all in the forest heed the call and listen.

But the family tree stopped growing long ago, its canopy thinned and frayed, not a single sap springing from the old rotting trunk. Some trees aren't meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.

This trap is empty, though. So is the next. The boy begins to relax. Light lances through the green birdless canopy, falls upon them in thin brilliant stripes as if cleaving them in two. Komorebi is the Japanese word for the kind of light you see in a forest. PJ told him that.