Of all the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing "Embraceable You" in spats.

From the earliest times, trees have been the focus of religious life of many peoples around the world. As the largest plant on earth, the tree has been a major source of stimulation to the mythic imagination. Trees have been invested in all cultures with a dignity unique to their own nature, and tree cults, in which a single tree or a grove of trees is worshipped, have flourished at different times almost everywhere. Even today there are sacred woods in India and Japan, just as there were in pre-Christian Europe. An elaborate mythology of trees exists across a broad range of ancient cultures.

By gathering seed from trees which are close to our homes and close to our hearts, helping them to germinate and grow, and then planting them back into their original landscapes, we can all make a living link between this millennium and the next, a natural bridge from the past to the future.

We can see from the experience of Odin that the image of the tree was the template within which all of the sacred world could be apprehended. The tree was the framework within which one "flew" to these Otherworlds. And since the exploration of sacred space was also a quest into the nature of human consciousness, the tree was regarded as an image of the ways in which we, humans, are constructed psychically. It was a natural model for our deepest wisdom, our highest aspirations.

"Walking through the woods I am reminded that there is as much death here as there is life. It is a mistake to think the wood forest refers only to the living, for equally it refers to the incessant dying. It is a mistake to speak of preserving forests as preventing the death of trees. Forests live out of the deaths of toppled giants across the decades, as well as the incessant dying of microscopic beings. Without death, the forest would die. Ultimately, it is only the removal of trees that can deplete the forest. Both fallen giants and fallen leaves collaborate with the bacteria of decay to produce the fertile soil from which new growth comes. By itself no single organism can long survive. The forest is its own memorial, the conclusion of its own conversation. You can lift a log, the corpse of a fallen tree, and find a whole community at the rotting face where it touches the moist ground."

If we represent knowledge as a tree, we know that things that are divided are yet connected.  We know that to observe the divisions and ignore the connections is to destroy the tree.

“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all.  But by the eyes of a man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”

To early man, trees were objects of awe and wonder.  The mystery of their growth, the movement of their leaves and branches, the way they seemed to die and come again to life in spring, the sudden growth of the plant from the seed - all these appeared to be miracles as indeed, they still are, miracles of nature!

"To return to my own trees, I went among them often, acknowledging their presence with a touch of my hand against their trunks."

The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life and activity; it affords protection to all beings.

Trees can reduce the heat of a summer's day, quiet a highway's noise, feed the hungry, provide shelter from the wind and warmth in the winter. You see, the forests are the sanctuaries not only of wildlife, but also of the human spirit.  And every tree is a compact between generations.

All life is figured by them as a Tree.  Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of existence, has its roots deep-down in the kingdoms of Death: its trunk reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe:  it is the Treeof Existence.  At the foot of it, in the Death-Kingdom, sit the three Fates - the Past, Present and Future; watering its roots from the Sacred Well.  It's "bough," with their buddings and disleafings, - events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, - stretch through all lands and times.  Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fiber there an act or word?  Its boughs are the Histories of Nations.  The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old.  ....  I find nosimilitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great.

“Tree that for twenty thousand years
Your vows have kept,
You have suddenly healed the pain
                  of a traveller’s heart,
And moved this brush to writer a new song”

Chang Fang-Sheng (4^th Century)

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