"I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines." 

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer.  But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

“If there must be a war, let the weapons be your healing hands, the hands of the world’s women in defence of the environment. Let your call to battle be a song for the earth.”

The poor ignorant savage even apologized to a tree for having to cut it down and had sacred groves and woods he left standing—homes of the gods or of his fellow creatures—whereas his successor, who ungodded nature, ravages the heights and brings floods, dustbowls and salt pans into the once fertile lowlands.  Or worse, defoliates to facilitate hunting down his brother man.

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

“He that planteth a tree is a servant of God, he provideth a kindness for many generations, and faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.”

“Ghosts of the world-wood: the trees are felled,

Stumps; puny saplings which replace them
will outgrow me and then outlive me.”

Michael Vince “The Thicket”

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... make us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Alice Walker (The Colour Purple)

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Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise.

George Washington Carver

***

There are those who say that trees shade the garden too much, and interferewith the growth of the vegetables.   There may be something in this: but when I go down the potato rows, the rays of the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring down my face, I should be grateful for shade.

“I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green sunshades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues, looking down on us with that sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limited organisms...”

I remember once visiting an outdoor exhibition of sculpture in Arnhem, the Netherlands.  One of the artists had placed this notice at the base of a majestic beech: "Statues are hewn by fools like me: only God could make this tree."  The Taoists looked at the inside of the tree. They saw God present, not as the super-sculptor, but as the primal force from which the tree drew its being and its specific form.  Becoming aware of this divine origin was for them "great knowledge," to be distinguished from the "small knowledge" of our petty, every-day existence.

"When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up. When we dig roots, we make little holes. When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pine nuts. We don't chop down the trees. We only use dead wood. But the white people plow up the ground, pull down the trees, kill everything. ... the White people pay no attention. ...How can the spirit of the earth like the White man? ... everywhere the White man has touched it, it is sore." 

“One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
 Of moral evil and of good,
 Than all the sages can.”

William Wordsworth “The Tables Turned”

***

If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are both branches on the same tree.

W.. B . Yeats

***

“and the loud chaunting of the unquiet leaves
are shaken with earth’s old and weary cry”

W.B. Yeats “The sorrow of love”

 ***

The forests are dying, the rivers are dying, and we are called to act. To return Earth to harmony is to restore the harmonious principles within ourselves and to act as responsible caretakers - to save the forests and the waters for future generations.

www.the-tree.org.uk