The trees do speak to us.
But their voices are borrowed by the wind—
The rustle of leaves touching leaves,
Sounds we call silence.
They are not our trees. They never were.
They are simply the trees.
They stood here long before we shaped ourselves into humans,
And they outlast us. Some have stood for over 4,000 years.
We cut down the oldest one, yet spared the second.
Can the second grow to be the oldest? Or will we deny it the chance?
Once, they were wild. Now, they are mostly farmed.
One monolithic “conserved” forest will never replace a wild one.
More Weyerhaeuser lies.
Conservation is not preservation!
The two are as distinct as Pinchot and Muir—
For Pinchot, nature was a resource,
To be sustainably managed for human use.
For Muir, nature was sacred,
Best preserved far from the degrading touch of man.
Our remaining wild forests must be preserved in their tangled diversity,
Left untouched, to thrive beyond human reach.
Trees are not solitary. They are collective.
There is no tree, only trees.
Forests.
They thrive through connection,
Root touching root,
An intricate network beneath our feet.
They are communities,
Interwoven with all life around them.
We have much to learn from their silence.