The Magic of Trees III 2010

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All around us the vine maples, the towering

hemlocks, the firs and spruces were draped

and bearded with moss. Great trunks rose above

us green and furry as far as we could see. Branches

spread over us shaggy with the primitive

spike moss, Selaginella. Under our feet the plush

of the forrest carpet grew so dense we sank at

times above our shoetops. In the misty light

we saw it roll on and on ,wave after wave,

over the moldering logs ,across the uneven

floor of the forrest...The green carpet that

covers the forrest floor is formed of many

species, many strands: it's warp and woof

are made up of a multitude of mosses.

Here and there along the path streams

of sunshine probed amongst the giant

trees. Drawn in glowing silver lines

they slanted down through the humid air.

And above each spot where they reached

the saturated carpet of the moss, mist curled

up like smoke from a fire being started

with a burning glass. And all the while

the long fingers of the spikemoss,

hanging from the branches like

gray-green stalacites forming under

the roof of a cavern, dripped

endlessly. As each drop fell

it entered the plush of the living

carpet without a sound. It was absorbed

without a trace. Moss is nature's great
silencer.

Edwin Way Teale,

from The American Seasons,

p.54, Ansel Adams "Trees".

Until there were trees, the newly

risen land was a place of rocks and

sand, scarred by the wind and rain,

seared by the unrelieved scorch of

the sun. Then there were forrests.

Trees clothed the hills,
cleansed the air, checked erosion,

shaped the continents, made the

land hospitable. And when man's

earliest ancestors achieved reason

and dreams they found the makings

of tomorrow on the forrest floor, saw

the future's shape in the long shadows

of the woodland...

Trees are the oldest living things we

know. Rooted in the earth and reaching

for the stars, they partake of

immortality, In spring, the trees

are life resurgent, bud and leaf and blossom.

In summer, they are a cooling canopy of

chlorophyll, more miraculous than all

the fractured atoms. In autumn, the

woodland is both beauty and bounty,

glory and replenishment beyond measure.

In winter, the trees are the elemental

shape of life and enduring growth.

Without the woodlands the earth
would be rocks and sand and desolation,
as it was in the beginning.

Hal Borland,

from Our Natural World

p.14, Ansel Adams "Trees"

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Trees conduct the eye from

the ground up to the heavens,

link the detailed temporariness

of life with the bulging blue abstraction
overhead...They alone seem to

unite the earth and the sky-

the known, invadable world

with everything that is beyond

our grasp and power.

Diane Ackerman,

from a Natural History

of the Senses

p.27, Ansel Adams "Trees"

Ansel Adams (2004)
"Trees".
New York: Little. Brown
and Company.

These poems and passages
speak for themselves.

Hope you enjoy them.

Have a settle-into-winter-
kind of day.

Helen.