I am inspired to return to some scenes. Others I don’t care if I ever see again. A sojourn in Poland clarified how those two extremes connect. I come from a town in the United States that is almost as far north as Warsaw, so long dark winter nights with high electricity and heating bills are normal. Vermonters haven’t used coal for either for a few generations, but we did and like many other communities we are still seeking solutions to the negative feedback loop of fossil fuel addiction. However, we know traditions, like revering the maple tree in our forests, which gives us syrup. Perhaps maple syrup is one of the reasons I am drawn to the woods, I like to see saplings grow into their sweetness. However, forests around the world, including ours, are threatened from human ingenuity and development in concert with greed and an intransigence of those in power. Climate change, resource extraction, and pollution are changing the atmosphere and our health from the increase in carbon dioxide levels and release of toxins into our soils and water. Resistance to change over how we create electricity, to “power” our lives, is largely from autocrats and large corporations with bravado, messaging, and the power of armed control. Wisdom from the old, the young, the weak, and the non partisan could devise better ways to peacefully solve this crisis with our brains, shifts in policy and revenue streams. Trees, recent research proves, communicate with each other using fungi (an interspecies internet) to send messages; and they annually sequester a full thirty percent of carbon emissions human society now produces. Trees participate in our economy far more than providing syrup and shade for life on earth. I now walk into the woods and see them as partners. They help me breathe easier. I meet them now with a Japanese practice of “forest bathing” or “Shinrin Yoku”, which is proven to improve human health. I see it as developing a mutually beneficial relationship for us to support. We need the world’s forests as lungs and more, for the earth we share. Right now our means of direct communication is muted, but with time and research that might change. We can rely on them as a renewable resource for manufactured goods and soil builders; both of which sequester carbon for the generations of those who come after us, and life on a healthy planet. I speak for the trees.