Keeping Company With Trees

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere
them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And
even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely
persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but
like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their
highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they
do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their
lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own
laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is
holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.”

~Hermann Hesse