But the world is still unpredictable and still we survive by the grace of chance and the strength of our choices.

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

There is such tenderness in braiding the hair of someone you love. Kindness and something more flow between the braider and the braided, the two connected by the cord of the plait.

For all of us, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children's future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it.

When we tell them that the tree is not a who but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation...If a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.

The market economy story has spread like wildfire, with uneven results for human well-being and devastation for the natural world.

Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own. I think now that it was a longing to comprehend this language I hear in the woods that led me to science, to learn over the years to speak fluent botany.

Trees constitute the environmental quality committee--running air and water purification service 24-7. They're on every task force, from the historical society picnic, to the highway department, school board and library. When it comes to civic beautification, they alone create the crimson fall with little recognition.

We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don't have to avert our eyes with shame, wo that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgement of the rest of the earth's beings.