or strength, for
courage, and for renewal.

In the cities I am always interested in the variety of the contents of
the store windows. Variously fabricated and disguised, these materials
come from the ends of the earth. They come from the shores of the seas,
from the mines, from the land, from the forests, from the arctic, and
from the tropic. They are from the backgrounds. The cities are great,
but how much greater are the forests and the sea!

No people should be forbidden the influence of the forest. No child
should grow up without a knowledge of the forest; and I mean a real
forest and not a grove or village trees or a park. There are no forests
in cities, however many trees there may be. As a city is much more than
a collection of houses, so is a forest much more than a collection of
trees. The forest has its own round of life, its characteristic
attributes, its climate, and its inhabitants. When you enter a real
forest you enter the solitudes, you are in the unexpressed distances.
You walk on the mould of years and perhaps of ages. There is no other
wind like the wind of the forest; there is no odor like the odor of the
forest; there is no solitude more complete; there is no song of a brook
like the song of a forest brook; there is no call of a bird like that of
a forest bird; there are no mysteries so deep and which seem yet to be
within one's realization.

While a forest is more than trees, yet the trees are the essential part
of the forest; and no one ever really knows or understands a forest
until he first understands a tree. There is no thing in nature finer and
stronger than the bark of a tree; it is a thing in place, adapted to its
ends, perfect in its conformation, beautiful in its color and its form
and the sweep of its contour; and every bark is peculiar to its species.
I think that one never really likes a tree until he is impelled to
embrace it with his arms and to run his fingers through the grooves of
its bark.

Man listens in the forest. He pauses in the forest. He finds himself. He
loses himself in the town and even perhaps in the university. He may
lose himself in business and in great affairs; but in the forest he is
one with a tree, he stands by himself and yet has consolation, and he
comes back to his own place in the scheme of things. We have almost
forgotten to listen; so great and ceaseless is the racket that the
little voices pass over our ears and we hear them not. I have asked
person