Finding Hope in Trees

An ancient foxtail pine forest in the Trinity Alps.

How Forests Can Help Us Heal a Fractured World

In recent weeks, I had the chance to stand before a full room and share my passion for trees. Their quiet strength, existence across deep time, and role as living elders shape us all–though most don’t know it. What follows grew from that talk—a weaving of science and story, a call to remember what trees have always known: that we belong to the living Earth and to one another.

We are living through turbulent times. The world feels splintered, yet beneath our feet the forest still holds fast—roots touching roots, sharing, and trying to endure despite us. I believe we all need to come together around nature and stewardship and this is one way I see it happening: by walking among trees, listening, and letting them teach us how to love this place again.

You can watch the full presentation at the end of this post. May it invite you, too, to find hope in trees.

A walk among ancient foxtail pines, where wind sculpts the forest, twisted trunks gleam, and the thin subalpine air whispers ancient secrets.

Down below, the world feels louder: division, anger, disconnection, and the weight of relentless news cycles pressing like smoke. It is easy to feel small and powerless.

But the late Barry Lopez, beloved nature writer and cultural guide, offers another way. In his essay Love in a Time of Terror, he urges us to respond to hatred not with more power, but with love — fierce, rooted, enduring love for the Earth and for each other.

“ In this moment, is it still possible to face the gathering darkness, and say to the physical Earth, and to all its creatures, including ourselves, fiercely and without embarrassment, I love you, and to embrace fearlessly the burning world?”
— Barry Lopez

What if trees could show us how to love in this fractured time?

This weathered whitebark pine, long since dead yet still standing, began as seeds cached centuries ago by a Clark’s nutcracker—living testimony to how small acts can shape whole mountain worlds.

July 30, 2025July 30, 2025

Conifer Forests of Whistler, BC

Subalpine fir in the high elevations of the Coast Mountains near Whistler, BC

Exploring the unique high-rainfall, glacially sculpted forests of the southern Coast Mountains

Whistler, British Columbia is famed for its mountains, but just as magnificent are the ancient forests draped across their flanks—wet, wild, and woven with a diversity of conifers that whisper of deep time. Tucked in the southern Coast Mountains, the forests surrounding Whistler are shaped by a cool maritime climate, abundant precipitation, and a legacy of glaciation that has carved basins, ridges, and deep alluvial valleys. These physical forces, coupled with nutrient-rich colluvial and glacial soils, give rise to complex plant communities where conifers reign.

July 15, 2025July 15, 2025

Among Ancient Pines on Mount Linn

As spring transitioned to summer, we traveled deep into the Coast Range to the headwaters of the Bigfoot Trail. Mount Linn—at 8,098 feet, the highest point in California’s Coast Range—rises like an island above a sea of rugged ridges and folded drainages. Here, the Bigfoot Trail begins, and here, we spent our days working to open the path for future hikers—treading, clearing logs, and feeling that familiar rhythm of shared labor in wild places.

June 1, 2025June 1, 2025

Discovering Shasta Snow-Wreath (Neviusia cliftonii)

Eastern Klamath Mountains from Hogback Lookout.

In Search of a Living Fossil in the Eastern Klamath Mountains

This spring, I embarked on my inaugural journey to the far eastern reaches of the Klamath Mountains—a realm where ancient limestone outcrops narrate tales of deep time, and where evolutionary relicts persist in quiet resilience. My quest: to encounter the elusive Shasta snow-wreath (Neviusia cliftonii), a botanical enigma known only to the rugged terrains surrounding Lake Shasta.

May 24, 2025June 28, 2025

Revisiting a Research Natural Area in the Klamath Mountains

There’s a quiet magnetism in Research Natural Areas (RNAs)—pockets of protected wild that call to those of us who seek to understand the living mosaic of California. These places are often the last intact natural systems on our public lands—and for decades, I’ve been drawn to them, trekking into these living sanctuaries to witness nature in its most undisturbed form, to document its story, and to carry that story forward.