13 July 2025 – I stand there on the sidewalk, having myself a Joyce Kilmer moment.

If you now find yourself chanting “I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree,” then you may be of my generation — someone who also grew up somewhere in North America and learned that poem in elementary school.

The 1913 language may now strike us as a bit over-heated. We’re more likely to respond to the approach taken by UBC Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr. Suzanne Simard. Her 2021 seminal work, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (now published in 21 languages), has propelled us right to the frontier of work being done in the field of plant communication and intelligence.

Kilmer or Simard, it’s about respect for trees, each pursuing that respect with their own language and skills.

My respect today is visual — for the sheer beauty & majesty of this tree. The textures of the bark, the play of colours.

Wonderful details, up close.

Tiny golden leaves, caught in bark crevasses at the base of the trunk…

a sprig of new leaves, erupting mid-trunk…

spider webs! …

and the bark itself, needing no adornment.

Yet, there is one final adornment.

Of nature, but added by human hands.