During a boyhood spent shuttling from town to town in Southern California I bore witness to the wholesale destruction of enormous orange and avocado groves to make way for the vast housing tracts and freeway systems that now permeate the region's landscape. Seeing the great groves uprooted and bulldozed into towering piles was difficult to believe, but in a child's eyes that incredulity was soon channeled into an opportunity to use the great pyres of dead trees as redoubts for dirt-clod battles. Then they went up in smoke and were forgotten in the frenzy of new construction.

Fifty years ago the importance of the life of the earth was not taught in school; the value of all but human endeavor went unrealized. Few could conceive that the great green blanket that fuels our air could ever be threatened. Today, too many of us who know better still take it for granted.

We know now that trees are the lungs of the earth-living, breathing conductors of the oxygen on which we depend. Yet, we focus on daily mundane tribulations and scramble to maintain our artificial infrastructures while the natural world, the source of our existence, slips away. As humankind indulges its presence on Earth to the exclusion of all else, it passes on to future generations more and more earthly dilemmas.

It does not have to be this way. If humankind can begin to express active concern for life other than its own, the place where we live will again begin to thrive. We must rise up and provide the active support our natural world so desperately needs. That action can be as simple as a person planting and nurturing a single seed.

It can be done. Great forests can be retained and new ones initiated. Cities can be made healthier. Fallow rural regions can be revitalized.

We can have clean, secure drinking water and less erosion on the earth's crust. We can have fresher air and reduced levels of the carbon monoxide that is choking the globe. We can control flooding and establish larger habitats for wildlife. We can enjoy cooler temperatures and an overall quality of life that conforms to our dreams.

We can have all these things without more massive human construction if we look to the silent neighbors we take for granted: the trees. But many of us know nothing about the complicated structure of trees or how they function. Nor do we know where to place a seed, when to water, or how to trim. Few of us have any notion of how to implement environmental education, how to work in concert with cities and towns, or how to rehabilitate damaged ecosystems around the world.

American Forests does.

American Forests is wholly devoted to the idea that our natural world can be saved even as humankind develops. It offers eco-beneficial and sound financial alternatives to the destruction of privately owned forests, forests that would otherwise be overdeveloped at the expense of future generations.

American Forests knows how to cultivate and nurture a seed into a successful, growing tree. It knows the right place to plant the right tree-and has been doing so for 130 years.

As the father of three, I want my children to be able to enjoy and explore great forests, jungles, deserts, and plains. I want them to breathe fresh air, drink clean water, and marvel at unpolluted oceans and rivers. I want them to feel like they are part of the natural world-not superior to it. And I want the same for their children.

Wide public support for American Forests is not merely a step in the right direction. Our support of their mission is a strong indication that humans are fit to lead the living world, and to serve, nourish, and protect it.

Ordering Information:

The book can be ordered online
or call 520-792-0900 use code amfordances.