“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.”
Hermann Hesse — Author
Read about this photo documentary.
“Every tree has its own spirit and its way of communicating. I feel a deep personal connection to every tree like it’s a relative of mine.”
Jenny Richards – Naturalist and Environmental Educator
About this Photo Documentary—Trees Are Our Lifelines
This tree series was shot over many years in the Hudson Valley of New York, Hawaii, Costa Rica and other places, virtually all with the i-phone 16 pro.
Across many Indigenous and traditional cultures — including Celts, Native Americans, and tribal peoples around the world — trees are seen as living beings, not just wood or property. People are expected to live in balance with nature. Forests are treated with respect as sacred places that support and connect all life. Ancient and Indigenous cultures understood what we must relearn. They viewed trees as kin with memory and agency. Long before modern science mapped fungal networks, these cultures recognized that trees communicate and shape weather. Their rituals enforced strict ecological ethics: take only what you need and allow the land to regenerate. At a time of accelerating deforestation, this ancient insight reads less like mythology and more like a survival manual.
According to recent forest science, trees are far more connected and responsive than once believed. Through underground fungal networks often called the “wood wide web,” trees can share nutrients, send chemical warning signals about danger, support weaker or younger trees, and interact as part of a living forest community. Modern ecology now shows that forests function less like collections of separate trees and more like interconnected living systems.
Trees help keep the planet alive. They absorb carbon dioxide, release oxygen, cool the air, protect soil and water, and store carbon that would otherwise heat the Earth. Forests provide homes and food for countless birds, insects, animals, and plants. Without trees, the planet would be hotter, less stable, and far less able to support life. Trees are ancient planetary engineers and the planet’s longest-living, biggest, and most widely distributed species.
Trees are the biggest, longest living and most widely dispersed species on the planet. California’s bristlecone pines exceed 4,800 years of age, older than the Pyramids, while Utah’s Pando clonal aspen colony is estimated at over 10,000 years old. Structurally, the Coast Redwood Hyperion stands as the tallest known tree at 380 feet (116 meters). Globally, approximately 73,000 tree species make up 25% of all land plants, dominating nearly every terrestrial ecosystem from the subarctic to the tropics.
Today, Earth holds an estimated three trillion trees, yet we remove ten billion annually for cattle, soy, palm oil, mining, logging, and urban sprawl. We lose 24.7 million acres a year—an area the size of Portugal—driving a dangerous loop of habitat loss, weakened soils, and faltering water cycles. Under the banner of dominion, modern humans cast themselves as superior to creation. The consequences are unfolding at a planetary scale; climate scientists warn that a 4°C rise in global temperatures could collapse major rainforests, fail tropical agriculture, and drive the mass migration of billions.
If humanity vanished tomorrow, Earth would heal; forests would reclaim cities and rivers would run clear. Conversely, if trees vanished, atmospheric co2 would trigger runaway warming, rainfall patterns would collapse into desertification, and food systems would fail. Within decades, the planet would become uninhabitable.
Our fate is inseparable from the forests. Please plant trees. If you can’t plant, you can save a tree by cutting parasitic vines that choke trees. Millions of trees die annually from wood vines. They strangle host trees by wrapping tightly around the trunk, blocking photosynthesis, and weighing them down. You can save a choked tree by cutting the vines at the base of the trunk with a clipper or a small axe. Do not pull the vines down, as this will strip the tree’s bark; leave them in place to wither and die