Such an honor to see this essay published at The Revelator, a beautiful and well-edited publication of the Center for Biological Diversity. I’ve been working on these ideas for quite some time; the essay gets at some ground truths for me about trees in fiction and also in the real world. I hope you enjoy it! Here’s a quick excerpt, and the full essay is here.

“Tolkien’s forests, similarly — where many of his most dramatic and evocative chapters take place — are gripping embodiments of this urgent wrestling match between darkness and light. The Old Forest, just beyond the borders of the bucolic Shire, is host not only to terrifying ring-wraiths but to uncanny and sometimes ravenously hostile ancient trees — and things get even worse in Mirkwood. But amid these forests of terror and danger there are also glades of joyous poetry and light, such as the alluring waystation of Rivendell and magical Lothlórien, where the cathedral-like spaces between the trees are filled with dappled golden light and the celestial music of elves.”