The skin is impossibly wet, a cloud condensed into animate matter. - David G. Haskell

Storms in the forest have a more primal character than storms playing over tamed urban land. A vigorous cloudburst is exhilarating, a burst of sensory delight with its leafy smells, gray light, and chill. But a full tree-ripping storm pushes the senses beyond exhilaration or thrill, into fear.

When laughing children chase after fireflies, they are not pursuing beetles but catching wonder.<P>When wonder matures, it peels back experience to seek deeper layers of marvel below. This is science's highest purpose.

The study of twigs seems esoteric. But this impression is dangerously wrong. Counting back through bud scars, tallying yearly growth, I not only see the struggle among native and foreign trees, I read the ledger of the world's atmosphere.