From the Introduction: Rooted securely in the earth, trees reach toward the heavens. All across the planet, trees-in a wonderful profusion of form and function-literally hold the world together. Their leaves receive the Sun's energy for the benefit of all terrestrial creatures and transpire torrents of water vapor into the atmosphere. Their branches and trunks provide shelter, food, and habitat for mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, and other plants. And their roots anchor the mysterious underworld of rock and soil. Trees are among Earth's longest-lived organisms; their lives span periods of time that extend far beyond our existence, experience, and memory. Trees are remarkable beings. Yet they stand like extras in life's drama, always there as backdrops to the ever-changing action around them, so familiar and omnipresent that we barely take notice of them. From Chapter 1: Birth A lightening bolt illuminates the sky, striking the highest point of the forested ridge. The fire does not start at the top, however, where the trees are young and strong, but slightly lower down, where over the years snags and fallen branches have accumulated to form a stack of dried kindling. One standing snag smolders for days, dropping live embers onto the rocky soil beneath it. The coals spread into the surrounding litter and ignite a ground fire, which enflames small twigs and dropped cones in its path. The fire licks up and tickles the lower dead branches of the living trees, quickly ascending the ladder of interlaced branches into the resinous middle story, where it burns with such fierce intensity that it consumes all the oxygen in the surrounding air and reaches a temperature well above the flash point of living wood. Then, like a suddenly opened damper in a firebox, a charge of fresh oxygen borne in by the opportune wind is whipped by atmospheric convection, and all the flames in the world seem instantly, as if by some devilish magic, to explode into the forest canopy.