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As seasons and years pass, a tree grows through many stages in its life cycle. It takes on ever-increasing importance in the lives of the creatures that live around it.
Trees 
Too often, humans think of trees only in terms of our own values. Certainly we are all aware of their beauty, and of how we depend on the products like building materials, newsprint and firewood they provide. But many of us are not aware of a tree's importance to other life forms.
As seasons and years pass, a tree grows through many stages in its life cycle. It takes on ever-increasing importance in the lives of the creatures that live around it.
A seed on fertile ground, having already escaped hungry birds and squirrels, has an important destiny to fulfill as it begins to sprout. At first small and hidden among the flowers, it undergoes a transformation aided by sunlight and warm summer rains. It begins to reach for the sky.
As a sapling, its leaves offer forage to a hungry deer. Its bark nourishes a rabbit on a cold winter day. As it reaches higher, a buck may use its slender trunk to rub the velvet from his new antlers in preparation for battle.
Soon the sapling is a small tree. A bull moose, no longer able to reach high enough to browse on tender twigs in the crown, rubs an itchy shoulder on the widening trunk while a small bird, hidden among the upper branches voices a claim over the surrounding land.
Years pass, and the branches of the maturing tree hide a raccoon as it snoozes away the day high above the ground while awaiting the cover of night to forage on the forest floor. Birds build their nests within its sheltered green canopy and a litter of squirrels play acrobat in the maze of intertwining twigs, safe from danger that lurks below.
Deep in the forest, a spreading tree protects delicate creatures from the parching summer sun, drenching spring rains and the biting winds of winter. Thickening branches camouflage a sleeping owl and halfway up a sturdy trunk, a frightened bear cub hides while mother deals with an intruder.
For a family of beavers, the tree provides raw materials to build a lodge and tender twigs to store in the winter food cache. When the tree blossoms, bees gather a sweet harvest of nectar and, by summer's end, fruits and seeds are collected to fatten those who must face the long, cold winter.
In winter, a tree plays an important role, catching snow that will later melt and seep to the roots of all the plants nearby. In spring, its heavy branches slow the melting of snow and reduce the flow of water to swollen rivers as they make their way to sea.
Of immeasurable value in the lives of forest inhabitants while it lives, a tree is just as important when it dies.
Insects honeycomb the rotting centre of a dead tree, boring tunnels that will later be cleared out by a woodpecker and made into a safe nesting cavity. Many other creatures use hollow trees for nesting and rearing their young, too. Among them are wood ducks, goldeneye ducks, wasps, squirrels and raccoons.
Each, in turn, may modify the cavity to suit its requirements. A young squirrel, looking for a winter den, will use an abandoned woodpecker hole, but first must chew the opening large enough to squeeze through. A raccoon, entering a narrow cavity through a large knothole, will scratch away soft decaying sides until there is room enough to house herself and her small masked young. A wood duck will search for days to find a cavity just the right size, then line it with down to protect her eggs.
As time takes its toll, the trunk crumbles and begins to lean. The decaying wood nurtures moss, lichens and fungi in a remarkable array of form and color. When finally the old hulk comes crashing to the ground, its prone hollow still offers a place for a squirrel to store nuts or a fox to hide. A ruffed grouse finds the fallen form a convenient place from which to "drum" its territorial message. Grubs and worms devour decaying wood and in turn are eaten by other creatures.
