“I am not a birch.”

“In a true you-and-I relationship, we are present mindfully, nonintrusively, the way we are present with things in nature.We do not tell a birch tree it should be more like an elm. We face it with no agenda, only an appreciation that becomes participation: 'I love looking at this birch' becomes 'I am this birch' and then 'I and this birch are opening to a mystery that transcends and holds us both.”

“Balderdash, I say, let the sword turn into an adder and the adder a salmon and the salmon a birch twig and birch twig a sword and the sword a tongue...Let it all run together so swiftly that it cannot be separated again...”

“The birch trees loom ahead like a brotherhood of ghosts. ”

“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”

“She and Jack had formed her of snow and birch boughs and frosty wild grass.”