Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) at Clifford W. Messinger Dry Prairie & Savanna Preserve, Wisconsin State Natural Area (Mayer, 2010).

Clearly, the Eastern red cedar is not only integral in the natural world, but has made a significant impact on human life for centuries as a source of life sustaining provisions, timber, and medicine. This is a tree of great significance and myriad utility whose greatest, most advantageous qualities are perhaps yet to be fully discovered.

As novelist and philosopher Hermann Hesse eloquently expounds, 

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life."

(Trees: Reflections and Poems, 1984).