Trees dot the landscape with a kind of poetry, standing as silent sentinels over the earth, with their hidden roots plunging deep into her bosom and drinking of her life, and their branches stretched to the heavens, all the more expansively the more they have allowed themselves to sink into the humble depths of the soil. Aspen, poplar, and beech, with a few large oak here and there, intermingle in great diversity, still mostly leafless but majestic nonetheless in their nudity; and among these stand tall and wide the fully-pined spruces and junipers, less in number but more vibrant in color. The atmosphere is still and quiet, with hardly a whisper of wind, and the cold only enhances the sense of reverberating quiet that cloaks the land and of the mysterious whispers of life that inhabit the woods and sing among the trees. Intermittently the chirping of small birds, passerines, warblers, or finches, or the calling of a lark, or even the deep voice of a moose, is heard, breaking the stillness, or perhaps better, intermingling with it. The fullness of sound-laden silence makes her think that perhaps she is hearing some distant echo, however imperfect, of the silent song by which the gods first sang Ierendal into existence.