Spend a few hours with the Sounds of the Forest open-source library of woodland-area recordings, and you’ll be sure to see the forest for the trees. From the Alps to the Amazon to the Adirondacks, forests are perhaps our most important natural resource (as Dr. Suzanne Simard recently noted on Ep. 114 of our At a Distance podcast), and one of our most spiritually beloved. Be they tropical or temperate, these dense ecosystems function as the world’s lungs, sequestering carbon and providing habitats for millions of species. In recent years (thanks, in large part, to pioneering work by Dr. Simard), science has taught us that trees cluster together in forests to communicate with each other and even share resources. Yet forests are increasingly threatened by deforestation, not to mention fire, flooding, insects, and diseases, even as we’ve come to appreciate their psychological benefits (forest bathing, anyone?) all the more.