A flock of a dozen chickadees spends the year in my woods. In winter, when we are harvesting diseased or dead trees for our fuel wood, the ring of the axe is dinner gong fro the chickadee tribe. ... But for diseases and insect pests, there would likely be no food in the trees, and hence no chickadees to add cheer to my woods in winter. Many other kinds of wildlife depend on tree diseases. My pileated woodpeckers chisel living plants, to extract fat grubs from the diseased heartwood. My barred owls find surcease from crows and jays in the hollow heart of an old basswood; but for this diseased tree their sundown serenade would probably be silenced. My wood ducks nest in hollow trees; every June brings its broad of downy ducklings to my woodland slough. All squirrels depend, for permanent dens, on a delicately balanced equilibrium between a rotting cavity and the scar tissue with which the tree attempts to close the wound. The squirrels referee the contest by gnawing out the scar tissue when it begins unduly to shrink the amplitude of their front door.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "A flock of a dozen chickadees spends the year in my woods. In winter, when we are harvesting diseased or dead trees for our fuel wood, the ring of the axe is dinner gong fro the chickadee tribe. ... But for diseases and insect pests, there would likely be no food in the trees, and hence no chickadees to add cheer to my woods in winter. Many other kinds of wildlife depend on tree diseases. My pileated woodpeckers chisel living plants, to extract fat grubs from the diseased heartwood. My barred owls find surcease from crows and jays in the hollow heart of an old basswood; but for this diseased tree their sundown serenade would probably be silenced. My wood ducks nest in hollow trees; every June brings its broad of downy ducklings to my woodland slough. All squirrels depend, for permanent dens, on a delicately balanced equilibrium between a rotting cavity and the scar tissue with which the tree attempts to close the wound. The squirrels referee the contest by gnawing out the scar tissue when it begins unduly to shrink the amplitude of their front door." in the context of "Aldo Leopold, (2001), A Sand County Almanac, publisher: Oxford University Press, ISBN: 9780199726523 (quote from p. 134 & p. 137; photographs by Michael Sewell; introduction by Kenneth Brower; 1st edition 1949)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.