We were never millwrights

The sun's rays penetrate the oak's boughs into the glade, and play gently with the pine needles carpeting the ground. Their edges gleam dully as though they are tiny chipmunk foils. My brown leather boots, scarred by close calls with saws and hammers, brush aside leaves from past autumns now forgotten. They scuff the dirt, pushing aside soil transplanted here from receding glaciers.
Yellow-green leaves look down on me, batted about gently by the breeze, waving as though we were best friends. The land here lives and breathes the stories of forgotten men and women. It has lungs but no tongue, leaving me with the sense of great untold history. The loam tugs at the strings holding the purse of history, tied tightly by men too afraid to share.

I feel a connection to the wide sweeps of timber before me, harsh mistresses that have no ties to the soft middle class boy, naïvely tramping about. Don't regale me with tales of your camping, the living you do in the luxury of your warm portable houses, pulled about by monstrous machines.
The stones can tell you stories of men and women camping for months in the deep snows relying on naught but layers of birch bark and thatch. You reside here now, but it was not your hand that tamed the land. Your ancestors were not even here to see the timbers fall and industries rise from grassy fields.
Take my admonitions gently, coos the Old Mother. The trees spreading their limbs are for you to take shade from and rest beneath. I ask only that you think of, and remember, your place. Remember those before you and think of those that will come after. You all rest on my bosom.