A Woodsman's View of Wilderness

Wood is my life. I live, eat and breath because of the trees God has given me. Longer than I can remember the tree have been the source of sustenance for my family, for my father's family and his father's. Now they say that I am the trees' enemy. They say I am a parasite. They say I rape and kill the one I love and respect. How can this be?
How carefully I take the tree from the forest, laying her gently down so as not to hurt the inner fiber of her being. The tree doesn't mind being cut down. It knows that its fiber will help to feed, clothe and house many people.
As the tree is set down on my eighteen wheeler, I think of it as a cradle of new birth. I know this tree is destined to become the handle for the carpenter's hammer, the paper that teaches my children to read and the chair that rocks them to sleep. If a tree could hear, would it deny the beauty in the violin's tone? My friend the tree has sailed the seven seas, bent and broken to the fury of the water and the wind. What a wonder this material wood is. To the craftsman it is his means of expression; to the printer it is his sword; to the woodsman it is my life. What will I do when they take you away from me? They say they know you and love you more than I do, yet they drive spikes into your heart. They destroy the machines that carry you to rebirth.
I do not want to hurt you. Maybe in my love for you I have been blind to your needs. There are people that use you and don't care for the beauty you can give, only the money you bring them. Greed has destroyed. I see I no longer receive my life from the forest, but from those who sell you like slaves to foreign lands. People no longer respect your beauty; instead they want plastic tables; they want TV's to teach their children to read; they wrap you around technology's gifts and throw you into the garbage to be buried in their waste.
I have become like you. No longer wanted for who we are. We have been used by society and lost our bid for survival. For a time I numbered in the thousands, you in the millions. Perhaps there is still hope for you if I give up my way of life. But I am just one of the many casualties of man's greed to use the environment.