There is a cathedral-like stillness that resides in the heart of an old-growth forest, a quality of silence that feels heavy with the weight of centuries. To step off a paved road and into the shadowed dampness of an ancient woodland is to leave behind the frantic tempo of human history and enter a realm governed by biological time. Here, the scale of life is measured not in fiscal quarters or news cycles, but in the slow thickening of bark and the gradual decay of fallen giants. These ecosystems are not merely collections of individual trees; they are complex, sentient networks that have perfected the art of coexistence long before…