In Lak'ech Ala K'in

Pan’s Garden (1912) by Algernon Blackwood, illustrations by W. Graham Robertson.

Blackwood was a prolific writer of ghost and children’s stories.

Here all the Forest lived and breathed in safety, 
secure from mutilation. No terror of the axe could 
haunt the peace of its vast subconscious life, no terror 
of devastating Man afflict it with the dread of 
premature death. It knew itself supreme ; it spread 
and preened itself without concealment. It set no 
spires to carry warnings, for no wind brought 
messages of alarm as it bulged outwards to the sun 
and stars.  ~Pan's Garden

"We need the books that affect us like disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us."

- Franz Kafka

(Source: nicsville, via sufigeek)