Of forests that move

They say Tolkien had Ents because Shakespeare didn’t. Macbeth was told, "fear not, till Birnam wood/Do come to Dunsinane; and now a wood/Comes toward Dunsinane." A moving forest! So anyone reasonable would presume from context; so Tolkien presumed. But it was only Malcolm and Siward carrying branches. How dull.

Ents, however: Ents shepherd trees, and their woods do walk. In one night trees of Fangorn came before Helm’s Deep. They destroyed the Orcs and in another night were gone back to their place. That were a forest to make a mortal tremble properly.

In the last two days I have seen a forest move. The air was full of tree-matter, so muddying the sky that one could hardly see the Sangre de Cristos just across the valley. The sun shone orange through the smoke as it did during the great fire five years ago. When Dad and I drove up to work, we thought there was another fire in the Jemez; but it was in reality the forests of Arizona, north of Phoenix, which were caught up by the flames and sent flying five hundred miles, over deserts and mountains and state lines, to sit in the Rio Grande valley. A Jinn could do no greater wonder.