“It is the beech tree that stands for today and yesterday and for all time. Clothed with translucent leafage, or stripped, as now, in suave silvery loveliness, it grows as a gracious monument to the memory of the old beliefs. To this day I find it no easy matter in the depths of a beech wood to disbelieve in Dryads.” (In Greek mythology, the Dryads are female spirits of nature (nymphs), who preside over the groves ...) From a Country Year by Teresa Hooley