Thomas Merton spent his whole monastic life listening for that secret pulsating in the heartbeat of creation, and wedded the forest so he could listen with absolute rapture and commitment as one would to a spouse. . . . What he heard in the murmurings of wilderness were "the sweet songs of living things" whose choirs he joined as a solitary monk offering a psalm of glory and thanksgiving on behalf of humankind.
— Kathleen Deignan, When the Trees Say Nothing