Following Miki’s directions, he turned onto a side road, and within a few hundred metres the logged area opened before them. The headlights had a limited reach, but he could see the devastation and raw open space. Cut stumps. Piles of branches and bark. Discarded crowns. Bulldozed tree ferns. An abrupt wall of shadowy trees where the logged area ended. ‘Wow, they’ve hammered it!’ he said.

‘It’s horrible,’ Geraldine agreed. ‘No wonder you’re upset, Miki.’

‘I’m worried about the eagles,’ Miki said. ‘It’s not far to their tree.’

The cleared area seemed to stretch forever as Leon drove through it. Landscapes like this were not new to him—his family had been knocking down trees for decades. But this kind of ruin had made him diverge from family tradition. It might have been possible, years ago, to think people couldn’t overcut forests, but now it had gone too far. Tasmania still had big trees, but areas of old-growth were declining. Leon didn’t know why they needed to cut old-growth at all. The large old trees were hollow inside or they split when they fell, and were basically useless for sawn timber. What was the point? They might as well leave the old trees behind. But loggers liked clearfelling because it was similar to mowing grass, safer and easier than selective logging, and they didn’t even have to get out of their machines. Tasmania had some of the best old-growth left in Australia. In a civilised country they ought to stop cutting it altogether. Back home on Bruny, they only cut pulp because there was no old-growth left. The same would happen here if things continued unchanged.

Leon was relieved to drive from the clearing back into unlogged forest. Out of sight, you could almost pretend the logged area didn’t exist. In the darkness, trees seemed to close around the vehicle, eerily lit by the headlights. This was how it was meant to be: forest like a blanket covering the earth.

Further on, Miki pointed out the eagles’ tree and Leon pulled up beneath it. When they slid out into the cold night, the trees seemed to lean towards them, shadowy and dense, branches reaching like arms, leaves rustling with invisible life. Leon thought of the tales he’d heard growing up, stories that demonised forests: Snow White being chased by the huntsman, Red Riding Hood stalked by the wolf, the hostile woods in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Those stories instilled fear that evil lurked among trees—but no dark forces hovered here, waiting to destroy people. The creatures of the forest were busy doing their thing: bush rats and marsupial mice fossicking in the understorey, possums nibbling on leaves, owls hunting prey. If people learned to love the forest instead of fearing it, they might want to save it.