There are many people loving the outdoors, who feel a special affection towards trees, and I am certainly one of them. In the Berchtesgaden National Park, where I found this old larch, the woods are developing back to their natural state (given the hunters can keep the numbers of bud-eating deers and roes in tolerable magnitudes), and fallen trees stay where they are, protecting saplings and providing shelter and nourishment for other species. For me there is a tremendous amount of beauty in such natural forests, and the woods surrounding the cities in so-called cultivated landscape resemble much more plantations than their wild ancestors.