" The value of every bit of land I’d ever trodden, I’d reckoned in terms of how it could benefit a man. Now I saw it with the eyes of a forest mage. Here life balanced as it had for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Sunlight and water were all that was required for the trees to grow. The trees made the food that fed whatever moving creatures might venture through this territory, and became the food that replenished the soil when their leaves fell to rot back into earth. This working system was as refined and precise as any piece of clockwork ever engineered by man. It worked perfectly. "

― Robin Hobb , The Soldier Son Trilogy Bundle: Shaman's Crossing, Forest Mage, and Renegade's Magic