I remember the towering and ancient sequoia and redwood trees in the John Muir park north of San Francisco, across the lovely Golden Gate Bridge. One thing I learned on a visit there was that these trees grow in a kind of circular family of say six or so trees. There is the original tree, and then other trees get their start somehow from the network of the roots of the parent tree, from sprouts off the roots. My memory is not precise on this topic and so some of the details may be a little off. But I bring it up because I grew up here in Louisiana among tall and graceful pines. There were two clusters in our yard, and both were rather circular in arrangement. (So now I wonder if perhaps they had a reproductive process similar to the great trees in California.) The needles were long and lovely, in clusters of three - pliable enough to braid. The squirrels spent much time peeling pine cones for the little nuts along the core. Woodpeckers loved the damaged broken limbs, likely because they housed insects. Sticky sap oozed from the thick bark. After a rain, a scent of sweet poignance filled the air.