Presence of a Deity

Hardwood groves in Central Texas line rivers that cut through the Hill Country and drain toward the Gulf of Mexico.  While few term these wooded areas anything more than copses, we often find ourselves lost searching for timber in post oak thickets that stretch too broad and loom imposingly enough to become forests.  Just north of Austin, along the South San Gabriel near Taylor, we stepped dizzily into a forest glade to find a lone and long dead Mulberry, exposed grain glimmering. Then echoed the words of Seneca:  “When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of the place, and the awful gloom of this domed cavern then strike you with the presence of a deity?”