The Naturalist in the Treetops

In December 1874, a ferocious windstorm swept through the Sierra Nevada. While most sensible people took shelter, naturalist John Muir did the opposite. He climbed to the top of a hundred-foot Douglas spruce near the ridge of Yosemite Valley and clung there, swaying wildly in winds that bent ancient trees like grass. From that perch, he listened. He heard what he called a magnificent psalm — the wind roaring through pine needles, branches cracking like rifle shots across the canyon, the deep bass of boulders shifting in streambeds below.

Muir later wrote that the storm revealed a voice he could not ignore, something far larger than the sum of its parts. The forest was not being destroyed. It was responding — every tree, every ridge, every waterfall caught up in a single chorus.

Three thousand years earlier, David heard the same voice. In Psalm 29, he names it seven times: the voice of the Lord thundering over the waters, snapping the cedars of Lebanon, shaking the wilderness of Kadesh. Every force in creation bows and responds. And then David lands on the stunning final note — this same God who commands the storm sits enthroned forever and gives His people peace.

The voice that breaks cedars is the voice that whispers strength into weary hearts. The Almighty who shakes the wilderness is the same one who steadies yours.