If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.

The sentence proposes trees as living exemplars of two virtues: strength and patience. “Strength” here is not aggression or dominance but steadiness—standing through wind, drought, and winter. “Patience” points to the tree’s timescale: growth measured in seasons and decades, not in quick results. By urging us to “welcome the company of trees,” Borland suggests that these qualities are learned through attentive presence rather than instruction—an ethics of quiet companionship. The line also implies humility: human anxieties shrink when set beside organisms that endure without hurry, reminding readers that resilience is often slow, rooted, and silent.