Under the White Pines

White Pines, Algonquin Park 2025

Stepping beneath the white pine trees in Algonquin Park felt like entering a vast, living cathedral. The air shifted, and a stillness settled — the kind that makes you instinctively slow your pace and look up.

For the Indigenous peoples of this land, these resilient giants have long been revered. In times of scarcity, the inner bark was used as emergency food, and their long, straight trunks became graceful canoes that carried people across lakes and rivers. The White Pine is also known as the “Peace Tree” for its calming effect on the nervous system — simply standing here, breathing deeply, feels like a kind of medicine.

These trees are among the oldest living beings in eastern North America, once dominating forests before European settlement. Their straight, strong trunks built ships and houses; their resin sealed seams against the sea. Yet here, in the quiet, they are not timber but timekeepers — living columns that have stood through storms, seasons, and centuries.

The scent of pine resin sharpens your senses, grounding you in the present moment. Overhead, you might hear the whisper of needles, a sound so soft it feels like memory itself. Beneath your feet, decades of fallen needles create a thick, springy carpet that muffles every step, as if the forest itself is asking you to linger.

Here, under the White Pines, healing begins simply by breathing.