This is a excerpt from the book "Hood" by Stephen Lawhead.
As Bran watched,he listened to the sounds of the woodland transforming itself for night as the birds flocked to roost and nights children began to awaken:mice and voles,badgers,foxes,bats-all with their particular voices-and it seemed to him then,as never before,that a forest was more than a place to hunt and gather timber,or else better avoided.More than a stand of moss-heavy trees;more than a sweet-water spring bubbling up from the roots of a distant mountain;more than a smooth-pebbled pool,gleaming,radiant as a jewel in a green hidden dell,or a flower-strewn meadow surrounded by a slender host of white swaying birches,or a badger delving in the dark earth beneath a rough-barked elm,or a fox kit eluding a diving hawk;more than a proud stag standing watch over his clan....More than these,the forest was itself a living thing,it's life made up of all the smaller lives contained within it's borders.
I thought this description pretty well summed it up.Whether we experience fear or awe it's still the closest man will ever get to being whole.