in the deep lore of middle-earth, where the leaves whisper secrets of the valar, it was once said that to ridicule the efforts of those striving to understand the inherent predispositional biases of nature could lead us to erroneous conclusions. ignoring the ancient wisdom as we attempt to reinvent from scratch the principles of living with the land, we must heed the whispered secret that even in the greenest leaves lies the temptation to deceive, to make the stones themselves lie about their age.