#spin the tale around for so many stories of the bible and yet still follow the plot just to mess with people's heads:

[crazy-maracuya]

Im gonna do whats called an Euripides move

[funtimes-inbabylon]

fenrir greyback

"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies? And even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying."

Rainer Maria Rilke

Mother told you that her life ended when yours began.

-

Sacrosanct are the fruits of your labor. Rotten in their root, rotten on the tree grown from holy soil. The tree that sheds its skin for you, reaches its tender branches out to you for you take its decaying legacy. Divinity is what you breathe into his flesh, after sinking your teeth so lovingly, so tenderly, into the boy's side. And he tasted so sweet, aromatic to fill your senses with blossoming honeysuckle, pomegranate blood to drip from your full lips. His body a parable, he who is made saint among the wretched. You do not call him son but instead savior.

A pariah, a chosen Messiah. Succinct is your will, writ into him, etched into his skin. Scored stories, didactic in their prose, the way the words form and fall about him. Illustrious in their verses, their psalms that sing into your ears. You'd make him your Bible if he refused to be your godly Prince. You would line him in gold and spin him tales of grandeur. Of kingdoms on clouds, snow-capped spines of mountains and white-feathered servants. You would place words on translucent page, use his skin as script, imperial in your longing.

He'd call you manic in your preaching, your fables and fantasies until you convinced him otherwise. No, not manic, not crazed, lunacy does not run through these veins. He is kept from you, hidden and mistreated - yet you need him near you, where you can plant seeds of righteous thought, where hallowed ideas can bloom. Child, Christ-like, to fulfill a self-appointed prophecy. Delusional, you bit him, delusional, you wanted to raise him.

You read passages from the Old Testament, memorized Lucifer and his morning star. Where Lucifer speaks, the fallen angel breathed through him. He who loved God so dearly, an angel with wings that failed him.

-

It comes to you in fluid dreams, of Catholic renderings, of Ancient Canaanite and Greek mythos poured through your veins. For Eros and the morning star to enter you, to salt the wound that the ropes made, daffodils that grew around you. Fogged vision, surrounding red, blanketed in violet and lily. Lucidly, you line your fingers with golden rings, diamonds placed on them in faceted ovals.

Their teeth flash white ivory in your vision. Their wailing is but illusary to you, it echoes in your mind, overtakes your psyche, as a malign moon burns ocular, circling where you stand. Its silvery light touches you and you cry out, in pain as bones break and form anew. Rip your skin for the sake of change, bleed infected blood, cardinal and ruin.

Hangs like steel manacles around your wrists, tethered to the canine feeling. Imagery and spooled fraternal revelry at your feet, they call you home by howl, compulsion driven by eternal feeling.

-

There is no existence without fear

-

LUCIFER: It may be thou shalt as we.

CAIN:

And ye?

LUCIFER: Are everlasting.

CAIN:

 Are ye happy?

LUCIFER:

We are mighty.

CAIN: Are ye happy?

LUCIFER:

No: art thou?

-

There is no happiness without worship

-

Monarchs fell long before you rose as King. The cushioned crown placed on your head, dealt in jewels and pearls, in where insects surrounding - locusts swarming, their frail bodies quivering, carrying news of your reign on their paper wings. Royalty changed Canis Lupus, and wolves replace soldiers, replace your people, bare their fangs for you. Reach gullets and bite through tendons for you. Bathe in blood, pupils dark, claws tear flesh for you.

You want the same from him, your Godly Prince, to be cloaked in crushed velvet, swathed in red silk, dripping and dripping with golden ruby'd chains for you. You would place him in pelts of wolves, their lives given to you for his return. Where you'd wait on your marble throne for him to beg mercy, forgiveness, divine exoneration from his sin of betrayal, a blaspheme crying crystal tears before you.

You want him crawling back to you, your heir, your only. You want him on hands and knees for you. With head bowed and neck craned, asking for regalia, cratered paradise, elysium nowhere but the palms of your hands. Which, for him to take, is paramount desire. To kiss each jeweled fist and vow loyalty, again, lupine in its hunger. Raven-winged, his plumage onyx iridescent, covertly viridian and cerulean. A jigsawed jaw, the amber of the moment, the snapping of fangs and where bone breaks cleanly to reveal itself rimmed with iron and wine.

Dionysiac in your raging prowess, you'd no choice but to tie his hands with the fated red thread.

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume: the sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

I. INTIMACY WITHOUT FEAR

For his name to be on your tongue, to embrace your very teeth and cushion between words. He was pillowed, perfect synonyms of grace and utopic euphoria. Placed, crucifix, in a crown of laurel and olive. To feel him before you, come to life, reverie-like in a fixed reality. How mist surrounded him, a pull inward, to fold over himself not in pain but ecstasy. To feel the divine glory, venerated light drug through gaps in the wall, pellucid in window panes, behind stained glass mosaics, your portrait hung from the wall behind him. A line of pews for his followers to preach, to listen with intent, eager ears - to hear that their worries would ebb, as he would grant their redemption.

II. INTIMACY IN WAVES

He'd come to you in a daze, in a trance of circling hounds, a canine ouroboros. He pulls cuspid and molar from his mouth, places them in your hands, pearls of bones to be stringed together, to hang from your blessed throat.

Metacarpus in mineral, a backbone carved from lapis lazuli, bruised, redolent eucalytpus leaves to cloak in archaic fashion. A wine reminiscent of velour. He'd look at you with glazed eyes and you would speak his name, feel it wash over every inch of you.

III. INTIMACY IN A SHARED MOON

It wanes, a harvest moon riding your shoulders, and you'd be haunted - a spiritual representation of the past before you. Wrapped in waving neon, tender kinetics of ghosts squeezing your soul between histrionic fits. Fistfuls of ripe berries, bleeding violet through fingers, digits veiled in pulpy residue.

Morning is pure, stained carmine in the wake of savage passion.

"There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes. Nowhere, ever, have the hideous mechanics of birth and copulation and death — those monstrous upheavals of life that the greeks call miasma, defilement — been so brutal or been painted up to look so pretty; have so many people put so much faith in lies and mutability and death death death"

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

[cassatine]

Hi! Can I ask what makes West End Games the "genesis point" of Star Wars old cnaon? Isn't it just the movies?

MY TIME HASCOME. Have a [tl;dr] of my notes on WEG. 

Okay so - are the WEG games the genesis point of the old canon or is it the movies is the kind of question I’m not super interested in, so i’m more going to focus on what makes West End Games key, and the part they played.

Let’s dothe time warp – we’re in the mid-eighties, let’s say 86. Return of the Jedi was released in 83, the movies have been adaptedin as many forms as possible. There’s been children books, storybooks, activitybooks, nonfiction, etc. There’s been magazines and strip comics in newspapersand two trilogies of novels published by Bantam, plus Foster Splinter of theMind’s eye, there’s been Atari games and toys beyond counting. There’s been publishedscreenplays and artbooks, a Guide to the universe compiled by a fan andofficialized, some odds and ends I’m notcounting, and that list may seem long, but it’s ten yearsof content – the rate of release was nothing like today’s or the nineties’. Towrap it up, between 84 and 86, there’d been the Ewoks and Droidstv series, as well as the Ewok movies (I think a lot of kids loved them, but olderfans, not really) but the overall release rhythm was winding down: Kennerstopped producing SW figurines in 85 (they’d start again in 95); in 86 theMarvel run of comics ended (they published two spin-off series til 87, Droidsand Ewoks, tho). Star WarsInsider, still the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine at that point, would start its runin 87, but it featured little about SW for years - outside of themerchandising pages at least. Fandom was certainly active, but the rate of official content had dwindled next tonothing, and nothing new was on the horizon.

In myperiodization, that’s the end of the First Legends Era, and at this point SWwas basically dying, nevermind the Ewoks and Droids stuff. Again, I don’t meanthe core fandom, but without regular new content the wider audience was justlosing interest.

Somethingchanged that of course, otherwise I wouldn’t be here typing this, and somethingwas West End Games, a small company who, until then, had mostly publishedhistorical and fantasy RPGs. They could buy the license because… well, no onewas interested. Again, Star Wars had stopped being a hot property.

That didn’tlast long, and West End Games kicked off the Second Legends Era, expandingon the universe in a way none of the previous spin-off products had.

Their firstpublication was Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game in October 1987, covering thefirst movie’ events. It was followed a month later by a Sourcebook and until the license changed hands at the end of the nineties, WEG released over ahundred books, sourcebooks and miscellaneous stuff, including the Adventure Journal, which arguably kickedoff the long tradition of SW short stories that other official magazines wouldlater continue. Many of these first short stories were later reprinted, mainlyin the Tales anthologies - and a lot of people were angry when some of the Special Editions changes invalidated bits of these stories (the very first Canonpocalypse). The West EndGames material also started the tradition of in-universe works; most of theirguides and sourcebooks had in-universe passages, but some of the sourcebookswere fully written from an in-universe point of view.

There’s anumber of factors behind the success of the WEG Star Wars line; for thecore fandom, it came at a time when there was very little new content: WEG’s shortfictions were the only new fictional content (bar Ewoks/Droids stuff) from 86to 91, and with the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine, WEG was basically the only regularsource of content. It was also an encyclopedical exploration of the GFFA, more on that below. It was aninteractive kind of fictional content; a way to become an active participant in the galaxy-sized storyof Star Wars rather than remain a passive audience, more accessible thanthe electronic games of the times. 

And it wasgood. Like, critically-acclaimed good.

The WestEnd Games publications had a hugeimpact on the franchise in their time, and their products remained being ratherinfluential in later years. They’re still being so, as that “roleplayinggame material published in the 1980s” alluded to in the 2014 Canonpocalyseannouncement – i.e., the source from which the Inquisitorium, the ISB andSiennar Fleet Systems, and a great many other elements since, were pulled andbrought to the NEU.

But to goback to your actual ask, there’sa reason for looking at the West End Games products specifically as a the base of the old Legends canon (and also a source ofelements and concepts for the NEU). The RPG outlook is a very specific one; oneof statistics and numbers and rules that users learn to navigate the setting ofthe adventures. To create a RPGfrom an already existing world,you’d define a number of categories and subcategories for worldbuildingelements, break down those elements to measurable characteristics – but alsoelaborate on context and fill in many blanks. It’s a very methodic way to doworldbuilding, one oriented towards a specific purpose.

Inpractice, that meant the West End Games books, although not planned as such,doubled as a set of incredibly detailed reference books, something without equivalent at the time. Althoughthe first publications centered around the movies and, once the ExpandedUniverse really took off in the early 90s, some of the novels, comics and games,the company had soon started to create as much as adapt, branching out to new,unexplored grounds. With the adventures came details about the galaxy’sgeography and history, its inhabitants and its technology, the inner workingsof the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. And if some of these publications tied tothe movies or other products, this was no-one way relationships: from theTarkin initiative to COMPNOR, the ISB or foundational texts such as the Declaration of Rebellion and otherelements great and small, the galaxy was laid out in West End Games’publications, comprehensively and extensively.

Thing is, if many of the books featured pre-written adventures or “adventure seeds”, the fundamental goal of sourcebooks and the overall worldbuilding of the WEG stuff was to create a universe for the players to tell stories – stories in which the narrator has no control over the characters, but stories nonetheless. In a way, the sourcebooks were reference books intended for storytellers.

Which is why they became the base of the “old canon”, when it took off in the early 90s, with the Dark Horse comics and Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy – and make no mistake, the only reason these happened at all was because WEG had made Star Wars a viable brand again. Their success had proven there was a market.

And as we’ve seen, they’d already done the worldbuilding, extensively; Lucasfilm has always had final approval on the WEG books too, so the content was considered as “official” as could be, and continuity already mattered (if always with the caveat that Lucas could invalidate it if he came back to SW, as finally happened). It’s well known Zahn was sent WEG sourcebooks by Lucasfilm (who would later develop an internal “canon bible,” way before the holocron database, but wasn’t there yet), and over the years, writers used the sourcebooks as resource materials; I wish I could give you a list but I’m working on it. Recently Jason Fry said he still used the sourcebooks. Hidalgo talks about them here and there.

Moreover, anumber of Legends (and NEU) writers, of fiction as well as of nonfiction, first contributed to StarWars through WEG; Troy Denning, later to write novels for the franchise,authored two “gamebooks,” i.e Choose your own adventure books, and a sourcebook;Bill Smith wrote and co-wrote a number of books for WEG before writing twotitles for the first series of Essential Guides ; Daniel Wallace alsowent from WEG to the Essential Guides, though he only contributed to thefinal published issue of the AdventureJournal, and the rest of his RPG writing was done in the context of Wizardsof the Coast publications. Peter M. Schweighofer, who would also go on to writefor WOTC, wrote or co-wrote a number of WEG books; he also edited the Adventure Journal and wrote a number ofshort stories. Pablo Hidalgo went from playing the WEG games to writing forthem before joining Lucasfilm. There’s more but I’m still working onthat list.

[newssplashy]

World: Climate change is killing the cedars of Lebanon

As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce.

BAROUK CEDAR FOREST, Lebanon — Walking among the cedars on a mountain slope in Lebanon feels like visiting the territory of primeval beings. Some of the oldest trees have been here for more than 1,000 years, spreading their uniquely horizontal branches like outstretched arms and sending their roots deep into the craggy limestone.

They flourish on the moisture and cool temperatures that make this ecosystem unusual in the Middle East, with mountaintops that snare the clouds floating in from the Mediterranean Sea and gleam with winter snow.

But now, after centuries of human depredation, the cedars of Lebanon face perhaps their most dangerous threat: Climate change could wipe out most of the country’s remaining cedar forests by the end of the century.

As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce. But here in the Barouk forest, part of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, south of Beirut, there isn’t much farther up to go. If the climate warms at the rates expected because of the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, some scholars say that by 2100 cedars will be able to thrive only at the northern tip of the country, where the mountains are higher.

In the north, though, there are different problems. Lebanon’s densest cedar forest, the Tannourine Cedars Forest Nature Reserve, has lost more than 7 percent of its trees to insect infestations unknown before 1997. They are directly tied to a warming, drying climate.

Throughout history, the cedars of Lebanon have been prized for buildings and boats, chopped down for temples in ancient Egypt, Jerusalem and beyond. So while climate change did not start the assault on the cedars, it could be the death blow.

Many thousands of square kilometers of forest once spread across most of Lebanon’s highlands. Only 17 square kilometers of cedars remain, in scattered groves.

The country’s most famous cedar patch, sometimes called the Cedars of God, has been fenced off for preservation since 1876.

UNESCO added the Cedars of God to its list of world heritage sites 20 years ago. The forest is isolated, and its ability to expand is limited. Now UNESCO says it is one of the sites most vulnerable to climate change.

Some believe that patch was where the resurrected Jesus revealed himself to his followers, said Antoine Jibrael Tawk, an author of books on the cedars.

The Lebanon cedar, a distinct species known scientifically as Cedrus libani, grows mainly here and in Turkey. The trees germinate in late winter because they need a freeze, preferably with snow.

This year, winter was mild. Omar Abu Ali, the ecotourism coordinator for the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, Lebanon’s largest protected area, pointed to evidence on the ground in the Barouk forest.

It was early April, and cedar seedlings were beginning to pop up from the soil. Normally the seedlings don’t come up until early May. Earlier, they risk dying in cold snaps and are more vulnerable to insects. “This is early germination,” Abu Ali said. “They can die.”

A generation ago, it typically rained or snowed 105 days a year in the mountains. High up, snow stayed on the ground for three to four months. This past winter, there were just 40 days of rain and a only month of snow cover.

“Climate change is a fact here,” said Nizar Hani, the Shouf Biosphere’s director. “There is less rain, higher temperatures, and more extreme temperatures,” both hot and cold, he said.

“The cedar forest is migrating to higher altitudes,” he said. And it is unclear, he added, which of the species that usually live alongside the cedars will survive higher up, further changing the ecosystem.

A 2010 study suggested that if the climate warms at expected rates, no more cedars will thrive in the Shouf, because the mountains there are not high enough. While some Lebanese specialists view that prediction as overly dire, they agree the cedars face an emergency.

“We are in a race,” said Hani. “There is no time to lose.”

In the Tannourine reserve, north of Beirut, this year’s poor snowfall has forest managers bracing for a tough season with Cephalcia tannourinensis, an insect commonly known as the cedar web-spinning sawfly that feeds on the trees’ young needles. The insect was unknown to scientists until 1998, when Nabil Nemer, a Lebanese entomologist identified it as the cause of the mysterious blight that hit Tannourine the year before, killing swaths of the forest.

Called to investigate, Nemer discovered that the culprit was the sawfly, which buries itself in the ground in the winter. It had never been noticed before because its life cycle initially did not interfere with the cedars. But with earlier snowmelt, the insects emerged earlier, laying their eggs in time for larvae to eat new cedar shoots.

“We can see a direct climate change effect,” Nemer said. From 2006 to 2018 alone, he said, the insects killed 7.5 percent of the Tannourine forest’s trees, disproportionately young ones.

The discovery of the sawfly spurred the creation of the Tannourine reserve. To protect the trees, scientists are using new methods to fight the insect with fungi that exist naturally in the forest and can kill the larvae.

The insects are just the latest threat to the cedar, which, like Lebanon itself, has faced one challenge after another: tough terrain, invasion, plunder, conflict.

The cedars are able to survive in a challenging environment. Their roots can drink from springs inside the porous rock. That survival is precisely what makes them a compelling symbol for Lebanon.

Through five millenniums of recorded history, a parade of civilizations has praised the cedars of Lebanon — and then chopped them down. Lebanon has been deforested by Mesopotamians, Phoenicians and ancient Egyptians; by the Greek and Roman empires; by crusaders, colonizers and modern Middle East turmoil. Yet the trees are so symbolic of the country that a cedar stands at the center of the Lebanese flag.

It offers majesty, for a tiny, vulnerable country. Rootedness, for generations scattered by famine and conflict. Ancient history, for a state carved out by colonial powers.

Invaders have long targeted Lebanon for its water supply, its ports and the valuable cedars, which they carted away for their palaces, temples, and ships. For centuries, the steep, rocky mountains attracted minority sects fleeing from hostile neighbors; their goats and wood stoves consumed more cedars. The conflicts of fractious warlords wreak environmental havoc to this day.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Lebanon had a national Green Plan that replanted many cedars. Then came the 15-year civil war. The plan was forgotten. Some warlords protected the cedars, in their way; in the Shouf mountains, Druze militants laid land mines around forests.

Four years ago, Lebanon’s Agriculture Ministry began a new plan to plant 40 million trees, including some cedars. Separately, the Environment Ministry supervises the management of protected cedar areas. Yet even today, political divisions and the war’s legacy make the government too weak and fragmented to build functional national systems for electricity, water delivery, sewage or trash removal, let alone a muscular, enforceable master plan to protect the cedars, ecologists say.

Still, many Lebanese see in the tree a reflection of their land’s uniqueness and its ability to survive the storms of history.

“It is a very strong tree, strong enough to be able to live in very hard conditions,” said Hani, the Shouf Biosphere director. “It’s very unique, noble, different from any other kind of tree.”

Everywhere in Lebanon, the cedar tree can be found on banners, tattoos, storefronts, souvenirs, political posters. It is often a stylized cartoon, like the bright-green stencil on the country’s cheerful flag, a child’s vision of the ideal tree. The trees’ scent surfaces in cedar honey and cedar olive-oil soap. Middle East Airlines paints the tree on its aircrafts’ tails and on their turned-up wingtips, as if to make sure passengers cannot miss the symbol.

Accounts of the cedar go back to one of humanity’s first remembered stories, the epic of Gilgamesh. In the tale, Gilgamesh kills Humbaba, the guardian of the cedar forest, and carries away the trees to build palaces and fortresses. Faisal Abu-Izzeddin, whose book “Memories of a Cedar” chronicles centuries of deforestation, calls Humbaba’s defeat the first of many victories of consumer over conservationist.

The cedars are mentioned repeatedly in the Bible. In the Song of Solomon, they represent the beauty of the beloved: “His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.”

Some Lebanese even invoke the trees in an oath: ‘I swear upon the cedars.’

In order to protect the cedars from total destruction, various Lebanese conservation groups are trying to diversify their locations and expand their populations. The main goal of replanting, they say, is to make the cedar forests larger and more resilient to whatever future environmental pressures they face.

The ideal altitude for cedars has historically been between 1,400 and 1,800 meters. But some trees can survive higher or lower, depending on water, shade, soil and wind. Experimenting, conservationists have found seedlings can survive in some places up to 2,100 meters.

In Arz, the Cedars of God reserve has just 2,100 trees. Dr. Youssef Tawk, a medical doctor and conservationist, and his colleagues are trying to regenerate a larger forest. It’s a challenge because the reserve itself is isolated. Most of the ideal areas to plant are private, or designated for other uses by the municipal government.

But since 1998, Tawk’s group has planted 100,000 trees in a patchwork of disconnected lands around the old reserve.

“It was a lot of trial and error,” Tawk said. “Where we could, and where the municipality allowed, we planted.”

Cedars grow slowly, bearing no cones until they are 40 or 50 years old. When they are young by cedar standards, they look much like other conifers, pointy, like Christmas trees. But after about a century, they morph into their distinctive shape. The trunk thickens, the branches spread parallel to the ground, the cones perch atop them like resting birds.

Approaching cedar forests, often the first trees you see are young. They look deceptively ordinary.

Then you come around a bend. The experience can be almost disorienting, because the mature cedars are so unlike how you expect a tree to look. Some stand alone like statues. Others grow in clusters, the horizontal lines of branches crosshatching the verticals of trunks, steep slopes and cliffs, creating dizzying effects.

Come closer and you feel something else. You are next to a being that has seen civilizations come and go. Now, it is watching you.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Anne Barnard © 2018 The New York Times

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/07/world-climate-change-is-killing-cedars.html

[newssplashy]

As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce.

BAROUK CEDAR FOREST, Lebanon — Walking among the cedars on a mountain slope in Lebanon feels like visiting the territory of primeval beings. Some of the oldest trees have been here for more than 1,000 years, spreading their uniquely horizontal branches like outstretched arms and sending their roots deep into the craggy limestone.

They flourish on the moisture and cool temperatures that make this ecosystem unusual in the Middle East, with mountaintops that snare the clouds floating in from the Mediterranean Sea and gleam with winter snow.

But now, after centuries of human depredation, the cedars of Lebanon face perhaps their most dangerous threat: Climate change could wipe out most of the country’s remaining cedar forests by the end of the century.

As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce. But here in the Barouk forest, part of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, south of Beirut, there isn’t much farther up to go. If the climate warms at the rates expected because of the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, some scholars say that by 2100 cedars will be able to thrive only at the northern tip of the country, where the mountains are higher.

In the north, though, there are different problems. Lebanon’s densest cedar forest, the Tannourine Cedars Forest Nature Reserve, has lost more than 7 percent of its trees to insect infestations unknown before 1997. They are directly tied to a warming, drying climate.

Throughout history, the cedars of Lebanon have been prized for buildings and boats, chopped down for temples in ancient Egypt, Jerusalem and beyond. So while climate change did not start the assault on the cedars, it could be the death blow.

Many thousands of square kilometers of forest once spread across most of Lebanon’s highlands. Only 17 square kilometers of cedars remain, in scattered groves.

The country’s most famous cedar patch, sometimes called the Cedars of God, has been fenced off for preservation since 1876.

UNESCO added the Cedars of God to its list of world heritage sites 20 years ago. The forest is isolated, and its ability to expand is limited. Now UNESCO says it is one of the sites most vulnerable to climate change.

Some believe that patch was where the resurrected Jesus revealed himself to his followers, said Antoine Jibrael Tawk, an author of books on the cedars.

The Lebanon cedar, a distinct species known scientifically as Cedrus libani, grows mainly here and in Turkey. The trees germinate in late winter because they need a freeze, preferably with snow.

This year, winter was mild. Omar Abu Ali, the ecotourism coordinator for the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, Lebanon’s largest protected area, pointed to evidence on the ground in the Barouk forest.

It was early April, and cedar seedlings were beginning to pop up from the soil. Normally the seedlings don’t come up until early May. Earlier, they risk dying in cold snaps and are more vulnerable to insects. “This is early germination,” Abu Ali said. “They can die.”

A generation ago, it typically rained or snowed 105 days a year in the mountains. High up, snow stayed on the ground for three to four months. This past winter, there were just 40 days of rain and a only month of snow cover.

“Climate change is a fact here,” said Nizar Hani, the Shouf Biosphere’s director. “There is less rain, higher temperatures, and more extreme temperatures,” both hot and cold, he said.

“The cedar forest is migrating to higher altitudes,” he said. And it is unclear, he added, which of the species that usually live alongside the cedars will survive higher up, further changing the ecosystem.

A 2010 study suggested that if the climate warms at expected rates, no more cedars will thrive in the Shouf, because the mountains there are not high enough. While some Lebanese specialists view that prediction as overly dire, they agree the cedars face an emergency.

“We are in a race,” said Hani. “There is no time to lose.”

In the Tannourine reserve, north of Beirut, this year’s poor snowfall has forest managers bracing for a tough season with Cephalcia tannourinensis, an insect commonly known as the cedar web-spinning sawfly that feeds on the trees’ young needles. The insect was unknown to scientists until 1998, when Nabil Nemer, a Lebanese entomologist identified it as the cause of the mysterious blight that hit Tannourine the year before, killing swaths of the forest.

Called to investigate, Nemer discovered that the culprit was the sawfly, which buries itself in the ground in the winter. It had never been noticed before because its life cycle initially did not interfere with the cedars. But with earlier snowmelt, the insects emerged earlier, laying their eggs in time for larvae to eat new cedar shoots.

“We can see a direct climate change effect,” Nemer said. From 2006 to 2018 alone, he said, the insects killed 7.5 percent of the Tannourine forest’s trees, disproportionately young ones.

The discovery of the sawfly spurred the creation of the Tannourine reserve. To protect the trees, scientists are using new methods to fight the insect with fungi that exist naturally in the forest and can kill the larvae.

The insects are just the latest threat to the cedar, which, like Lebanon itself, has faced one challenge after another: tough terrain, invasion, plunder, conflict.

The cedars are able to survive in a challenging environment. Their roots can drink from springs inside the porous rock. That survival is precisely what makes them a compelling symbol for Lebanon.

Through five millenniums of recorded history, a parade of civilizations has praised the cedars of Lebanon — and then chopped them down. Lebanon has been deforested by Mesopotamians, Phoenicians and ancient Egyptians; by the Greek and Roman empires; by crusaders, colonizers and modern Middle East turmoil. Yet the trees are so symbolic of the country that a cedar stands at the center of the Lebanese flag.

It offers majesty, for a tiny, vulnerable country. Rootedness, for generations scattered by famine and conflict. Ancient history, for a state carved out by colonial powers.

Invaders have long targeted Lebanon for its water supply, its ports and the valuable cedars, which they carted away for their palaces, temples, and ships. For centuries, the steep, rocky mountains attracted minority sects fleeing from hostile neighbors; their goats and wood stoves consumed more cedars. The conflicts of fractious warlords wreak environmental havoc to this day.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Lebanon had a national Green Plan that replanted many cedars. Then came the 15-year civil war. The plan was forgotten. Some warlords protected the cedars, in their way; in the Shouf mountains, Druze militants laid land mines around forests.

Four years ago, Lebanon’s Agriculture Ministry began a new plan to plant 40 million trees, including some cedars. Separately, the Environment Ministry supervises the management of protected cedar areas. Yet even today, political divisions and the war’s legacy make the government too weak and fragmented to build functional national systems for electricity, water delivery, sewage or trash removal, let alone a muscular, enforceable master plan to protect the cedars, ecologists say.

Still, many Lebanese see in the tree a reflection of their land’s uniqueness and its ability to survive the storms of history.

“It is a very strong tree, strong enough to be able to live in very hard conditions,” said Hani, the Shouf Biosphere director. “It’s very unique, noble, different from any other kind of tree.”

Everywhere in Lebanon, the cedar tree can be found on banners, tattoos, storefronts, souvenirs, political posters. It is often a stylized cartoon, like the bright-green stencil on the country’s cheerful flag, a child’s vision of the ideal tree. The trees’ scent surfaces in cedar honey and cedar olive-oil soap. Middle East Airlines paints the tree on its aircrafts’ tails and on their turned-up wingtips, as if to make sure passengers cannot miss the symbol.

Accounts of the cedar go back to one of humanity’s first remembered stories, the epic of Gilgamesh. In the tale, Gilgamesh kills Humbaba, the guardian of the cedar forest, and carries away the trees to build palaces and fortresses. Faisal Abu-Izzeddin, whose book “Memories of a Cedar” chronicles centuries of deforestation, calls Humbaba’s defeat the first of many victories of consumer over conservationist.

The cedars are mentioned repeatedly in the Bible. In the Song of Solomon, they represent the beauty of the beloved: “His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.”

Some Lebanese even invoke the trees in an oath: ‘I swear upon the cedars.’

In order to protect the cedars from total destruction, various Lebanese conservation groups are trying to diversify their locations and expand their populations. The main goal of replanting, they say, is to make the cedar forests larger and more resilient to whatever future environmental pressures they face.

The ideal altitude for cedars has historically been between 1,400 and 1,800 meters. But some trees can survive higher or lower, depending on water, shade, soil and wind. Experimenting, conservationists have found seedlings can survive in some places up to 2,100 meters.

In Arz, the Cedars of God reserve has just 2,100 trees. Dr. Youssef Tawk, a medical doctor and conservationist, and his colleagues are trying to regenerate a larger forest. It’s a challenge because the reserve itself is isolated. Most of the ideal areas to plant are private, or designated for other uses by the municipal government.

But since 1998, Tawk’s group has planted 100,000 trees in a patchwork of disconnected lands around the old reserve.

“It was a lot of trial and error,” Tawk said. “Where we could, and where the municipality allowed, we planted.”

Cedars grow slowly, bearing no cones until they are 40 or 50 years old. When they are young by cedar standards, they look much like other conifers, pointy, like Christmas trees. But after about a century, they morph into their distinctive shape. The trunk thickens, the branches spread parallel to the ground, the cones perch atop them like resting birds.

Approaching cedar forests, often the first trees you see are young. They look deceptively ordinary.

Then you come around a bend. The experience can be almost disorienting, because the mature cedars are so unlike how you expect a tree to look. Some stand alone like statues. Others grow in clusters, the horizontal lines of branches crosshatching the verticals of trunks, steep slopes and cliffs, creating dizzying effects.

Come closer and you feel something else. You are next to a being that has seen civilizations come and go. Now, it is watching you.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Anne Barnard © 2018 The New York Times

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