strongly-braced

Updated: May 21, 2025

The ever-varying tenants of the forest, also, were constantly presenting as he passed on, some novelty to attract his unaccustomed eye; now in the smooth, tall shaft of the fusiform fir the dandy of the forest standing up with its beautiful cone-shaped top among its rougher neighbors, trim and straight as the bonneted cavalier of the old pictures, among the slouchy forms of his homelier but worthier opponents; now in the low and stocky birch standing on its broad, staunch pedestal of strongly-braced roots below, and throwing out widely above its giant arms, as if striving to shoulder and stay up the weight of the superincumbent forest; and now in the imperial pine, proudly lifting its tall form an hundred feet over the tops of the plebeian trees around, to revel in the upper currents of the air, or bathe its crowning plumes of living green in the clouds of heaven.

D. P. Thompson - Gaut Gurley