> helpfully provided some bristlecone background:
>> White Pines would never incroach on Bristlecone territory - besides being
>> a
>> thousand mile apart in range, the White Pine doesn't grow above 5,000
>> feet/1500 m. ...
>>
> I never suggested that the more aggressive trees would encroach on the
> Bristlecone--
> sorry if I made it sound like that.
>
> Rather, I was wondering "aloud" how discussions of the future goals would
> go between the
> Whites and the Bristlecones. The whites "purpose" as a sub-species is the
> reclamation of
> disturbed earth at the periphery of a forest. Bristlecones "purpose" is
> living where no other
> plant can, where no other species except trolls wants to be. The white
> pines are numerous,
> young, fast reproducing, and perhaps aggressive. The bristlecones are
> ancient, wise,
> certainly magically powerful and perhaps still half in the time before
> time, when most of
> them were born.
>
> It is easy to imagine how these two groups would disagree about how to
> safeguard the
> forest.
There are many and varied political and military theories about where one should "defend" one's nation, which is what the difference you're looking at seems to be - do we defend "on the borders"? Do we defend by letting attackers in then overwhelming them? Do we "defend" by attacking our neighbors? All theories have been followed by one nation or another at some point in history - Republican and early Imperial Rome liked to "defend" by defeating their neighbors, Russia and China are masters at sucking in the attacker and overwhelming them (militarily or culturally...), etc.
Frankly, Bristlecones wouldn't be involved in the discussion, because the forest wouldn't reach as far up the mountain slopes - they are the lonely-mystics-on-mountaintops of the Tree world. But between "deep forest" and "border" trees (and shrubs, let's not forget the little folk!), certainly.
RR
He was born with the gift of laughter and the sense that the world was mad
R. Sabatini, Scaramouche
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