Daniel Platter (Director)
Daniel was born to love nature. He is the grandson to Montana and Eastern Washington farmers where outdoor scenery was first class. As a young man he rushed through forest trying to climb every mountain, but now walks more deliberately through the woods, taking in all the details, and trying to understand the smallest interactions. He has lived in some loathsome places and some of the most scenic as well. Always has he noted that the wealthiest neighborhoods.... states..... countries have in common the luxury of natural beauty. As beauty ever more rapidly becomes a premium, and the earth's forests fall, as pavement prevails, as people build vacation homes where roots once held, he has endeavored to aid the natural world, and people in the process.
Powerful are opposing forces, and Dan Platter has made no mistake in pointing out that money is green for a reason. It is generated by conversion of our leafy natural heritage to currency. What a terrible irony that in this way we should become impoverished, and moreover diminished in soul!!!!
Songforest has given him the ultimate opportunity for volunteer tree planting (and planning for tree planting), a most loved task. It is his belief that wherever possible larger trees should be sought, thereby bringing the most shade, most life, most abundance, and most glory.
In the Emergency Department in Portland where he works as a physician, there are all too many who come exhausted, depressed, and in poverty of mind, and Dan has always hoped that they would find strength in nature, and a friend in a tall, silent, yet seemingly vigilant tree. Or at least feel more bright their own life's strength under the glorious shade of another. For it is in trees where so many things find solace and a place to live, and so should we all, one people, one body of living things, one green planet.
