(This first section is meant for you to personalize for your own context. Find local parallels to the following images, and provide pictures - if possible - of local landmarks for your people to see in a new way.)

Washington State is evergreen country.

In some parts of the world like the Pacific Northwest, deciduous trees are but random presences in nature.

That's why this stretch of interstate was so striking. Driving along the freeway on a grey November afternoon, we passed an unnaturally large expanse of winter-bare trees. Where did it come from?

This was one of the U.S. Agriculture Department's experimental tracts and plantings - a huge swath of neat, healthy poplars - uniformly straight, tall and (after November's rain and winds) spookily barren in the midst of a sea of evergreen.…