The Inverted Pyramid by Bertrand W. Sinclair

As the reaping machines pass over a field of wheat at harvest time mowing swath after swath until there is nothing left but bristling stubble, so the men and machinery under Rod's direction mowed the forest, harvesting that great crop which the centuries had matured. Day by day the logs poured into the booming ground. Week by week tugs departed, towing enormous rafts. The mills chewed up these logs and spewed them forth as squared timbers, in wide boards and narrow, in beautifully finished materials out of which carpenters in far cities fashioned roofs over the heads of other men.

To Rod these trees had been living things, dumb giants brooding over the earth they shadowed. He had stood among them with a humbled spirit. As a child he had moved in that silence and shade with a strange awe, with a mysterious sense of possession and of being himself possessed. A childish fancy? Perhaps. But it lingered still, recurred often. He could imagine the spirit of the forest putting forth a voiceless protest at all this havoc. He could dismiss these fancies intellectually, but his mind was powerless to put aside emotion. His brain could support action with the stern logic of necessity; it could not always banish the pang from his heart.