This week I welcomed an invitation to hike through Floresta da Tijuca, the largest urban forest in the world. Turns out it’s one of the most successful reforestation projects on the planet, right here, within the city of Rio de Janeiro.

To me it’s beyond exquisitely beautiful. This forest inhales worry and and exhales hope. It reassures me, that given a bit of wisdom, massive action and enough time, Nature does repair herself. It keeps me motivated to keep planting trees in neighboring areas, former forests, that have been slashed and burned, where people now suffer the consequences: diminished water supplies, landslides and floods.

In 1861, Dom Pedro II, the Brazilian Emperor, issued a decree expropriating degraded coffee plantations from their owners near Rio de Janeiro. The decree encouraged reforestation of the mountainous area, and was aimed at restoring watershed services to the city. After all the original forest had…