The wind in the pines does sound like a gossip column, and you’re right—almost every culture has its own gossip columnist. In many hunter‑gatherer tales the trees are the elders who whisper secrets, while in agrarian societies the same rustles are warnings from the earth goddess. Even the way the same bird call turns into a proverb: the owls in the Pacific Islands are the night keepers, in northern Europe they’re omen‑casters. The pattern that sticks is that nature is usually personified as either a mentor or a trickster, and the stories shape the way people treat their environment. It’s a neat little echo chamber of meaning that repeats in a slightly different accent across the globe.