The woods, of course, are far from silent. Even in a snow storm there is noise: snowflakes falling through the branches with the faintest rasp of ice. Frozen solid, the crack of a tree yielding to the cold will sound like a light rifle. On an ordinary day, there is the chatter of squirrels, birds, rustling leaves, maybe even insects, water, a multitude. But what is wonderful about the forest is that this symphony has nothing, nothing to do with man. It will go on whether we listen or not. We can deafen ourselves to it, we have for the most part done so already. However, we can not silence it.
If a tree falls in a forest, the forest hears. It could care less if we hear it. We would do well to remember that.
Acair Fearann 
But why the dichotomy? If we are part of the forest, and the forest is part of us, we will hear and see and feel with the forest in our particular human way of sensing and contribute our own human response. No necessity for the forest to be an out-there “it” and the human to be an in-here “me”, simply because we are not always in the forest.
And how right you are! I suppose that post is a response to being entirely too closely involved with people where there is that dichotomy… Thank you for the reminder… 🙂