Conifers - trees with cones and needles - are important to cultures across the globe. This time of year many of us are bringing them into our homes in the form of Christmas trees, but to those of us in the Pacific Northwest, conifers are an important part of life year-round. The connections between conifers, their ecosystems, and people in the Northwest are numerous and strong, and over the course of the next month a weekly series of short episodes will explore these connections and delve into the stories told by particular Northwest forests and the conifers that define them.