A seed that lands upside down in the ground will wheel—root and stem—in great U-turns until it rights itself. But a human child can know it’s pointed wrong and still consider the direction well worth a try.

He finds the words in a book: A tree is a passage between earth and sky. He messes up passage.

“It’s a great idea, trees. So great that evolution keeps inventing it, again and again.”

The best and easiest way to get a forest to return to any plot of cleared land is to do nothing—nothing at all, and do it for less time than you might think.