The Overstory: Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
First there was nothing. Then there was everything.
Then, in a park above a western city after dark, the air is raining messages.
A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, hard as life. Its needles scent the air and a force hums in the heart of the wood. Her ears tune down to the lowest frequencies. T
... See moreBut underlying these facts is an assumption that trees are commodities.Underlying these facts is a human view of time.As the forests shift, can we find opportunities to shift our own understanding?As the trees are pulled into the new patterns of a warming planet, can we learn to embark on our own migration—our own pilgrimage—a journey that slows us... See more
Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder • They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration – Emergence Magazine
I have been thinking about growth and decay, the interplay between the two, the way all growth requires regeneration, which in turn requires a shedding, a composting, a reconstituting of old material. We don’t always know what needs to be shed, or what the optimal direction of growth is. This is where the “blind optimism” of a tree is helpful — the... See more
Kinship: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Love Poem to Trees, Transience, and Eternity
Leaves, soil and seeds. Not normally words that make your pulse race. But they do light a fire in the mind and heart of Hope Jahren. In her hands, you will never feel the same way about these words again. Leaves become elegant machines, soil is the interface between the living and the dead, and seeds, well, they are transformed into the most patien... See more