The Overstory

by Richard Powers

A great truth comes over him: Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels good, like a root must feel, when it finds, after centuries, another root to pleach to underground. There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.

The game seems childish, at first. But all of art is childish, all storytelling, all human hope and fear.

What use are we, to trees? She remembers the Buddha’s words: A tree is a wondrous thing that shelters, feeds, and protects all living things. It even offers shade to the axmen who destroy it.

A truth bends near him, one that his discipline will never find. Consciousness itself is a flavor of madness, set against the thoughts of the green world.

In a world of perfect utility, we, too, will be forced to vanish.

Its branches rush outward, toward the house, slowly, to be sure, but fast enough to inspire her. How life managed to add imagination to all the other tricks in its chemistry set is a mystery Dorothy can’t wrap her head around.