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life is trying to say something no one hears.
A tree is a passage between earth and sky.
But there is, of course, no freedom. There are only ancient prophecies that scry the seeds of time and say which will grow and which will not.
There are a hundred thousand species of love, separately invented, each more ingenious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.
“That’s what I’m saying! What’s crazier? Believing there might be nearby presences we don’t know about? Or cutting down the last few ancient redwoods on Earth for decking and shingles?”
It is no answer to say that streams and forests cannot have standing because streams and forests cannot speak. Corporations cannot speak, either; nor can states, estates, infants, incompetents, municipalities, or universities. Lawyers speak for them.
“What’s crazier—plants speaking, or humans listening?”
“Yesterday’s political criminals are on today’s postage stamps!”
To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs.
“Yes! And what do all good stories do?” There are no takers. Neelay holds up his arms and extends his palms in the oddest gesture. In another moment, leaves will grow from his fingers. Birds will come and nest in them. “They kill you a little. They turn you into something you weren’t.”
No one sees trees. We see fruit, we see nuts, we see wood, we see shade. We see ornaments or pretty fall foliage. Obstacles blocking the road or wrecking the ski slope. Dark, threatening places that must be cleared. We see branches about to crush our roof. We see a cash crop. But trees—trees are invisible.
“You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.”
Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
Maybe we want to hurt trees so much because they live so much longer than we do.
But, of course, it’s not the world that needs saving. Only the thing that people call by the same name.
You have been spared from death, to do a most important thing.
ACROSS THE BIOMES, at all altitudes, the learners come alive at last. They discover why a hawthorn never rots. They learn to tell apart the hundred kinds of oak. When and why the green ash split off from the white. How many generations live inside the hollow of a yew. When red maples start to turn at each elevation, and how much sooner they’re turning every year. They will come to think like rivers and forests and mountains. They will grasp how a leaf of grass encodes the journeywork of the stars. In a few short seasons, simply by placing billions of pages of data side by side, the next new
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Imminent, at the speed of people, is too late. The law must judge imminent at the speed of trees.
