The Overstory

by Richard Powers

the greatest flaw of the species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth.

Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.

As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.

We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men. . . . In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.

“I hear myself best when I’m sleeping.”

But all of art is childish, all storytelling, all human hope and fear.

Deforestation: a bigger changer of climate than all of transportation put together. Twice as much carbon in the falling forests than in all the atmosphere.

Remember? People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures—bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful—call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.

That’s life; the dead keep the living alive.

As Toynbee once wrote, “Man achieves civilization . . . as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort.”

“A reporter once asked Rockefeller how much is enough. His answer: Just a little bit more. And that’s all we want: to eat and sleep, to stay dry and be loved, and acquire just a little bit more.”

Life has a way of talking to the future. It’s called memory.