The Overstory

by Richard Powers

The whole group of them, looking. Birders, geologists, microbiologists, ecologists, evolutionary zoologists, soil experts, high priests of water. Each of them knows innumerable minute, local truths. Some work on projects designed to run for two hundred years or more. Some are straight out of Ovid, humans on their way to turning into greener things. Together, they form one great symbiotic association, like the ones they study.

There are no individuals. There aren’t even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest. Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation.

“But that’s just it, Dennis. They aren’t self-reliant. Everything out here is cutting deals with everything else.”

“If you want to maximize the net present value of a forest for its current owners and deliver the most wood in the shortest time, then yes: cut the old growth and plant straight-rowed replacement plantations, which you’ll be able to harvest a few more times. But if you want next century’s soil, if you want pure water, if you want variety and health, if you want stabilizers and services we can’t even measure, then be patient and let the forest give slowly.”

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.

“It could be the eternal project of mankind, to learn what forests have figured out.”

It crosses Nick’s mind to wonder how he ever took it in his head to move his life twenty stories into the open air. But how does a person get anywhere? And who could stay on the ground, once he has seen life in the canopy?