Book recommendation for your summer reading list!

Wallace Falls Trailhead, ©2023 Nicole Bratt

“

First there was nothing. Then there was everything.

Then, in a park above a western city after dusk, the air is raining messages. A woman sits on the ground, leaning against a pine. Its bark presses hard against her back, as 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. The tree is saying things, in words before words.

It says: Sun and water are questions endlessly worth answering.
It says: A good answer must be reinvented many times, from scratch.
It says: Every piece of earth needs a new way to grip it. There are more ways to branch than any cedar pencil will ever find. A thing can travel everywhere, just by holding still.

The woman does exactly that. Signals rain down around her like seeds.

...

Something in the air’s scent commands the woman: Close your eyes and think of willow. The weeping you see will be wrong. Picture an acacia thorn. Nothing in your thought will be sharp enough. What hovers right above you? What floats over your head right now—now?

Trees even farther away join in: all the ways you imagine us—bewitched mangroves up on stilts, a nutmeg’s inverted spade, gnarled Baja elephant trunks, the straight-up missile of a sal—are always amputations. Your kind never sees us whole. You miss the half of it, and more. There's always as much below ground as above.

That's the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right next. Creating the soil. Cycling water. Trading in nutrients. Making weather. Building atmosphere. Feeding and curing and sheltering more kinds of creatures than people know how to count.

A chorus of living wood sings to the woman: if your mind were only a slightly greener thing, we’d drown you in meaning.

The pine she leans against says: Listen. There's something you need to hear.

”

Excerpted from The Overstory by Richard Powers

Friends,

The overstory Book Cover, ©Nicole Bratt

The Overstory is one of my top 10 recommended books of all time (so far). It changed my relationship with trees, and therefore this planet. If you have not yet had the pleasure of diving in, consider adding it to your summer reading list. Like many good things, this book will take time, patience, and sustained engagement. It’s worth it.

Enjoy,
Nicole