Reflections on Trees (part 1)

I read 'The Overstory' by Richard Powers several months ago now, but pre-holiday stress left it languishing by the bed, unreviewed. I wanted to love this book so much, but it depressed me, because the tale is one of such wanton destruction. It's a book about trees, whats not to love, and the people who love them. We follow the lives of some of these people and watch them struggle to save the trees they love. There are triumphs ... and there are devastating losses. It was a hard read.

One of the characters in the book writes a book, it's about how trees communicate with each other and other amazing skills. Over the course of the story she is first ostracised by academia then after years doing other tree-ish stuff the book is rediscovered and it's truth discussed widely, it becomes a talisman for the story. I remember wondering, while I was in the Bonsai museum, whether the tiny trees in pots miss their companions. Struggling with having lost my list of quotes and want to get on and post other Japan pictures, so here is a quote about two other characters reading the book:

"They read The Secret Forest again. It's like a yew: more revealing on a second look. They read how a branch knows when to branch. How a root finds water, even water in a sealed pipe. How an oak may have five hundred million root tips that turn away from competition. How crown-shy leaves leave a gap between themselves and their neighbors. How trees see color. They read about the wild stock marker trading in handicrafts, aboveground and below. About the couples limited partnerships with other kids of life. The ingenious design that loft seeds in the air for hundreds of miles. The tricks of propagation worked upon unsuspecting mobile things tens of millions of years younger than the trees. The bribes for animals who think they're getting a free lunch.

They read about myrrh-tree transplanting expeditions depicted in the reliefs at Karnak, three thousand five hundred years ago. They read about trees that migrate. Trees that remember the past and predict the future. Trees that harmonise their fruiting and nutting into sprawling choruses. Trees that bomb the ground so only their own young can grow. Trees that summon air forces of insects to come save them. Trees with hollowed trunks wide enough to hold the population of small hamlets. Leaves with fur on the undersides. Thinned petioles that solve the wind. The rim of life around a pillar of dead history, each new coat as thick as the maker season is generous." (p.367-8)

This is a writer who loves trees.

I love trees too.

More to come.