Patricia Westerford Chapter – The Overstory – Richard Powers Q&Q Response

profileAKP
PatriciaWesterfordchapter-TheOverstory-RichardPowers.pdf

PATRICIA WESTERFORD

. . !T's 1950, and like the boy Cyparissus, whom she'll

soon discover, little Patty Westerford falls in love with

her pet deer. Hers is made of twigs, though it's every bit

alive. Also: squirrels froni pairs of glued walnut shells, ·

bears made of sweetgum balls; dragons from the pods of

Kentucky coffee trees, fairies donning acorn caps, and an

angel whose pine-cone body needs only two holly leaves for wings.

She builds these creatures elaborate homes with pebbled front walks and

mushroom furniture. She sleeps them in beds fitted with magnolia-petal

comforters. She watches over them, the guiding spirit of a kingdom whose

towns nestle behind closed doors in the burls of trees. Knotholes turn into ----..... louvered· windows, through which, squiniliig, -~he can see the inviting par-

/,..,.---lors of woody citizens, the lost kin of humans. She lives there with her crea-

\ tures in the minuscule architectu_re of imagination, so.cmuch richer thaQ the

· \ offerings of full-sized life. When her tiny wooden. doll's head twists off, she \ . ' \ plants it in the garden, certain it will grow another body,

All her twig creatures can tal~, though most, like Patty, have no need ./

of words. She herself said nothing until past the age of three. Her two older

brothers interpreted her secret language for their frightened parents, ·who

THE. OVERSTORY i. 1.13

' ; began· to think ·she must be mentally deficient. They brought Patty into the

'~linic 'in Chillicothe-for tests that revealed a cleformation of the inner ear. ,____--- The clinic fitted her with fist-sized hearing aids, which she hated. When her

own speech s~arted to flow at last, it hid her thoughts behind a slurry hard

for the uninitiated to comprehend. It didn't help that her face was sloped and..___

ursine:. The neighbors' kids ran, from her; this thi~g only borderline-hl1man./

Acorn people are so much _more forgiving. . . · - ,

Her father alone ~Qderstands her woodlands world, as he always under-

stands her ·every thickened word. She has a pride of place with him that the two

~oys accept. With them, Dad may throw softballs ~1'.1d'tell bubble-gum wrapper

· jokes and play tag. But he reserve~ his best gifts for his little plant-girl, Patty. __

Their closeness bothers her mother. "I ask you. Has there ~ver been such

a little nation of two?" Bill Westerford takes Patricia with hi~ when he visits southwestern Ohio

farms on his tours as an ag ~xtension agent. She rides copilot in_the beaten-

up Packard with the pine side paneling. The war is over, the world is on th~

~end, the country is drunkon science, key to better living, and Bill Wester~

ford takes hl.s daughter out to see the 'Yorld.

' Patty's mother objects to the trip~- The girl should be in school. But wr . . I'

father's soft authority prevails. "She won't learn more anywhei;e than she

will with me."

. Mile after plowed mile, they hold their raying. tutorial. He faces her so she

can read his moving lips. She laughs at his stori~s -·-thick, slow boollls-ai:\d

stabs enthusiastic answers to each of his questions. Which is more numerous:

the stars in the Milky Way or the chloroplasts on a single leaf of corn? Which

// trees flower before they leaf, and which flower after? Why are the leaves ~t ~- . _the tbp of trees· often smaller than t~ose at the bottom? If you carved your

nam·e four feet high in the bark ~f a beech tree, how high would it be after

half a century?_ ·

She loves the answet to that last one: Four feet. Still four feet. Always four

-feet, howeve; high the beech tree grows. She'll love that answer still,_half a

century later.

114 RICHARD POWERS

_.,.,,,- ..

(.✓<'' In this way, acorn animism turns bit by.bit into its offspring, botany. She \ becomes her father's sta~ and only pupil for the simple reason that she alone,

of all the family, sees what he knows: plants are willful and crafty ap.d after

something, just like people._ He t~lls her,' on their drives, aboufalhhe·obliqu·e

mfrades· that green can -d~~ise. People have n9_s.Qrn.~L2,t.! curious behavior. Other creatures-bigger, s~ower, older, m~;;~ durable-call ;h~~h~ts, make -.-··-··-~ ·,. _____ , _____ ..,.----·"· ---~---~ . the weather, feed creation, and create the vei;y air. ·

. "I~;~·;· great idea, 1:r'e;~. So gr~;~ ~h;~-~volution keeps inventing it, again and again."

He teaches her to tell a shellbark from a shagbark hickory. No one else at

her school can even tell a hickory from a hop hornbeam. -The fact strikes her·

as bizarre. "Kids in my class think a black walnut looks just like ~ white ash .. ·

Are they blind?"

'1f}~~_!:-.blind, __ J.\_dam's curse. We ~nly see things that look like us. Sad -, . story, ain't it, kiddoP•·---- ---- '

/·Her father has a little trouble with Homo sapiens himself. He's caught

[- between fine folks whose family farms are failing to ;ubdue the Earth a~d

j companies that want to -sell ;them the arsen_al t9 bring about total domin-

[

; 'ion. When the frustrations of the day grow too much for him, he sighs and.

says, for Patty's impaired ears alone, "Ah, buy me a ~illside that slopes away

from town."

·-·-,:, They drive_!_~rough ~ land once co_vered in dark beech forest. "Best

tree you co~ld e~;;·;,~nt to ;;~TStr~~g ~~d-;id;i~t-f~ir~i·g;-~ce, flai;- ing out nobly at the base, into its own plinth. Generous with nuts _!_hat feed-

rll comers. Its smooth, white-gray trunk more like stone than wood. -The

iparchment~colored leaves riding out the winter-marcescent, ·he tells her-

;shining out against the neighboring bare hardwoods. Elegartt· with sturdy

boughs so much ·like human arms, lifting upward at the tips like hands_ prof-

fering. Hazy and pale i11 spring, but in autumn its flat, wide sprays bathe- the

-air in gold.

"_What happened to them?" The girl's words thicken when sadness

weighs 'them down. I •

"We did." She thinks she hears. her_ father sigh, though he never takes

/

THE OVERSTORY • 115"

his eyes off the road. "The beech told the farmer where to plow. Limestone

underneath covered in the best, darkest loam a field could want." ' . . - The~ dri~e from farm _to farm, b~~~~~st~yea~is·blight~~ n~xt ye~r's

_ vanishing topsoil. He-shows her extraordinary things: the spreading cam-.

bium of a sycamore that swallowed up the crossbar of an old Schwinn some:.. , /

one left leaning against it decades ago. Two elms that draped their arms · _ ........ ~--~· '• .

around each other and became one tree. ------.---..... -. ...... , ..... -·•·. ' "We know so little about how trees grow. Almost nothing about how

~ bloom and branch and shed and heal themselves_-_ We've learned a little

. about a few of them, in isolation. But no,!hing.is-less-isola.t~g _<:?_~ __ 1?.ore social

than a tree."

Her--father is her water, air, earth, and sun. He teaches her how t~ s~e a

tree·, -the living sheath of cells underneath every square inch of hark doing

things nq man has yet figured out. He drives th_em to a copse of spared. hard-

woods in the bottoms of a slow stream. "Here! Look at this. Look at this!" A

patch of narrow stalks, each with big, drooping leaves. A sheepdog of trees.

He make~ her srtiff the giant spoonlike foliage, crushed. It smells acrid, like blacktop. He picks up a thick yellow p1~kle froiµ the ground and holds it to

her. She has rarely seen him so excited. He takes his army knife and cuts

the fruit in half, exposing the buttery pulp and shiny black seeds. The flesh ·

makes her want to scream with pleasure. But her mouth is full of butterscotch

pu~ding·:--~ · - r . . · - · -

t1 ~-:.'Y.'! The only tropical fruit ev~r to escap~ the tropics. Biggest,- · f. · best, weirdest, wildest native fruit this continent ever made. Growing native,

right here in Ohio. And nobo~y_k~ows!"

/ . .✓ -----~--, They k~ow. The girl and her father.'she'll never tell anyone the lo'cation

( of this patch. It will be theirs alone, f~ll after prairie-banana fall. .

~ Watching the man, hard-of-hearing, hard-of-speech Patty learns that ~

· ---.. real joy consists of knowing that human wisdom co~nts less than the shim-

mer of beeches in a breeze. As certain as weather coming from the west, the . · /hings people know for sure will.change. There is ~o know~~~[':~_~[:::ct. T~~,.-=)

/ only dependable things are humility and looking. _ _,.,.. ( _________ · H'itfindiher ·out in-tlie-bacfyird-;-~ki~g birds from the twinned ~ings

J 16 • RICHARD POWERS v., ......... ,....,, ... ,~

/ of mapli\ samaras;_A.n odd look come~ over his face. He holds up one of the

seed~ and--poinfs' it toward the giant that shed it'. "Have you noticed how it releases more seeds in. updrafts than wheµ the wind is blowing downward?

Why is that?"

These questions ar~ her,favorite thing in the world. She'thi:qks. "Travels r h ~" ·,,./ ~~. : ' /

He puts his finger to his nose. "Bingo!" He looks at the tree and frowns,

working through old puzzlements all over again. "Where do you think all

the wood comes from, to g~t from this little thing to that?"

Wild guess. "The dirt?"

"How could we find out?"

They design the e~periment together. They put two hundred pounds· of

soil in a wooden tub by the south face of the'barn. Then they extract a three-

angled beechnut from its cupule, weigh it, and push it into the loam.

"If you see· a trunk carved full of letters, it's a beech. People can't help

. writing all over that smefoth gray surface. God love 'em. They want to watch

,.//' their iettered hearts growing bigger, year after year; Fond lovers, cruel as their " ' \, flame, cut in these trees their mistress' name. Little, alas, they kn'ow or heed how

\'-far these beauties hers e~ceed!" ·

He tells her how the word beech becomes the word book, in language after ,,:,,·

··\, language. How book branched up out of beech roots, way back in the parent \ '

\ tongue. How beech bark played host to the earliest San:skrit letters. Patty

pictures their tiny seed growing up to be covered with words. But where ~ill

the mass of such a massive ·book come from?

"We'll _k¢ep the tub moist arid free of weeds for the next six yea~s. When

you turn sweet sixteen, we'll weigh the tree and the ,soil again."

She hears him, and understands. This is science, and·worth a million

times more than anything any person might ever swear to you. -, '

IN Tr ME, she gets almost as good, as her father at t_elling what's wilting or

gnawing on a farmer's crops; He stops quizzing her and starts consulting,

THE OVERSTORY. • 117

(

not in front of the fa~m~rs; of coUTse, b~t later,_ba.ck in the car, when they ,

have the luxury of thmkmg through the mfestat1ons as a team. -·' ·

On her fourteenth birthday, he gives her a bowdlerized translatipn. of.

_ \ Ovid's Metamorphosis. It's inscribed: For my dear daughter, who knows ~ow big

and wide the family tree really is. Patricia opens the book to the first sentence

and reads:

Let me sing to you now, about how people ;um into other things. ~ __ ._ .... ----------------------·.-------------~-~----- I. At those words, she's back where acorns are· a step away from faces and

pine cones compose the bodies of angels. Sh_e reads the book. · The stories

are -odd and fluid, as old as humankip.d. They're somehow familiar, as if

she were born knowing them. The fables seem to be less about people turn-

ing into other living things tlian about other living things somehow reab-

sorbing, at the moment of greatest danger, the wildness inside people that

never really went away. By.now Patricia's body is well along its own tortured

metamorphosis into something she in no way ~ants. The new flare to her .

- chest and hips, the start of a patch between her legs turp.s her, too, halfway· - / into a more ancient beast. .--------- ----- .... ______________ ------------- · ··

. / C-sheTo-v;;b;~tthe s~ij.~s wher~p_~ople change into trees. Daphne, trans- ~ ' -----·- ..... ____ , ___ ..... .

formed into a bay laurel just before Apollo can catch and harm her. The. ,.. I . . .

_- ..____________ w:omen killers 9f Orpheus, held fast by the earth, watching their to~s turn; .

into roots and their legs into woody trunks. She reids of the boy Cyparis..: ·

sus, whom Apollo converts into a cypress so that he might grieve. forever

for his slain pet deer. The girl turns beet-,_ch~rry-, apple-red at the story of·

, . Myrr~a, changed into a myrtle after creeping into her father's bed. And she

cries at that steadfast couple, Baucis and Philemon, spending the centuries .

//~ogether as oa~~g_c!.linden, their reward for taking in strangers who turned

~ out to be go~·. Her fifteenth autumn comes. The days shorten. Night falls early, signal-

ing the trees to drop their sugar-making project, shed all vulnerable parts,

and harden up. Sap· falls. Cells become permeable. Water flows out of the.:

118 RICHARD POWERS

trunks and concentrates into anti-freeze. The dormant life just below the

bark is lined witq water so pure that nothing is left to help it crystallize. ( .

Her father explains how the ti;ick is done. "Think about it! They've fig- .

(,,,..,.-·u_E~--~t ho~_to live !:~p_p~~!11- place, ~~~:.1 .. ?_~t_h~~-P.E.O..~~E!!.9~,.~ipped by ··\ winds at thirty below zero." .. ·

i;t~r-iliafwI~t;;;- Bill Westerford is coming home from a field trip after sundown when the Packard hits a patch of black ice. He's thrown from the

~~r as it flips off the road into a ditch. His body flies for twenty-five feet

hJfore crashing into a row of Osage orange that farmers planted for a hedge ai:entury an_d a half earlier. · · •,

/.,-.'' At the funeral-, Patty reads from Ovid. The promotion of Baucis !ind Phi-· / ---=--- ... ---.. -·------

( lemon to trees. Her brothers think she has lost her mind with grief. -

\ '-She-won't let her mother throw anything out. She keeps his walking stick

and porkpie hat in a kind of shrine. She preserves his precious library-Aldo

Leopold, John Muir, his botany texts, the Ag Extension pamphlets he helped

to write. She finds his copy of adult Ovid, marked all over, as people mark .

beec~es. The underscores ~tart, triple, on the· very first line: Let me sing to

you now, ahout how people turn into other things.

HIGH SCHO,OL tries to kill her. Viola in the orchestra, ·the maple howl-

ing with old hillside memories, under her chin. Photography and volleyball.

,(··-<she has two almost-friends who understand the reality of animals, at least,

\ if not quite plants. She shuns all jewelry, dresses in flannel and denim, car-

ries a Swiss Army knife, and wears her long hair wrapped around her skull

in braids. ·

A stepfatlier arr~ves, one who's smart enough not to try to reform her.

There's a trauma involving a quiet boy who dreams for two years of taking

her to the senior prom, a boy whose dream must_ die from a whjte-oak stake

<_!hr::~!:~:!::: of her eighteenth year, preparing to h~ad to Eastern Ken-.

\ tucky to study botany, she remember~~he beech growing in its tub of soil, I\ . ···•·•-., ... ~

qut ~y the barn. Shame rushes through her:"How .. ·could-she .. have.-forgot- . ...., _____________ ·~----... --- •..•. ·- . .

. THE O.YERSTORY • 119

ten the experiment? She h~s missed her proip.ise to her fafher by two years.

Skipped sweet sixteen alt9gether. _ she spends an entire July afternoon freeing the tree from the soil and.·

crumbling eyery thimble of dirt from its roots. Then she weighs b~th the ,

plant and the earth it fed on. The fraction o(an ou1:ce of beechnut 'now '

weighs more than she does. But the soil weighs' just what it did~ minus an "---~

~unce or two. Ther~'s no other explanati_~~i .. almog_ajlili_tJ.rni§.Jll~S..~.h~s / . __ ... , .... ~-·-~ ... --.... _ _,,.,./ · · f h ----=--H·-- £ ther knew th1s Now she does toQ. - · ~~er~~;an;;.~~~1:

1 :~pe:::ent i~-~:;~~ ~-:hi~d-;h:··h~:~~-;here she and

her father liked to sit on summer nights and listen to what other people called

silence. She remembers what he told her about the species. _People, God love

'em· ~ust write all over beeches. But some people-some fathers-are writ-' . ten all over by trees.

Before she goes away to school, she puts the tiniest notch in the smooth _

gray booklike bark of the trunk with her army knife, four feet above

the ground.

EASTERN KENTUCKY UNIVERSITY turns her into someone else.

Patricia blooms like something southern-facing. The air of the sixties crac~-: .

les as she crosses campus, a change }n the weather, ~he smell of days length~

ening, the sc~nt of possibility breaking the cast of outdated thought, a cljar

wind rolling down from the hills. · ' Her dorm room overflows with potted plants. She's not the only one:on

her floor to fit a botanical garden between the student desk and bunk' hfd.

But her plani:s are the only ones with strips of data taped to their terra-cqtta

pots: Where her friends grow baby's breath and blue-eyed violets, she grows . _......._

tickseed and partridge pea· and other experiments. And !';t, she. also cares ·

for a bonsai juniper that °looks to be a thousandyear~. old,_ a. spiky haiku of y,/ creatur~itli no scientific purpose whatsoever.

·Tlie.gfrls from upsta_i;;~~~~~ down.some nights to check on her. Thet~e

made her into a p~t project. Let's get Plant-Patty drunk. Let's fix Plan~-Patty

up with that heatnik ec~n guy. They mock her studiousness and laugh at her

120 RICHARD POWERS

calling. They force her to l_isten to Elvis. They slip her into sleeveless sheaths

and pile up her hair in a bouffant. They call he~3:.9~-~~3."~<2fE~XPP.hY.11·

She's not of the herd. She doesn't always hear them well, and when she does,

,,..their words don't always make sense. And yet her frantic fellow·mammals

/ do make her smile: miracles on all sides, and still they need compliments to

< \

keep them. happy. -_ t.

Sophomore year, Patty gets a job in the campus greenhm.i.ses-two hours

stolen every morning before classes. Genetics, plant physiology, and organic

chemistry take her through evening. She studies every night at her carrel

until the library closes: Then s~e· reads for pleasure until she falls asleep.

She does try the books her friends are· reading: Siddhartha, Naked Lunch, 0~

JIM Road .. But nothing else moves her more than Peattie's Natural Histories,

~

/ books from her father's shelves. Now they're her endless refreshment. Their

phrases branch and turn to catch the sun: . .

' '

\ Thrones have crumbled and new empires arisen; great ideas have -

\ been born and great pictures painted, and the world revolution-

, i1ed by scie,1tee"~;Jznvention; and still no man can siry- how many centuries {his Oak wil{_(}ndure or what nations and creeds it may

l . - \ ._.,,./ -outzve ... . '~~

Where the deer bound, where the trout rise, where your hor~e stops

to slather a. drink from_ icy water while 'the sun is warm on the back

of y'our neck, where every breath you draw is exhilaration - that

is where the Aspens grow . ...

And ofh~r father's beloved tree:

Let other trees do the work of the world. Let the Beech stand, 'where

still it holds its ground ; ..

· She never exactly becomes a swan. Yet the seni~r who emerges OJ.!t of

freshman-ugly ducklit1gh,Q9d kno:ws.;hat she loves and how·-shei;~-~ds to .. -.. .~ ...... _,.._ ... - . . . ..,

THE OV 0

ERSTORY • 121

spe~d her life1~?d that's a n'.~_y~!.Y -~-!!-\~l,1:g the youth of any year. Those she ' -- ---------- ....... ..

doesn't scare away come--sniffher out, this keen, lr6mely, forthright girl who --

has escaped the stoop of constant social compliance. To· he.r astonishment, -

she e~~assITifors:--Sbli'ietliin"g'ao"ouf'fierp~;k·;-boys up._ Not her looks, of -

,/' course, but an ever-so-slightly head-turning quality to her walk that they

( can't quite place. Inde:pendent th~ught-a power of attraction all its own. /

·,.,'----. When b(?ys come calling, she.makes them take her for a picnic lunclU~

"'-Richm~nd Cemetery-serving the needs of dead pe6ple since 1848. Some-

times they flee, and that's that. If they stick around and mention the trees, .,.she'll see them again. Desire, she scribbles into her field notebooks, turns out ·

( tQ be infinitely varied, the sweetest of evolution's tricks. And in the pollen

\stqrms of spring, ~ven she,turns out to_be a more than adequate flower.

· ~One boy sticks around, month after month. ·Andy, the English major.

He plays in the orchestra· with her and loves· Hart Crane and· O'Neill a~d

Moby-Dick, although he can't say why. He can get birds to land on his shoul-

der. H~'s waiting for something to come and redeem_ his aimless life. One

night, over cribbage, he says he thinks it might be her. She takes him by the

hand and leads lJ_im to her narrow bed. Clumsy and green, they peel back the

/' shields of clothing. Ten minutes later, she's turn~sUotS,L!l--.tree~j!l~L~}ittle too. / . ---=-------·-·-~----· .......... __ .. ~", late to be spared.

"'·· ----------. ' ---· --·

7

RE AL Lr FE _ s TART s in graduate school. There are mornings :in West

Lafayette when Patricia Westerford's luck scares her. Forestry s~909l. She

feels unworthy. Purdue pays her to take classe_s that she has ~raved for years.

She gets food and lodging for teaching undergradi.iate botany, something

she'd gladly pay to do. And her research .demands long days in the Indiana

w~ods. It's an animist's heaven. - - · )'_.,,

But by her seco~d ye;;:··~h~ catch beco~es clear. In a semi~ar on forest management, the professor declares that snags and windthrow should be

cleaned up from the forest floor and pulped, to improv~ forest healt~. That

doesn't seem right. A healthy forest must ·need de~d trees. They've been

around since the beginning. •Birds turn them to use, and small mammals, and

122 • RICHARD POWERS

more forms of insects lodge and dine on them than science has ever counted.

She wants to raise her hand and say, like Ovid, how all life is turning into

other things. But she d~esn't have the data. All she has is the intuition of a

girl who grew up playing in the forest litter.

Soon, she sees. Something is wrong with the, entire field, not just at

Purdue, \mt nationwide. The men in charge of American forestry dream of

turning ~ut straight clean uniform grains at maximum sp~ed. They speak of

thrifty young forests and decadent old ones, of mean annual increment and eco-

nomic maturity. She1s sure these men who run the field will have to fall, next year or the year after. And up from the downed trunks of their beliefs will

spring rich new undergrowth. That's where she'll thrive.

She preaches this covert revolutio~ to her undergrads. "You'll look back-

in twenty years, amazed at what every smart person in forestry took to be

self-evident truth. It's the refrain of all good sc;ience: 'How could we not have

seen?'"

She works well with her fellow grads. She goes to the barbecues and hoo-

ten~nnies and manages to take part in departmental gossip while remaining

her own little sovereign state. One night there's a dizzy, warm, wild mis~n-

derstanding with a woman in plant genetics. Patri_s:ia puts the embarrassed

fumble away in a drawer of her heart anµ never ta~es it out again, even to .

look at.

,// A secret suspicion sets her apart from the others. She's sure, on no evi:-. ,, . -...... ··--···-··--··· --- (_\ denc~_whatsoever, that ~rees .. ~re soci,al creatures. It's obvi;;us to her: motion-

less things ·1:h~t g~~w'-in ~ass mixed communities must have evolved ways to

synchronize with one another. Nature knows few-loner. trees. But the belief

leaves her marooned. Bitter irony: here she is,~ with her people, at last, and

even they can't see the obvious. ( ~

Purdue ~ets hold of one of the first prototype quadrupole gas'

chromatography-mass spectrometers. Some pagan god brings the machine

right to Patricia, as a reward for her constancy. With such a device she ' ' '

can measure which volatile organic compounds the grand old eastern trees.

put into_'the air and what these gases do to the neighb_ors. She pitches the

')'HE OVERSTORY • 123

id~a to her adviso_r. People know nothing about the _stuff trees make. It's a

whole new green world, ripe for discovery.

"How will that produce anything us~ful?"

"It might not.". · "Why do you need to do this in a forest? Why not the campus test plots?"

"You wouldn't study wild. animals by g~ing to the zoo."

"You think cultivated trees behave differently than trees in a forest?"

"'-- She's sure.ofit. But _his sigh is as clear as a public service announcement: Girls

doing science are like bears riding bikes. Possible, but freakish. "I'H reserve

some trees in the wood lot. It'll make things easier and save you lots of time."

"There's no hurry."

. "Your dissert:atio~. Your time to waste."

:She wastes 'it.with the most intense pleasure. The work isn't glamorous. It

consists of taping numbered plastic bags over the ends of branches, then col-

lecting them at measured intervals. She does this over and over, dumbly and

mutely, hour by hour, while the ~orld around her rages with assassination,

race riot, and jungle warfare. She works all day in the woods, her back crawl-

ing with chiggers, her scalp Vfith ticks, her mouth filled with leaf_duff, her

eyes with pollen, cobwebs like scarves around her face, bracelets of poison:

ivy, her knees gouged by cinders, her nose lined with spores, the backs of her;

thighs bitten Braille by wasps, an~ her heart as happy as the day is generous.

She brings the collected samples back into the lab and spends hour after r· .

/ tf;!dious hour puzzling out the concen\rations and· molecular weights, deter-

\\ mining which gases each of her trees bre~thed out. There pmst be th~usands· .,

6f compounds. Tens of thousands. The tedium makes her ~cstatic. She calls it

the science paradox. It's the most brain-crushing work a person can do, yet it

can spring the mind enough to s~e what else but the mind is really out there.

And she gets to work in the dappling sun and rain, the stink of humus filling

up her nose with relentlessly musky life. Out in the woods, her father is with her again, all 'day iong. She asks him things, and th~ mere· ac~ of asking out

loud helps her see. What starts ; shelf fungus growing at just a certain height up a trunk? How many square meters of solar panel _does a given tree put

124 • RICHARD POWERS

. out? Why should thef~ be such tremendouS, difference in size between the

leaf of a serviceberry and that of a sycamore?

It's a miracle, she tells ·her students, photosynthesis: a feat of chemical

engineering underpinning.creation's entire cathedr~L_A.lLthe·razzw~ of

life 01,1-_~!rth is a free-rider on that mind-boggling magic act. The secret-~?··

life: plan~~-~~t iight~!.1.? air and water, and the st~!«:~-~1.!~s.gy_goes on to ni~ke apcrJ;-~ll things. She i;;;r~-h~~--a~;;g~;·iritC:'~he inner sanctum of the ~ys-

t~ry": Hurtdred~ of chlorophyll molecules ass~mble into antennae complexes.

Countless such antennae arrays form up into thylakoid discs. Stacks of these

discs align in a single chloroplast. Up to a hundred such solar power factories

power a sing!~ plant cell~ Millions of ~ells may shape a single leaf. A million

leaves rustle in-~ single glorious ginkgo. .. Too many zeros: their eyes glaze over. She must shepherd them back

.,.. over that ultrafine line between numbness and awe. "Billions_of years ago / - '

\ a single, fluke, self-copying cell learned how to turn a barren ball-~tfoison

\gas an~~;~ic slag into this-~peopled garde;--And e~ng-;~qpe,

f~~na·1ove· beca.!Jle.-P--Qi~1ble.". They-think· she's~ and that's.Tmewith

her. Sh~~~ ~~ntent to post a memory forward to their distant futures, futures i:hat will depend on ~~~ inscrutable generosity of g,reen things. ---✓---·-

~.........,____ __ -~,..;,___.,.--- "-----------~~- --- -·----~-.........--~-- ... -✓ .....

Late at night, too tired from ~ching and res~arch to work more, she· reads her beloved Muir. A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf and My First

Summer in (he Sierra float her soul up to her room's ceiling and spin it like a.

Sufi. She writes her favorite lines in the inside covers of-her field notebooks

and peeks at them when department politics and the cruelty of frightened .·

humans get her down. The words withstand the full brutality of day.

We all iravel the Milky Way together, trees ~nd men . ... In every walk with

>,.,.:-~ature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way int~ the ·universe is ..

~",,-.;.hrough ~ wildern~:s.

PLANT-PATTY becomes Dr. Pat Westerford, a way to disguise her gender

in professional correspondence. Her work on tulip· trees earns her a doctor-

ate. It turns out that those thick, long lengths of culvert pipe stood ·on end

THE O_VERSTORY • }25

are factories richer than anyone suspects. Liriodendroti has a repertoire of

• • scents. It breathes out volatile organic compo'iinds tfiat (Io all kinds of things. She doesn't yet know how the system works. She just knows it's rtch and

beautiful. She lands a j_:>ostdoc at Wisconsin. She searches Madison for relics of Ald~--

Leopold. She looks for the t@Y~g _ _!JJack ~!~1:1~-~--:'ith its !:~~~ant_:"_~~~e~/ and pea-po~Lseeds, the tree that stunnea Muir into becoming a naturali~{.

"' Buttii~-;~:ld-changing)~~ust ~a;-~ut--d~-:;ntwelv~ y~;;;before. .. .....• , ..

The p~stdoc turns into an adjunct position. She makes almost nothing,

but life requires little. Her budget is blessedly free of those two core expenses,

·ente~tainment and status. And the woods teem with free food.

She starts to examine sugar maples, in a forest east of town. Her break-

through comes as ·breakthroughs often do: by long and prepared accid~t .

_Patricia arrives in her copse on a balmy day in June to find one of her bagged

trees under full-scale insect invasion. At first it seems that the last several

days of data are ruined. Impr~vising, she keeps the samples from the dam:;

,/4ged tree, as_ well as several n¢arby maples. Back in the iab, she widens the

/ list of compounds she looks at. :Over then. ext few weeks, she finds something

that even she isn't ready to believe. ·

Another nea·rby tree gets infested. She measures again. Again, she doubts ---------------···~~-~--·--· ,· ' .

the evidence. Fall begins, and the· leaves of her complex chemical factories

shutter and drop to the forest.floor. She battens down for the winter, teach-

_ing, double-checking her results, tryiQg to accept their crazy implications.

She wanders the woods, wonde.rj_ng if she should publish or run the experi-

ment for another year. The ~ks i3Jier forest s~-~~=-~.:-~~!.~!-~t!!_l, the beeches a stunning bronze. It seems wis;-i:o wait_----······· .. . · ·

Confitmation comes the following spring. Three more trials, and she's · </ convinced. The trees under attack pump out ;.nsecticides to save _their.lives:. That much is uncontroversial. But something else in the data makes her flesh

\ pucker: trees a little way off, untouched by the invading swarm~,0-r-a:mp up I . --~

their own_ defenses when their neighbor is attacked. Som~!hi.!lg.!,~{e!~.~~}~:

They get wind of the disaster, and t~:y_prepare. She controls for 'everytliing

sh;;~~~, ·;~d'tl1eresiiits·ait~r;~;;~··;he same. Only one c_onclusion makes any

126 • RICHARD POWERS

se~~J_;...T-he~ounded trees send out alarms that other trees smell. Her· maples .

are si'gnaling,-They're linked together in an airborne network: sharing an L _..--- -----------., immune system across acres of ~oocll~nd. These h3~i:i:ikg;_,~Je.t.!Q!lary trunks are p,roteGting-eaeh other. ·-· ·-

She can't qui~e let h?rselfbelieve. But the data keep confirming. And on

that evening when Patr.icia .finaliy accepts what the i:neasurem.ents say; her

limbs heat up and tears run down her face. For all she knows she's the first ' ' '

/Greature in the expanding adventure oflife who has ever glimpsed this small

\ .• ~::e::::: thing that evolution is up to. Li~~-~~.tal~-~n~-~:_i~~~~~,-and she has

-She writes up the .results as soberly as she can. Her report is all ;hemis.:

try, concentrations,- and rates-nothing but what the gas chromatography.

equipment records. But in her paper's conclusion, sh~ can't resist sugge§ting ~ what the results spell out:

· Tk~JJ!!chemical 'behayiort[in?.Iif!.l!..'!.!.:!£ees may make sense only -------~·--·-;;w·-·-- ~...__."'_,__ __ ...,._.~ ..... ,.,_,.,......~~ when we see them ,ds memhers of a community. - ' --. ---·------····\._'-----·~--·:_ ... ---=~----~·~--~--

Dr. Pat Westerford 's paper gets accepted by a reputable journaL The peer

· reviewers raise their eyebrows, hut her data are sound and no one can find

__ al!y problems except commo~ sense. On the day th~ article appears, Patricia < feels she has discharged her debt to the world. Ifshe di~s tomorrow sh~'ll still ' . ' \,have added th~~ one s~all ~hing to what life has c~me to know about itself. .~ ·

·,." The pres; picks up on her(findings. Sh~rview fo;-~-popular

science magazine; She struggles to hear the questions over the phone and

stumbles with her answers. But the pie~e runs, and ·other newspapers pick

it up. "Trees Talk to One Another." She gets.a few letters from r~searchers-

across the country, asking for details. She'~ invit;d to speak at the midwest-

ern branch meeting of the professional forestry society. ,

Four months later, the journal that ~an the piece prints a letter signed by

three leading dendrologists. The men say her methods are flawed and her

s.tatistics problematic. The defenses of the intact trees could have been acti-

vated by other mechanis~s. Or these trees might already have been com-

~

THE OVERSTORY • -127

promised by insect:; in ways she didn't notice. The letter mocks the ide~ that

trees send each other chemical warnings:

Patric~a Westerford displays ari almost emharrassing misunder-

standing of the units of natural selection .. .. Even if a message is,

in some way "received, "it would in no way imply that any suc_h

message has heen "sent."

The short letter contains four uses of the word Patricia and no mention

of Doctor, until their own signatures. Two Yale professors and a name chair

-- at Northwestern, ·versus an unknown adjunct girl at Madison: No one in.the

profession bothers trying to replicate Patricia \Vesterford's findings-. Those

researchers who wrote her for more information stop responding to her let-

ters. The newspapers that ran the wide-eyed articles follow up with accounts

of her brutal debunkin~.

Patricia goes through with her _scheduled talk at the midwestern for-

estry conference, in Columbus. The room is small and hot .. HE;r hearing aidi

howl with feedback. Her slides jam in the carousel. The questions are hos-

tile. Fielding them from behind the podium, Patricia feels her old childh~·oc

speech defect returning to punish her for her hubris. For the three agonizinE <- ~ays of the conference, people nudge each other as_ she passes tliem in th1 ~lls of the hotel: There's the woman who thinks that trees are intelligent,

Madison doesn't renew her lectureship. She scrambles to line ·up a jol ., ___ -...______ ,., .. .-- ·~--------·-·-·-'·--·

elsewhere, but it's too late1n~rhirs·eason.·sne can't even get work washini

glassware for some other researcher. No other animal closes ranks faster tha1 . <..,_ .. ___ ... --- ...... , ,,_ ................ ""•·-·•·' ' ., ...... •'""•.

Homo sapiens. Without a lab to use, she can't vindicat~ herself. At thirty-twc

ilie starts sub~titute teaching in high schools. Friends in the field iourmur i

'sympathy, but none goes public to defend her. Meaning drains from her lik

green from a maple in fall. After long weeks in i;;olitude replaying what hap

pened, she decides it's time to shed.

She's. too cowardly to give in to the scenarios that play in her head m61

nights_as she tries to fall as.leep. The pain prevents her. ~others: the pai

she'd inflict on her mother and brothers and remaining friends. Only tr

128 • RICHARD POWERS

· w9ods protect her from undying shame. She tramps the winter trails, feeling

the thick, sticky horse ~hestnut buds with her frozen fingers. The understory

_,,. .. fills up with tracks like longhand accusations scribbled on the snow. She lis-

( tens to the forest, to the chatter that has always sustained her. But all she can \\ µear is the deafening wisdom of crowds. .

\ · -Half a year passes at the bottom ofa well: One bright blue crisp Sunday

, morning in high summer, Patricia finds several unexpanded caps of Al!J=o/!;/ta

bisporigera under a stand of oak in the hottomlands of Token C~eek. The fu~gr are beautffui;but take for~~-that·::;ould m;ke-;;~ld D;~ri~~ of Signatures ~lush. She gather~.them in her mushroom bag and brings them home. There,

she cooks up a Sunday feast for one: chicken tenderloins in butter• olive oil " . . ' '

$arlic, shallots, and white wine, all seasoned with just enough Destroying. Angel to shut down both her kidneys and her liver.

She sets the table and sits down to a meal that smells like health itself.

The beauty of the plan is that no one will know. Every year, amateur mycol-

ogists mistake young A: bisporigera for Agaricus silvicola or even Volvariella

volvacea. Neither her friends nor family nor former colleagues will think

anything but this: she was wrong in her controversial research, and wrong

in her_ choice of fungal fruiting bodies for her 1 dinner. She brings the steam-

. ing forkful to her lips. ' ,,.r'.,

c·· ' Somet_~i.~~t~~~P..~--~-:~:-~.!gE~.ls. f19.9d.hei: .. musde.s.,Ji,n5:~_than any~~ds. '- Not th_i~:"~~nz-~ ii:.f.r.~'..1!:~a.~. ~~~~/ng. I ~

·~- The fork drops hack to the plate. She _rouses as from sleepwalking. Fork,

plate, IT\Ushroom feast: everything tu~ns, as she watches, into· a fit of mad-

ness,' lifted. In another heartbeat, she can't believe what her animal fear was

willing to -make her do. !he opinion of others left her ready to suffer the

- most agonizing of deaths. She runs the entire ~eal down the g~rbage dis- ·

p~~I and goes hungry, a hunger more wonderful than ~ny meal. ·

<,.. Her re~~_life starts this night-a long, postmortem bonus round. Noth- }?g~n t!:e_x::~~:!~~-~~rrie"cando-~worse than she ;·;;· read~. to·-~--~~-herself;

. Human estimation can no longer touch her. Sh~-·s "(iee now'tci'experiment. To discover anything. ···v . .... ___ .... -,, ... , .. 0 • --------

·-Ii~~-.-~~~~ral mfs;irig years. From the outside, yes: Patricia Wester-

-~ ,·

)! '

;;:;~ \'!;:, .J

·,. ',';)

·.✓.,· j, ,'

. THE. OVERSTORY, • 129 .

ford disappears into underemployment. Sorting storeroom boxes: Cleani~g

floors. Odd jobs leading from the Upper Midwest through the Great Plains

toward the high mountains. She has no affiliation, no ac.cess to equipment.

Nor does she try for lab positions or teaching stints, e".e11 when former col-

leagues encourage her to apply .. Pretty ~uch all her old friends add her to

the roster of science roadkill. In fact, ~he's busy learni~g a foreign language.

With few claims on her time and none on her soul, she turns hack outside,

int~ the woods, the green negation of all careers. She no longer theorizes or

speculates. Just watc;hes, notes, and sketches into a stack of notebooks, her

only persistent possessions aside from clothes. Her eyes go near and narrow.

-- She camps out mariy nights with Muir, uncle~ the spruce and fir, completely

' , lost, turned wildly around by the smell of inland oceans, sleeping on beds of

thick lichen, sixteen inches of brown needle p_illow, the living eart? ·beneath

her bag, its fluid influence rising up into the fiber of her and all the towering.

trunks that surround ~nd watch over. The particle of her private self rejoins

everything it has been split off from-the plan of runaway green. I only went

out far a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I

found, was really__going in. ,_

She reads '(horea~--~~~_!.:'.~~d fire_~ ~t. night . .. sh~l1,_!~o:, __ ~~~e intelligence with"tke-e-a-rt!i:i'i{mJ~p(partly'leaves and 11egetable mould myself? And: What

is ii/;·ii;;;~;h~th::possession of me?T;ii'~j';,;;;t;~i~~-1-=-rliinro/o~-r life in

naiure:="J;Tz;,~-;;1,; ~hown matter, to come l:;,_-;;;;;_uictw"i{h-"ir,==rocks-;·i,ees~· wind

o;;-;;;,r clieeksTt!iitsolid earth! th/ ii:ctual world! the commor.:i sense/ ·contact! Contact! Who ar~we? whe;~·;~ .. ;;?·"-·""'• .. · .......... -.... ~-· .. -· ................ .

~.No.;··~h~··diift~·farthe~.·;.;s~ .. It's amazing how far a little war chest will / \

go, once you learn ho" to forage. This cm.1ntry is awash in food free for the

eating. You just need t~ilow where to l(?ok. She glimpses her own face

once, while splashing water on it in the bathroom of a service station near a

national forest in a state where she's the merest beginner. She looks ~arvel-

ously weathered, old beyond her years. she has gone to seed. Soon she'l:

start to" s~are people. Well, she has always scared people._.J\gg_!J . ..P_~~plt who.hated wildness took away her career. Frightened people mocked he1

for s~fugili~rees send"mess·ages""t~-·~;~-~;f;;~~Sh~·f~;gi~es"them alL It': ...__ .... ,.- ' .• --~--..... ,,,.~-... ~-,.,...,.,_., ....... ,.-.,,~ .. 1-'--•«.,;',"~--,,.-..:-:~ ... ~-,_;•..,;:· ····~,:~ ._, .. o.,~- ~-•• • .. ¼ -~--- •• ,.,

130 • RICHARD POWERS

nothing. What frightens people most will one day turn to wonder. And then ..... .___,,,.,,.~,.._ .. -,..,., .... ~.--·-••,-.,......,._,.,....,~,.. - ,.. ....... ·-----~.._..,.....,,.r------. ... ~

-peo_el~ wi!1, do what four billion years-~~ye-shaped t~~m to do: stop anc1·;-~e just what.it.is "they'rii';~efrig .... _ ·- ,/ . '·.,,.-, ---- --- / ···--,--------···-----~-.

On a late fall aftern~on she pulls her ancient beater over to the side of the ~- . r·/ road along a stretch of the Fishlake Sce1!_~~-BJway, on the we~tern edge of the

\,\ Colorado Plateau in south-c~~Utah. She has followed back r~-~ds from

\Las. v;ga;:~;;it~f" cl ~lueless -~T~;;;;, toward Salt Lake~ capital of cunning saints. She gets out of.the car and walks up into the trees on the crest w'est of

/ the road. Aspens stand in the afternoon sun, spreading along the ridge out <.,_- ----

--...,') of sig?t. P;:_e!!:.lus !!.:_":,_uloides. c:;louds of gold leaf glint ?n thin trunks tinted the palest green .. ~he air is still, but the aspens shake as if in a wind. Aspens

alone quake when all others stand in dead calm. Long flattened leafstalks _

twist at the slightest gust, and all.around her, a million two-toned cadmiu~ ·

mirrors flicker against righteou~ blue.

The (iirad~-I~iives·tui=nth~-wlnd a~ They filter the,._dry light and fill ... _____ ,,,.---------------- it with expectation. Trunks run straight and bare, roughed with age at the

bottom, then smooth and whitening up to the first branches. Circles of pale

green lichen palette-spatter them. She stands inside this white-gray room, a

pillared foyer to the afterlife. The air shive;s in gold, and the ground is lit-

J{; tered with windfall and dead~he ridge smells wide open arid sere. The whole atmosphere is as good as a running mountain stream.

Patricia Westerford hugs herself, and, for no reason, begins to cry. The

tree of the Navajo sun house chant. T}:ie tree Hercules turned into a wreath,

th·t~niJ~~~crificed, when ~~~ing b;~ic'ft~~·hell-;-·Tlfe"one:wlioseJJr~;~d

leay~~.f.11".Ql~~-~ed native hunters from.:_.~_;jC.iw§.,~_~he niost widely distributed tr_e.e_ in _North:~~;J;a"witlf""cf~;;·kin on three ;;~~i;;~;;· ·;i1· ~~ once feels

. .---, ___ , --·- . . ..... ----------·"""""•·------------------. . . --- . ' ., __ --.. ----- -- u~~ably,,rar~\She has hiked through aspens far north into Can;da, the

--"---~---------- \... lone hardwood holdout in a latitude monotonous with conifer. Has sketched . { ' ' their pcJ.le summer shades throughout New England and th~ Upper Midwest.

Has camped among them on hot, dry outcrops above gushing streams of

sno-w~~!!~~-!he Rockies. Has found them etche~ with knowledge-encoded

native\a,r_?~~glyplisyas lain on her back with her ey'es closed, in far south-

,, western moiipiains, m~morizing the tone of tliat restless shudder. Picking '

\

'TH~ OVERSTORY • 131

her way across th~se fallen branches, she hears it again; No other tree makes

this sound. The aspens wave in their undetectable breeze, and_ shl': begins to _see

hidden things. High up on one trunk, she reads claw-gashes above her head,

the cryptic writing of bears. But these slashes are old and rimmed with

blackened .scars; no bears have crossed these woods in a long time. Tangled ·

roots spill from the bank~ of a rivulet. She studies them, the exposed edge

·of .a network of underground conduits conducting water and minerals across -

dozens ~f acres, up the rise to other, seemingiy separate stems that line the

rocky outcrops where water is hard to find. j

At the height of the rise is a little clearing, slashed down with a chain

saw. Someone h_~Q.~~!.!~Jpro.Ying..tl@g_~. She produces her loU:pe from

her key chain and applies it to one stump to estimate the number of ring~.

The oldest downed i:rees are about eighty years. She smiles at the number,

so comical, for these fifty thousand-baby trees all around her have sprouted

from a rhizome mass too old to date even to the nearest hundred millennia.

Underground, the eighty-year-old trunks are a hundred thousand, if they're -------·-,..,, .. ..,....,, ...• ~ ... ,~ -,.,.. ··-·· ,~ ,,. ••,.--~ .-... ~--.,., .... :., ~.-........... ,,., .•.. , ........ . a~ay. She woulcl.J:tt~be,surp..d.~.t4Jf.this-·great, joined, single ~lonal creature _

tha~T;~-;iike a forest has bef:n_around-fortliebetter part of a million years.

fhi?; ·:;ry·~h~ has stop~-~cl=- ~d 0

Se~-;~e ~f th~ old~st, ·1a~gest living things on earth. Ali around her spreads one single male whose genetical!y identical

trunks cover more than a·hundred acres. The thing is outlandish, beyond . .

her ability to wrap her head around. But_ then, as Dr. )Vesterford knows, the

_ ~orld's out:land_s are everywhere,-anf~~.;,~~e ~~:oy with ~um:,~_thoughf,;

~-like boys toy w1t~.?-.~etles, '--.:::::::::._.... . ·· ~ th;~;d from where she's parked,· aspens tumble down the b~s~ toward Fish Lake, where five years earlier a Chinese refugee engineer too~

:---...._pis three daughters camping on the way to visiting Yellowstone. The oldeit 1 ( < girl, named r.or a Pucci~i o~~~-~~52.!!1~,-w:ill.222.~ ~..:~~~!~1--~L~~~·teas~f~r

t ' f'ifty million dollars of arson; _ \ ___...A_..... ....... ,.-'"''~-~----......... ,. ........ -~.. . .•

Two· thousand miles to the east, a student sculptor born into an low~

farming family, on a pilgrimage to the Met, walks_ past the single quakin$

aspen in all of Central Park and doesn't notice.it: He'll live to walk past tbf ·)" tl'. ,· i

132 • RICHARD POWERS

r . ·. ,tree again, thirty years later, hut only because of swearing to__rhe-P.uccini I ··- ,. .. -- ~ .. ~,..,.,. ...... ~ ... -. - ......... ,, .. "'· ..... _ . __ ... ,f .... ~·-·-····~ .••• ~---.... ,. ____ .,,.--.,-~.--.-... ,.,,.,...._ _,..,,, ..

/ hero~~;}~_a.!.Jto-matt<,t?ow hll._cLthing~. get, he;,onfkillhimself.

! To the north; up the -~ui;ing spine ~f'the·R;~ki~s:·o;~ farm near Idaho Falls, a veteran airman, that very afternoon, builds horse stalls for a friend from his old squadron. It's a pity hire, one that comes with room and board,

and the vet plans to leave the gig as soon as he can. But for today, he makes

the corral siding out_ of aspen. As poor as the wo~d is for lumber, it won't shatter when a horse kicks it.

In ,a St .. Paul suburb not.far from Lake Elmo, two aspens grow near the

south wall of an intellectual property lawyer's house. He's only dimly awa~e

of them, and '.Vhen his free-spirit girlfriend asks, he tells her they're birches.

In time,. two great, strokes will lay the lawyer low, reducing all ·aspens,

/

1 birches, beeches, pines, oaks, and maples i:o a single word that will take him half a minute to pronounce.

. On'the West Coast, in the emerging Silicon Valley, a Gujarati-American

{ . boy and his fathe~ build primitive aspens ·qut of chunky, black-and-white

: pixels. They're writing a game that feels to the boy like ~alking through the forest primeval.

' , These people are nothing to Plant-Patty. And yet their lives h;ve long

been connect:d, deep underground. Their kinship will work like an unfold-

. \ ing hook. The' ~a~lwa~s comes clearer, in the futu~e. .

\ Years from now, she 11 write a hook of her own, The. Secret Forest. Its bp~ning page will read:

You and the tree in your backyard come from a common

·ancestor. t bi~!~!l-~~ ~· half years ago, the two of yo~ parted · w~ys. But even now, after an immense journey in separate

-dir_~'?.!!?.~.~~-.!~it~~.i~~::~~J'r_~~iiilsharea .. quart;;~f y~r genes ....

-~' -~- .,, ~ ,, ~ ...... ,_._ -~·-----•.-•"'·~-~~--•·..-1·, ....

' ... ~ ... , .. , ., ..

She sta.nds in the clearing at the top of the rise, looking out over a shallow

gully. Aspens ~verywhere, and it boggles her mind that not one of them has

grown from seed. All thro~ghtbi; .. p·~~;~-i'~he-W~st~:fewi;~~;-h;~;-~i'~~;~-- ----~..:____;__ ' -------·-·---··~·-- -- ------------.. ----·-·---.. -- .. - ..... ,.

THE OVERST,ORY • 1.33'

'in ten thousand years. Lc;mg ag_~2 .. !~-~.sHma.te,.change.i .. e.~~spen's seeds can no longer thrive here:"Bm they propagate by root; . they sp➔ There are aspen colonies up n~ .;,he';~tRe i:~-~[:.:ts were;o1der'Jlfa.nthe sheets

themselves. Th~·moti~cl~ss. trees are ~igrating:::Sir1;1mortal stands of aspen ~;;:::,,.;_ • . . \.._. ,..-/4,,.-4 ____ ,. ................ , ... ,,...,...,,....,.,... .. ,,.,,,..,. ... ,~ ... , •••• .., .. ,.,

retreating before the la;;t-two-~·mii~=ilucirglacrers, then following them

ba~k north again. Life will not answer to reason. And meaning is too young

\ a thing to have much power over it. All th~~~~~-the world .is ~~ther- , :

. ing ~4-~g!.?.?.~~-=~~-g;_c:;.clsy-mphonic.cho~µ~,(-!-~-.t-~-~t.-~~t!ici~ _m-_<-!!!ns . .to. hear b'Jore·she dies.

-•-gfi~T~~;f;·~~t over the draw to \uess which way her male, this giant ;isperi clone, might be headed. He has bee~ roving around the hills and gullies_in

.a ten-millennium search· for a female quaking gi~nt to fertilize. Something

on the next rise punches her in the chest. Carved out from the heart of the

spreading clone, a housing developme~t sits among; a ribbon of new roads ..

Condos, a few days. old, cut through several acres of the root system of orie

of the ~arth's most lavish things. Dr. Westerford doses her eyes. She has·

seen dieback across the West. Aspens are withering. Grazed on by every-

thing with hooves, cut off froin rejuvenating fire, whole groves are· vanish-

//ing. Now she sees a· fore.st, spre~ding across_.'these mountai~s _since be~ore

~mat1:s left Africa, giving way to second homes. She s~=~-1~_m one ~-~eat

glimpse of flash!r,ig gold: t~ans, at war over·the l~?i..~:1.~-~-:~r

and· it~-~~ph~~·.e. And. sh~ C<l;~: .. ~.~-~~-~?.~~::..:~~~-~~-q~~!~}~E;-~:,~~~-~:!~~i?h sid~ff~fiy winning. ·

_____ J _______ .. ___ ...... ~

IN THE EARL y EIGHT IE s, .Patricia heads northwest. Giants still grow in

the Lower 48, pockets of old growth scattered from Northern California on

up to Washington. She means to see what uncut fo~~~_!,9.oks like, while there

is any left to see. The wester-n Cascades l;}da~p ~eptember:-n'ot,hing-irrher ~ri'e;;;;~:~pares her. From mid-distance, with no clue for scale, the trees

seem no larger than the biggest sycamores and tulip poplars out East. But ;up

clo~e the illusion disappears, and she's lost in reason's opposit~. Alf she cari

. do is look and laugh and look some more;

134 •· RICHARD POWERS

Hemlock, grand fir, yellow cedar, Douglas-fir: buttressed monster coni-

fers disappear in the mist above her. Sitka sprl_!,S~.§ bulge out in burls as big

as minivans-pound for pound, a wo~;;;~~er than steel. A single trunk

could fill a large logging truck. Even runts here are big enough to domi-

nate an eastern forest, and each acre holds at least five times as much wood.

Beneath these giants, way down in the understory, her own body seems

.freakishly small, like one of those acorn-people she made in childhood. A

( knotho!efo .9.~.~,~f these ~olumns of solidified air could be he_r home:~; ~-----•--~~,__,_. . .-._ . ,..,,.,,.,.,.,.,~.,....,,,., .... ,,,.__,,,..._,,.,.,,_..,, _ _,_,.,,..,,,.<,...~1•·-,-•-,.•"'-,.,., ••c:.•,v.,-•.,,,.•"'-'''-" ~., •n,----~ _.,..._~ .,.~, . ., '":"'..,_:.,-v ~..,,,,_, • ..,,,~ -..,, .J'~

. Clicks and chatter disturb the cathedral hush. Th~air is so twilight-green

she feels like she's underwater. It rains particles-· spore ~1 ds. broken '\'

webs and mammal dander, skeletonized mites bits of insec frass ~Ind bird· ' ' \_ '

feather .... Everything clim.bs ayer everything else, fighting Toricraps of

. light. If she holds still too long, vines will overrun her. She ~alks in silence,

, crunching ten thousand invertebrates with every step, watching for tracks ·i;-_.,.,--- \ in a place where at least one ofthe_!J.1!.tiy;eJanguages·-uses-the_ same word for

.,-1- \, - ... ~_......,,..-,.,..,-..... __ .. _~

\,footprint and understanding. The earth gives beneath her like a shot mattre~: I,.

/ \ Anexpo·sed,idge takes her ~own into a basin. She swings her sj!!~

/ ~efore her, and the temperature plummets as she passes through a ther-

/ mal curtayi. The canopy is a colander stippling the beetle-swarmed surfaces

with specJi,s of sun. For every large trunk, a few hundred seedlings huddle in

~he litter. Sword fern, liverworts, lichen, and leaves as small as sand grains

~tain every inch of the dank, downed logs. The mosses are themselves as

dense as thumbnail forests.

She presses on fissures of bark and h~r finger~ sink in knuckle-deep. A

bit of bushwhacking reveals the extent of the prodigious r9t. Crumbling,

c~eature-ri~dled boles, decaying for centuries. Snags. gothic and twisted,

silvery as inverted icicles. '·She has never inhal_ed such fec~utrefaction.

The sheer mass of ever-dying life packed into e.c!£? singlecubic foot, woven

},,. togetnerw11:hfu'~gif fil~~~~;~-~~l d~w~hett;;;ed spid;;:;;b~l~;~~~ her woozy. M;;hro;~·;J~dder up tli'"e sides"oftrimE. in terratecf i~-dges;·Bead·salfii~~--feed

'·-~----·•""--········- ✓----........ ,,.,,-·- .. ·- " - •. '

. the trees. Soakecfby"'fog iii winter long~"spongy green stuff she can't name ~-- covers every wooden pillar in thick baize reaching higher than her head.

Peath is everywhere, oppressive a!1d beautiful. She sees the source of

.. ----· ---------- ---- - ------

' ' : /

\'

.;t :,·t

\

THE OVERSTORY • 135

that forestry doctrine she so resisted in schooL Looking at all this glorious

qecay, a person might be ~C:>:~i.~:~.!.9..:.!~!.?.~.~.~g.!~~\.~{ef. lE~-~~-£-~~~~.~~-r,it, inat . s~h thi~k mats of decomposition were cellulose cemeteries in need of the

rejuvena~ing ax. She sees why her kind will always dread these close, ~hoked

thickets, where the beauty of solo trees gives way :to something massed,

scary, and crazed. When the fable turns dark, when the slasher film builds

to primal horror, this is where the doomed ~hildren ~nd wayward adoles-i ---.._

cents must wander. There are things itr here worse than wolves arid witches,

primal fears, that no amount of civilizi~m will ever tame. / ' t ~

The prodigious forest pulls her along, past the trunk of an immense west-

ern red cedar. Her hand strokes the fib~ous strips that peel from a fluted trunk

· whose girth rivals the height of an eastern dogwood. It reeks of incense. The

top has sheared off, replaced by a candelabra of _boughs promoted to stand-in

trunks. A grotto opens at ground level in the r~tted heartwood. Whole families

of mammals could live. inside it. But the branches, a thousand years on, droop-

ing with scaly sprays a dozen stories above her, are still cramm:ed full of cones.

,,,.,----She addresses.the cedar, using words ohhe forest's first humans. "Long 1

Life Maker. I;m here. Down-here." She feels foolish, at first. But each_word

is a little easier than the next. "Thank you for the baskets and the boxes. Thank you for the capes and.

hats and skirts. Thank you for the cradles. The beds .. The diapers. Cano.es. .

Paddles, harpoons, and nets, Poles, logs, posts. The rot-proof shakes and

shingles. The kindling that will always light."

Each new item· is release and relief. Finding no good reason to quit now, \ \ she lets the gratitude spill out. "Thank you for the tools. The chests: The · \ decking. The clothes. closets. The paneling. I forget: ... Thank you," s~e

'· says, following the ancient formula. "For all these gifts that you have given."•

\ And still not knowing how to stop, she adds, •~~e-~-~-~t_"!!_e didn't know. / how hard it is for you to grow back." \..._,,-~ ..

SHE FIN n s w o R K with the Bureau of Land Management. Wilderness

ranger. The job description seems as miraculous as the outsized :trees: Help

136 • RICHARD POWERS

preserve arid protect for present and future generations places where man is a

visitor who does not'remain. The wild woman must don a uniform. But they

pay her to be by herself, carry the·welcom~ weight of a pack, read a topo-

graphic map, dig a water bar, look for smoke and fire, teach folks to leave no

trace, follow the rhythms of the'land, and live wholly within the arc of the

year. To clean up after ~umankind, yes. To gather the endless twisties, bag-

gies, six-pack rings, foil, cans, and bottle -caps strewn through meadows of

wildflower, on rem~te scenic outlooks, skewered in the boughs of !).Obie firs,

under cold running streams, behind waterfalls. She would gladly pay the . !

goverl)ment, to do that much: ·

Her supervisor apologi~es for the state of the cabin they give her,

on the edge of an ancient c_edar grove. There's no running water, and

. .,,-the varmints outweigh the new ~iped in biomass, many times over. She

(/ can only laugh. "You don't u~dersta~d; You don't underst~nd. It's the

'\ Alhambra." \

TOMORROW SHE'LL HIKE twenty-five miles, loosening the bolts on

the signs attached to trailside trees, so their cambium can keep growing.

The~e's a spot on the· other side of the ridge where th~ bark of a big spruce

has swallowed art old Forest Service plaque from the forties that now says

oply BEWARE OF.

The nightly rain start~.' She goes out to the clearing and sits in the down-

~~ur, dressed only in a loose cotton shirt, listening to the wood put forth

fresh cells. She comes back inside. In the kitchen, she light~ the kerosene

lamp with cl;iunky strike-anywhere matches and takes the flame into the

bedroom. The thump of a bushy-tailed wood 1 rat telegraphs another raid on

her worthless belongings. Last week it was a pair of barrettes. Too dark to

search for the latest missing loot tonight. She sponges off over the cold-water

zinc basfo in the corner and gets in bed. No sooner doe~ her ear listen in

to the musty pillow than she's transported to the ancestral ,vacation home,

· where the future still radiates endless forms most beautiful.

.\:-

THE OVERSTORY • 137 ,,I

SHE· w o R Ks for eleven blissful months. The wildlife never once threatens

her, and deranged campers do so only twice. In the constant rain, everything _

grows mold. Monster trees suck up the downpour and respire it back int~ the

air as steam. Spores spread acro~s every damp surface. Both her legs sport

athlete's foo! up to the knees. Sometimes, when she lies down and closes her

eyes, she feels that l)lOss will cover her liq.s by the time she opens them again. I. •

She labors for days to make a storage pad, hacking back the brush from a

few square feet. By year's end, the little nick in the undergrowth is covered

· again in shrub and saplings. She loves feeling that every _headway man tries

to make into the relentless .greert blitz will be crushed.

UNKN ow N To HER, while she rehabs-backcountry fire rings· and ~leans

up illegal campsites fouled with beer cans and toilet paper, an article appears.

It's published in a reputaple journal, one of the best that humankind has

managed. Trees trade airborne aerosol signals, the article says. They make

medicines. Their fragrances. alert and awaken their neighbors. They can

se_nse an attacking specil:!s and summon an air force to come to th~ir aid. The ·

authors cite her earlier, much-mocked c1rticle. They reproduce her findings . . - , -

and extend them into surprising places. W9rds of hers that she has all but

forgottl:!n have gone on drifting out on the qpen air, lighting up others, like

a waft of pheromones.

PATRICIA IS OUT ONE DAY in an unfamiliar drainage, sawi_ng windthrow

from a remote trail. She sees a motion in the undergrowth-the most ·

dangerous ga:me. Drawing nearer, she ·spies two researchers, a couple

of vagabond scientists froni _that loose confederation who _gather every

summer in the flimsy trailers full of lab gear in a clearing a handful of

miles from her own cabin. She dreads these· run-ins with her old tribe. ' . '

She always says as little as possible. Today, she holds back and watches.

. Through the woods, at this distance, the two men look like upright, blun-:

dering circus bears in lumberjack costumes.

138 • RICHARD POWERS

The pair bushwhacl-. a little, closing in on a spot that interests them. One ·

of the men hoots softly, a perfect; purring impersonation. She has heard the.

call at night·, although she ha~ never seen the, caller. This imitatiop would ·

fool her. The.man calls again. Incredibly, something answers. A du_et ensues:

foe bright, pert, human come-on, followed by the logy but obliging bird,

// hidden in the trees. A ~~~!:-~J_{jnJhe.air, .. aQQ~ -~wl appears·. Bird of wisdom ]

~ and sorcerers. It'_s !~e(first Strix occidentaij_:r.,:PJtricia has ever seen. Spotted

'"--.,. ~~1:· the. endangered~p;~Ies"'"fli~T-~aentists propos_e to save by locking up 1

billions of dollars of old growth, the only place it can live. It settles down,

mythic, on a branch three yards from its seducers. Bird and men regard each

other. One species takes pictures. The 9ther just· spins its head and blinks its

enormous eyes. Then the owl is gone, followed; aft~r further note-taking, by

the humans, leaving Patricia Westerford· wondering if she wakes·or sleeps:

Three weeks later,_ she's near the same spot, pulling in~asive plants. The

thick, furry twigs of ailanthus suclf ers lea~e her finger~ stinking of coffre

and peanut butter. She climbs a switchback at a good clip and runs into the

two researchers again. They're several yards up the slope, kneeling by. a

downed log. Before she can flee, they see her and wave. Caught, she waves

back and hikes up to them. The .older man is on the ground, on his side, pop-

ping tiny creatures into specimen bottles.

"Ambrosia beetles?" The two heads turn toward her, startled. Dead logs:

t~e topic was her passion once_, ~n9 she forgets herself. "When I was a stu-

cknt, my teacher told us that falle~ trunks were nothing but obstacles and

fire hazards."

The man on the ground Jooks up at her. "Mine said the same thing."

"'Clear them off to improve forest health.'"

"'Burn the~ out for safety and cleanliness. Above all, keep them out of

~treams.'" ,; 'Lay down the law and get the stagnant place producing again!'"

All three of them chuckle: But the chuckle is like pressing on a wound.

\.

improve forest health. As if fores~s were waiting all these four hundred'millio~✓- - \ Y .. ears for us newcomers to come cure them. Sd:_~_ce in.the se~~~~ull~~~r;:.

blindness: How could so many smart people have missed the obvious? 'A_ • ,.J •• -·-•·------~ .. ---..... _ . ·-·--·•···••· -----------·-····------------ .••• --- -\. . ......, _____ .._ ____________ •.... .. - -- - --

1,· }• ,, ., ',r:

'-i:., ,,: ' :~ . ·••.,• .,.,

•',

'\,' :;1 ,\, '' ~--i , __

THE OVERSTORY' • 139

person has only to look, to see that dead l_ogs are far more- a,live than living,

ones. But the se"xis~s never have much chance, against the power of doctrine ..

"Well,i' the man on the ground says, "I'm sticking it to the old bas- , .

tard now!"

Patricia smiles, hope pushing_ through the ache like a bree~e through-·

rain. "What are you studying?" ' . , 71 _ . - "Fungi, arthropods, reptiles, amphibi;ms, small mamma}s; fra~s, webs,

denning, soil. ... Everything we can catch a d~ad log doing.'L_,,./ .

"How long have you been at it?" '--_ ·

The two men trade looks. The younger man hands down another sample . ' '

bottle. "We're six ·years in.''

Six years, in a field where most studies last a few months. "Whe~e_ on

earth did you firid funding for that long?"

"We're planning to study this particular log until it's gone."

She l~ughs again, a little wilder. A cedar trunk on the wet forest floor:

their grad students' great-great-great-gra11dchildren will have to finish the

project. Scienc~, in her absence, has gone as crazy as· she always thought it

should be. "You'll disappear long before it does."

The man on the ground sits up. "Best thing about studying.the forest.

You're· dead by the time the future can blame you for missing the obvious!" .

He looks at her as if she, too, is worth researching. "Dr. Westerford?"

She blinks, as baffled as any owl. Then she remembers, lier ~niform, .

_badge, on her chest for anybody to read. But that Doctor. He could only have

gotten that from her buried past. "I'm sorry," she says. "I don't remembe~ ·

· ever meeting you.''

l "You haveri't! I heard you talk, years ago. Forest studies·conf~rence, i~ ·

Columbus. Airborne signaling. I was so impressed, I ordered offprints of

your article.''

That wasn't me, she wants to say. That was somebody else. Someone lyi'!-g

· dead and rotting some'!1here.

"They hit.xou pretty hard."

· She shrugs. The younger scientist looks on like a kid on a visit to the

Smithsonian.

140 • RICHARD POWERS

"I knew you'd be vindicated." Her bafflement is enough to tell him

everytliing. Why she's in the uniform of a wilderness ranger. "Patric!,~;_l'm ' --·--~-,-- ....

· Henry; This is Jason. Come visit the station." His voice is soft but urgent,

life there's something at stake·. ''You'll want to se~ what our group is doing. You;ll want to learn what your work's been up to, while you were gone."

BY DECADE'S END, Dr. Westerford makes'her most surprising discovery

,,.,,,,.-of all: she may just lo~e her fellow men. N oi: all of them, but robustly and

/ ,, with enduring green gratitude, at least those three dozen regulars who take

her in and make a home for her in the :qreier Research Station, Franklin.

Experimental Forest, the C~scades, where she spends sever~l dozen months

in a row that are happier and more productive than sl\~ imagined possib1e.

Henry Fallows, the group's senior scientist, puts her ~11 a g~ant. Two other ' . ,;----

re~cnTeamstrom Corvalltsadcfher-to\heir payrolls. Money is tight, but

they give her a mild~wed trailer in the Ghetto in the Meadow and access to

the mobile lab-all the reagents and pipettes she needs. The latrines and

the community showers are sinful indulgences, compared to her BLM cabin,

with its frigid sponge baths on the porch at ~ight. Then there's cooked food,

i~ the shared mes~ hall, although some days shl:!'s so immersed in work that

someone must come remind her that it's time to eat again. ·

Her public reputation, like Demeter's daughter, <;:rawls back up: from the

underworld. A scctltering of scientific papers vindicates her original work in

airborne semaphores. Young researchers find supporting e-yidence, in spe-

cies after species. Acacias alert other acacias to prowling giraffes. Willows,

poplars, alders: all are caught warning each other of insect invasion .across

the open air. It makes no difference, her rehabilitation. She ~oesn't much

care what happens, outside this forest. AH the world she needs is here, under

this c;nopy-the densest biomass anywhere on Earth. Steep, steely streams

. / .,,__,. scour through rickles of rock where salmon spawn-water cold enough to \ . --....__,___ __ ,_ ___ _ \\ kill all pain. Falls flash over ridges turned jade by moss and tumbled with

' · "'shectbranches. In. the scattered openings, shot here and there throµgh .the understory, sit secret congregations of salmonberry, elderberry, huckleberry,

·I

.. ,· -.i.

·, i,.,

\' j, r ),

,f' .~· . ,.,

~, ' ',/,

• ,r. c'

\ .:

',J, ,,

'THE OVERSTORY • 141

snowberry, devil's club, ocean spray, and.kinnikinnick. Great straight coni-

fer monoliths fifteen stories high and a ca;~length thick hold a roof above all.

The air around her resoimqs with the noise.of life getting on with it. Cheebee of invisible winter wrens. Industrial pock from jackhammering woodpeck-

ers. Warbler q_uzz. Thrush flutter. The scaiterings of beeping grouse across the forest floo~. At night, the cool hoot of owls chills her blood. And, always,

~e tree fr.o,gi(,~ong of et~rnity. _,,.,7 --~-,...... ., ' . Through this Eden, her colleagues' astonishing discoveries confirm her

suspicions. Slow, long observation makes a laughingstock of what people

think about trees. In a nutsh~l: the .ri,:;._h brown batte~ of soil-.-.. itself mo.stly

unknown microbes ~d invertebrates, perhaps a million species-channels

dec"ay-a;;;n:;~iw;·~~··d;;th in ways sh~--;;;ry·~~~ b~gi~~ ~o su~s ou~: It thrills h;;-··w· ;i~-;~· meals ancn;'"·p;~tof-th; 0la~gh~~r a~d ~hared da~~,- the dizzy netw~rk trading in discoveries. The whole group of them,(~' Birders,

geologists, microbiologists, ecologists, evolutionary zoolo,~1Sts,'.·soH e:icp~rts,

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.

Turns out that the temperate jungle's million invisible tangled loops need

every kind of death-brokering intermediary to keep' the circuits coursing.

Clean up such a system, and the countless self-replenishing wells run dry.

This gospel of new' forestry is confirmed by the most wonderful findings:

beards oflichen high in th~ air, that grow only on the oldest trees and inject

essential nitrogen back into the living system. Subterranean voles that.feed

on truffles and spread the spores of angel fungi across the forest floor. Fungi

that infuse into the r~ots of trees in partnerships so tight it) .. ?.~~~ .. !() __ saj where ·one· organisni Ieives offa~d"°th~. other begins. Hulking coni[~E?..Jfiat '.:.·-·-··-···- ··-·-···""-····"· ...... ,.,--·· ........... -.... , ...... -, . ., ...... ,, .... ,............... .. ,--

sprout adventitious roots high in the canopy that dip back down to feed on thi-~t; of~Tr;~c~·riiul;titiii"i~-ili~· ;~~-~ ·~fth~i~-o;t1-b·;;~~h~·;:·-- -. : · .. .

P-atricii:gives herself to Douglas~fi~;. Ar~1w~straight, untapering, soar-.

· ing up a hund;;d feet befo:e the first branch. They're an ecosystem unto

142 .~ RICHARD POWE~S

themselves, hosting more than a thousand species of invertebrates .. Framer

of cities, king of industrial trees,· th~t tree without which ~erica wo~ld

have been a very different proposition. Her favorite individuals stand scat-

tered near the station. She can find them by headlamp. The largest of them

must b~ six centuries oli He's so tall, so near the upper limits imppsed by -

( gravity, that it takes a d~y and a half for ~!.JE: __ t?_ ljf.t_~ater . .from his roots \ \ t~ the· highest of his sixty:'ii~~ ~iili~~- ~;~dles. And every br~nch smells of

\ deliv~;;~~~- _ · -··-------· - ....

i The things she catches Doug-firs doing, over th~ course of these years, fill

her with joy. When the lateral roots of two Dougla:k~f.ir,~ .. run int_<:>_:~~? other

underground, they·f~~;:· Th~o11gh r.hose· self ~gr~fted knots, _!~~_.rw_Q_ trees join thei~ vascular syst;~~ ~geth~;~~d become one. N~t;~rked together

un~g~ound by cou;tle~;~h~~;~;:i~ ·;;f--~-ii;r~f living f~1!gi;h~e~ds, her tree~Teed and heal each ·other, keep· thei/y~~~g--a~C:f";i~k alive, P.?ol their

........_____ _... --., ·- ------ .. ' ·-----------------· re~oui~es and meta:6olites into community chests .... It will take years for

the "r>fdure i:o emerge. The~~~ili be findings, unbelievable truths confirmed _by a spreading worldwide web of researchers in · Canada, Europe, Asia, all

(.---~--- happily swapping data through faster and better channels. H~r trees are far

· "---,,, mor~ social than _even Patricj.9--suspected. T~~•:U:.e-~.~1:.d~~als. There

· _aren't even separ.ite species([v~rythi~gjn the forest.ill t~~~~~~~-C-~mpet-i- ·

tion is no!_~eparable from endl~ssflaeforso'f-co0_perati'cfu'jfrees fight no more

th:n do~h;·k;~~son~;si;gl'ittre~:Yt~ee;;\~~~-~f n£ture isn't red in tooth

and claw, after all. For one, those species at the base of the living pyramid

have neither teeth nor talons. But if t~ees_~hare their storehouses, the~v~

drop of red must float on a sea of green. / · · _______ ,.,., ... ,.,_,.............. ________ -·---·--·--·--·-·--·-·----. . .

THE MEN want her to come back to Corvallis and teach.

"I'm not good e~ough. I don't really know anything yet." ·

"That doesn't stop us!" .

. But Henry Fallows tells her to think about it .. "Let's talk when you're

ready."

'1•:

ii '

... ~ ', -:,• ~i '~! ;'

'f. ',' ,,

·, ,.

THE OVERSTORY • 143

THE RESEARCH STATION MANAGER, Dennis Ward, drops by with

little gifts, when he's on ·sl.te. Wasps' nests'. Insect galls. Pretty stones pol-

ished by the creeks. Their standing arrangement reminds Patricia of the one

she had withthe pack rat she shared her BLiv.l cabin with. Regular visits,

, ligh~ning and shy, trading in worthless trinkets. Then _days of hid~ng. And

just as Patricia once warmed to her resident pack rat, s~ she grows fond of - ' . this gentle, slow-moving man.

Dennis bring~ her dinner one night. It's an act of pure foraging.

Mushroom-hazel casserole, with bread he has baked in a cloche laid in a

brush burn. Tonight's conversation is not inspired. It rarely is, and she's

· grateful enough for that. "How're the trees?,; he asks, as he always does. She

tells him what she can; minus the biochemistry.

"Walk?" he asks, when they finish rinsing the dishes into a graywater

catch. A favorite question; to which she always answers, "Walk!"

He must b~ ten years older. She knows nothing about him and doesn't as~.

They talk only of work-her slow research into the roots of Douglas-firs, his

impossible job of corralling scientists and getting them to abide by the m1ni- ·

mal rules. She herself is well into autumn. Forty-six-older than her. father

was, when he died. All her flowers hav~ long since faded. But here's the bee. ·

They don't go far; they can't. The clearing·is small, and the trails are too

dark to navigate. But they don't need to go far to be in the thick of all she

loves. Qut into the rot, the decay, the snags, the l~xuriant, prolific dring all·

around them, where a terrible green rises, riding forth in all directions with .

its converting coils.

"You're a happy w~man," Dennis says, somewhere in that great basin

between question and claim.

"I am now."

"You !ike everyone who works here. That's remarkable."

"It's easy to like people who take plants seriously." .

But she likes Dennis, too, In his spare motions and abundant silence,

he blurs the line between those nearly identical molecules, chlorophyll and·

hemoglobin.

•"You're self-reliant. Like you~ trees."

144 RICHARD !'OWERS

~'llut t~t's just it, Dennis. They aren't self-reliant. Everything out here is

cutting !le~ls with every~hing else."

'"That's, what I think, too."

She laughs at the purity of his hunch.

"But you have :your routines. You ha~e your work. It keeps you going,

:ful\ time."

She ~ays nothing, spooked now. On the threshold of a contented middle

age, this ambus~. _

He feels her clench; for the leng~h of several owl calls, he adds no syllable.

Then: "Here's the thing. It's nice to cook for you."

She sighs long and slides down into the way things need to be: "It's good

to be cooked for."

But everything is so much less spooky than she could have supposed. So

much lighter. He says, "What if we kept our separate places? And just ...

came to each other from time to time?"

"That ... could happen."

"Did-our work. Saw each other for dinner. Like now!" He sounds sur-

prised to make the co.nnection between his wild proposal and what the pres~

ent already holds.

"Yes." She can't yet believe that luck might extend so far.·

"But I'd want to sign the papers." He peers out _into an opening in the

western firs, where the sun has undeniably started to set. "Because then,

when I die, you could get the pens.ion."

She takes his shaking hand in the dark. It feels-go~d, like a root must feel,

_,..... when it finds, after centuries, a:µother root tJ .. E!_each t.o_:yrl.derground. There

-:· are a hundred thousand species oflove, separately .. ln-;;nted, each more inge-~- - ' ', .. ~ious than the last, and every one of them keeps making things.

" ; ~ ,. :

,. ,·,,1,;

·":;,1,t: ; .1,-

;r,,,.· . ,.

O_LIVIA VANDERGRIFF (_

SN ow IS THIGH-HIGH and the going slow. She plunges

through drifts· like a pack animal, Olivia Vandergriff, ..

back to the.boardinghouse on the edge of campus . .Her last

session ever of Linear Reg~ession and Time Series Models

has finally ended. The carillon 9n the quad peals five, but

this close to the solstice, bla~kness closes around Olivia

like midnight. Breath crusts her upper lip; She sucks it back in, and ice crys- .

tals coat her pharynx. The col~ drives a- metal filament up her nose. _ She

coulµ die out here, for real, five blocks from home. The novelty thrills her.

December of senior year. The semester so close to over. She might

stumble now, fall face-first, and still roll across the finish line. What's left?

A short-answer exam on surviva_I analysis. Final pap_er in Intermediat~

Macroeconomics. Hundred and ten slide IDs in Masterpieces of World Art,

her blow-off elective. Ten more days plus one more semester and she's done

forever.

Three years a:go, she thought.actuarial science was the same as ac~ount-

. ing. When the counselor told her j t dealt in_ the price and probability· of

uncertain events, tpe rigor combined with ghoulishness made her declare,

Yes, please. Iflife demanded a slavish commitment to one pursuit, there were