The Overstory: A Novel

silvery as inverted icicles. She has never inhaled such fecund

The day is one of those eerie Central Peninsula imitations of heaven—seventy degrees and clear, the air thick with bay laurel and eucalyptus.

“We have to learn to love this place. We need to become natives.”

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.

Science in the service of willful blindness: How could so many smart people have missed the obvious?

We live, we get out a little, and then no more, forever. And we know what’s coming—thanks to the fruit of the taboo tree that we were set up to eat. Why put it there, and then forbid it? Just to make sure it gets taken.

It’s a funny thing about capitalism: money you lose by slowing down is always more important than money you’ve already made.

This is what people do—solve their own problems in others’ lives.

There it is: the ultimate commandment. Take care of your own. Protect your genes. Lay down your life for one child, two siblings, or eight first cousins. How many friends would that translate to? How many strangers who might still be out there, laying down their lives for other species?

This, the most widely distributed tree in North America with close kin on three continents, all at once feels unbearably rare. She