The Overstory: A Novel

Leigh’s elm, Jean’s ash, Emmett’s ironwood, and Adam’s maple, each made from identical green puffballs.

silvery as inverted icicles. She has never inhaled such fecund

You cannot shut down human hunger. You cannot even slow it. Just holding steady costs more than the race can afford.

Out in the yard, all around the house, the things they’ve planted in years gone by are making significance, making meaning, as easily as they make sugar and wood from nothing, from air, and sun, and rain. But the humans hear nothing.

Consciousness itself is a flavor of madness, set against the thoughts of the green world. Adam puts out his hands to steady himself and touches

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.

We are not, one of Adam’s papers proves, wired to see slow, background change, when something bright and colorful is waving in our faces.

She can’t quite let herself believe. But the data keep confirming. And on that evening when Patricia finally accepts what the measurements say, her limbs heat up and tears run down her face. For all she knows, she’s the first creature in the expanding adventure of life who has ever glimpsed this small but certain thing that evolution is up to. Life

No mates exist for countless miles around, and a chestnut, though both male and female, will not serve itself.