Sublime

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.

There are no individuals. There aren’t even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest.

Much closer to realization is an effort to bring back the American chestnut tree. The tree, once common in the eastern United States, was all but wiped out by chestnut blight. (The blight, a fungal pathogen introduced in the early twentieth century, killed off nearly every chestnut in North America—an estimated four billion trees.) Researchers at

Among numerous other urban revitalization programs, tree planting thus became a major policy goal for US cities. In 2006, Los Angeles, a city with 1.5 million trees, set a goal of planting a million more. They also sought to replace the iconic non-native environmentally underperforming palm tree with native shade trees.11 In cities like Pittsburgh,

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.