Ingenious Nature
The first tree we “meet” in The Overstory is thriving far from its native soil.
A bounty of chestnuts rains from trees in mid-nineteenth-century Brooklyn. Six of them travel, forgotten, in a coat pocket as a young couple heads west to forge their future. “…this is America, where men and trees take the most surprising outings.”
Found that spring and planted on the Iowa prairie, only one survives as the years go by. But chestnut trees need to be in communities, or at least pairs, in order to propagate.
How does this one defy the odds and flourish, becoming a landmark known for miles around? A miracle?
“…this tree has a secret tucked into the thin, living cylinder beneath its bark. Its cells obey an ancient formula: Keep still. Wait. Something in the lone survivor knows that even the ironclad law of Now can be outlasted.”
