Future Uncertain (2021)

“The words refuse to come, tonight. She should simply sleep, and see what her dreams might say. Instead, she cranes to glimpse the kitchen clock above the antique, slope-shouldered refrigerator. Still time for a midnight wander down to the pond.

The spruces near the cabin wave spooky prophecies under the near-full moon. There’s a straight line of them, the memory of a vanished fence where red crossbills once liked to sit and shit out seeds. The trees are busy tonight, fixing carbon in their dark phase. All will be in flower before long: huckleberry and currant, showy milkweed, tall Oregon grape, yarrow and checkermallow. She marvels again at how the planet’s supreme intelligence could discover calculus and the universal laws of gravitation before anyone knew what a flower was for.

Tonight the stands are as drizzled and murky as her word-filled mind. She finds the trail and ducks beneath her beloved Pseudotsuga. A path cuts under the spires lit by late winter’s moon, a path she walks almost nightly, out and back like that old palindrome: La ruta nos aporto otro paso natural. The many uncatalogued volatile compounds breathed out by needles at night slows her heart rate, soften her breathing, and, if she’s right, even alter her mood and thoughts. So many substances in woodland pharmacies that no one has yet identified.”

From The Overstory by Richard Powers.

Published by Vintage.