The Power of Compelling Nature Narratives  (2022)

Our forests speak to us when we care to listen. When we more carefully open our eyes, ears and other senses, we can find insights there that many folks overlook.

Several talented novelists and poets display heightened awareness of nature's diverse gifts and impacts. One of these recent novelists is Richard Powers with his 2019 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Overstory.

Powers explores broader values and deeper meanings within our magnificent American forests. His novel describes individuals who come to appreciate nature’s distinctive messages and who make life-changing environmental commitments. Powers' portrayal of the beauty and interconnections of trees in our remaining forests can be as striking at times as the best of Walt Whitman, Robinson Jeffers and other nature poets that many of us read in high school.

“Talk runs far afield tonight. The bends in the alders speak of long-ago disasters. Spikes of chinquapin flowers shake down their pollen; soon they will turn into spiny fruits. Poplars repeat the wind's gossip. Persimmons and walnuts set out their bribes and rowans their blood-red clusters. Ancient oaks wave prophecies of future weather. The several hundred kinds of hawthorn laugh at the single name they're forced to share. Laurels insist that even death is nothing to lose sleep over.” 

Beyond Powers’ vivid imagery throughout the novel, we get inside the heads and hearts of his major characters. One key protagonist is based on respected ecologist, Suzanne Simard. Simard is a professor of forest ecology in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. She received her PhD in Forest Sciences at Oregon State University. 

Simard did pioneering research starting in 1997 discovering how trees use underground fungi networks to communicate and share resources. These conclusions disputed earlier views that trees constantly compete for survival. She described how fungi and roots facilitate communication and interaction between flora in an ecosystem. Carbon, water, nutrients and defense signals are shared among plants and trees in a forest.   

Richard Powers as a novelist describes a Simard-like character, Patricia Weatherford, and other unique personalities from their childhood influences into their later struggles to communicate broader visions for our forests. The opposition against Powers’ characters is relentless and often overpowering. Many passages throughout his novel reveal the characters’ perspectives and challenges.  

“That's the trouble with people, their root problem. Life runs alongside them, unseen. Right here, right now. 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.” 

“Something marvelous is happening underground, something that we're just learning to see. Mats of mycorrhizal cabling linking trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information.” 

"Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch and a nearby Douglas fir may suffer." 

“What is it within us that gives us this need not just to satisfy basic biological wants, but to extend our will over things, to objectify them, to make them ours, to manipulate them, to keep them at a psychic distance?" 

We can easily accept the attitudes and social norms of the cultures in which we are born and raised. Yet most of us discover over our lifetimes that at least a few of these received wisdoms are not valid or the best practices for the future. Many Americans are embracing an expanded environmental ethic and asking questions. Who has a stake in critical environmental policies, and do some key stakeholders have significant voice or representation in important decisions? Such questions have been raised increasingly over the last century.  

Before, during and after the virgin timber boom in the Deep South, residents questioned public and private policies that favored the interests of the more privileged and powerful. Populist sentiment for health and safety measures in the timber industry, as well as for good roads and schools, was strong, particularly in Winn Parish. These concerns even went so far as to give victories in the 1912 election that put many Socialist Workers Party members in charge of Winn Parish government offices. Public support for Huey Long later drew from these populist roots. Emerging conservationists and naturalists began clamoring for changes, including Caroline Dormon in north Louisiana who worked with legislators and the US Forest Service to establish public parks and forests. Our area history is rich with the stories of people who made differences.   

I’m a believer in the power of narrative rationality. Our realities are often constructed in part from the provocative stories that we have read or heard. Much of what we accept as vitally important and what strongly motivates our conduct does not stem from the rationality of science articles or textbooks. If we took the time and had the inclination to read numerous scientific reports based on elaborate statistics and arguments, we might still remain detached and unaffected. One truly compelling story, though, can sometimes move us mentally and emotionally, like nothing else, to revitalize or change our attitudes and responsibilities. Perhaps a few novels or films on our natural environment, like Powers’ The Overstory, could be worth checking out at your local library or bookstore.