“When disaster strikes, it’s all we see. The despair and horror come from seeing the end of what we thought we knew and loved, and the certain knowledge that there can be no…

“We came to know it as the goose tree, because one year a pair of geese nested in the broken-off top. We might as easily have called it the raccoon tree, the owl…

“This being summer, the river was too warm for fishing today but that meant it was just right for sitting in it and contemplating the life that goes on along that contested riparian…

“And what the leaves told me, now that I was listening, was that I have it all wrong. Leaves are not part of the trees and shrubs that grow them. They only live…

“The windy forests of the high foothills and Front Ranges are the birthplace of rivers: rivers like the Oldman, beside whom I sit most evenings on what I’ve come to know as the…

“Back in the late 1970s, I landed what seemed the perfect job for one who likes himself better when hanging out with wild things in wild places than when with others of his…

“And what the leaves told me, now that I was listening, was that I have it all wrong. Leaves are not part of the trees and shrubs that grow them. They only live…

“I knew these plants better now than I ever did back in those botanical days of looking things up and labeling them. I know them as friends, as members of my community, as…