I`m reading Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods in preparation for the book I'm going to write next year. It's funny, but only about half way through did I realize, at a deep level, that it was about trees. My mind this year has been so on technology that I've forgotten how important the natural processes of the world were to me. But technology works best when we understand what it already wonderful and powerful in the world. It also works best when we realize what is vulnerable
Consider the natural technology of the tree, from Bryson's book:
For all its mass, a tree is a remarkably delicate thing. All of its internal life exists within three paper-thin layers of tissue--the phloem, xylem and cambium--just beneath the bark, which together forma a moist sleeve around the dead heartwood. However tall it grows, a tree is just a few pounds of living cells thinly spread between roots and leaves. These three diligent layers of cells perform all the intricate science and engineering needed to keep a tree alive, and the efficiency with which they do it is one of the wonders of life. Without noise or fuss, every tree in a forest lifts massive volumes of water--several hundred gallons in the case of a large tree on a hot day--from its roots to its leaves, where it is returned to the atmosphere. Imagine the din and commotion, the clutter f machinery, that would be needed for a fire department to raise a similar volume of water.
This has been without contest, the most difficult, uncertain and painful year of my life. I have no doubt that there are many other uncertainties in my future. But this year was just profoundly stressful at my core. It is a really frightening thing to be poor, and I never want to be that bad again, and I would never want that for anybody.
But I survived and I have a year of writing ahead. For the next year I am doing the thing I have always wanted to do, the thing I have always dreamed of doing, writing a book. Writing a book with no pressing responsibilities, other than to write that book.
To do this I need a lucid mind, a strong core, faith in myself and my abilities. Faith in the value of my project.
To build these things, I will stand.
