83
" A torrent of warnings, stories, adages, poems, threats, how-tos, real estate info, survival tips and non sequitur jokes are available for those who tap in. Everything talks, you just have to be willing to listen. "
― Kira Jane Buxton , Hollow Kingdom (Hollow Kingdom, #1)
86
" Dennis and I followed the slippery eel of I-5 and listened to the trees: the moan of a madrone, the counsel of a Douglas fir, the shimmer of a cherry tree, the whine of a whitebark pine, paper birches, dogwoods, and oaks and maples and sweet gums and cedars and elms. Some shared memories of things that had occurred many, many years before on the land around their trunks, slow stories of fights between lovers, the massacre during the lumber industry boom, the Great Seattle Fire, and the Klondike gold rush. Trees are super nostalgic. Others recited soothing poems in sotto voce—oral balms learned as seedlings. Some spoke of when the bison and the wolf roamed this land; they talked of change and whispered about a predestined event, repeating the word “renaissance” in harmony. I had no clue what all this had to do with Michelangelo, but you don’t argue with a tree. "
― Kira Jane Buxton , Hollow Kingdom (Hollow Kingdom, #1)
93
" I am Mother Tree. Part of something greater than my one. We, of ancient forest and all of us, are connected through swirling root. Here and there, so tightly we interweave that when one of us dies, the other must die too. Our stand is one, braving licks of lightning and the sticky scarlet appetites of insects. We warn neighboring crowns of drought and danger with our scent song and send quick, silvery messages through Web, fungal lattice. Like you, we sweat. We scream when thirsty, we bleed when sliced. And we remember. "
― Kira Jane Buxton , Hollow Kingdom (Hollow Kingdom, #1)
99
" My name is Shit Turd and I am an American crow. Are you still with me? Crows aren’t well liked, you see. We’re judged because we are black, because our feathers don’t possess the speckled stateliness of a red-tailed hawk’s or the bewitching cobalt of a blue jay’s, those stupid fuckers. Yeah, yeah, we’re not as dainty and whimsical as hummingbirds, not as wise as owls—a total misnomer by the way—and not as “adorable” as the hambeast-bellied egg timer commonly known as a penguin. Crows are harbingers of death and omens, good and bad, according to Big Jim according to Google. Midnight-winged tricksters associated with mystery, the occult, the unknown. The netherworld, wherever that is—Portland? We make people think of the deceased and super angsty poetry. Admittedly we don’t help the cause when we happily dine on fish guts in a landfill, but hey ho. "
― Kira Jane Buxton , Hollow Kingdom (Hollow Kingdom, #1)