Home > Work > Overstory: Zero: Real Life in Timber Country
1 " The aim of all autobiographical works writing is apologetics, the saying, too late, of the things that should have been said. It is, of course, a foolish task, born of a desperate desire to be understood. Ultimately, it is a futile one as well, doomed from the outset by an innate dishonesty. Sometimes i think that the only honest writer was Lao Tzu, who had the good sense to admit in defeat in the first line of the Tao Te Ching: "Existence is beyond the power of words to describe."And yet, there is the hope that we may, at times, go beyond mere expression and actually say something useful. "
― , Overstory: Zero: Real Life in Timber Country
2 " I remember working on the manuscript for Overstory: Zero back in the spring of 1995 and feeling that it was incomplete and wishing that I could just keep adding to it for the rest of my life like Walt Whitman did with Leaves of Grass. This place, my home valleys, is interesting enough and complex enough to sustain a lifetime of pondering and description. The One Hundred Valleys of the Umpqua it is called and I would like to write one hundred pieces about our lives here, but, having aged another score of years and finding myself looking ahead to life: the last decades" I doubt now that I'll ever reach that playful goal. "
