Do Ideas Grow on Trees?

Possibly the most frequent question asked of a writer is, “Where do you get those ideas?” Since I write fantasy, often the underlying question is, “Are you insane?” I’m not, depending on who you talk to. Don’t ask my siblings or my children or….

My new book is an urban paranormal with magic and sentient nature. I’ve been thinking a lot of the ways nature communicates with us, even to uber-left brain practical people, and how it is possible to learn a little of the language if we pay attention. So, I decided to write about some of my experiences. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if I need to be committed.

Some years ago, I went through a period of terrible grief. I lived on my ranch in Eastern Oklahoma at the time, where there are a lot of trees (and rocks). Between the house and the two barns, there are two enormous walnut trees and four tall sycamores. The walnuts had been there for a few centuries before we moved in on them.

The sycamores had been seedlings a couple of feet tall invading the pasture near the spring where we planned to build our home. It wasn’t natural pasture, so it had to be mowed (brush-hogged) at least once a year or it would become forest again. When my husband mowed, he left a line of sycamore seedlings to grow. Now, I can’t reach around them, and they’re tall. They grow fast and have outlived him. When things started to get unbearable, I would lean against a walnut tree and watch the sycamores. The walnut was solid, strong, and I could feel its strength filling me. 

Some years later, I moved to San Francisco to go to grad school for my Ph.D. My classes over for the day, I stood outside the school, waiting for the bus. There were several recently planted sycamores along the sidewalk, about six or eight inches in diameter. Feeling a little melancholy and missing home and family, I put my hand on the trunk of one of those baby trees and said, “Tell my trees at home, hello.” 

And I got an answer. A surge of—something. Something not possible.

Nature communicates, but it’s not easy to learn the languages it speaks or to know when it’s talking to us. (Or even imagine it.)

So, in answer to the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” I got my idea for my next book in part from the burning of the Amazon and of Australia, and in part from this experience. We know now that trees communicate, so, what if my character does talk to trees. And she discovers the trees are deciding whether or not to abandon this earth. What if?