Why have American novelists, especially the serious ones, got this thing about tree species?
Actually, I think you got it right in your own question: “the writer wants to connect [the reader] to his roots.” Quite literally — not because he’s a “townie,” not because he’s been taught to use specific, concrete details (though that is not irrelevant), not just because he needs to throw words around. I can’t speak for novelists, but in my poetry I often find myself using images of trees and wildflowers. The tree is rooted in the the soil, in hard-fast reality, dependent on the earth for its nurture and stability. But the tree always reaches for the sky, drinking in air and light, slithering in the breeze, shaken by the winds, surviving storms (or not!), turning the raw elements of life into something beautiful, or at least something unique even in its commonness. Trees do not represent just the natural world that we live within; they also represent the natural beings that we are. I cannot walk under a spreading live oak, a towering pine, a scraggly mesquite, or a maple changing th
