вЂњWhen you stand in front of a living thing thatвЂ™s as wide as a house and as tall as a football field is long and almost two millennia old, and itвЂ™s still working on its plan,вЂќ he said, вЂњyou just start saying, IвЂ™ve missed something obvious here.вЂќД«efore he wrote the novel, he вЂњcouldnвЂ™t tell a poplar from a maple,вЂќ he said, but he read more than 120 books about trees and learned to identify dozens of species. In retrospect, Powers feels all his novels were building toward вЂњThe Overstory,вЂќ which he was inspired to write after he saw a redwood while hiking in Northern California. HeвЂ™s been labeled вЂњour pre-eminent novelist of ideas,вЂќ вЂњour greatest living novelistвЂќ and вЂњthe best novelist youвЂ™ve never heard of.вЂќ In his books вЂњ The Gold Bug Variations,вЂќ вЂњ Galatea 2.2,вЂќ вЂњ Plowing the DarkвЂќ and вЂњ Orfeo,вЂќ he wrote with precision about molecular DNA, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and gene editing, but more fundamentally, he seemed to be questioning what makes us human, and how transmutable those qualities are. Inspired by the figures in the photo, he quit his programming job and started writing his 1985 debut, вЂњ Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance.вЂќ It was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, the first in a river of accolades, including a MacArthur вЂњgeniusвЂќ grant and a National Book Award.ДЇor much of his career, Powers has used fiction to probe humanityвЂ™s relationship to technology, and how our creativity and ingenuity has come to define and ensnare us. He came to the Smoky Mountains to study the parkвЂ™s old growth forest and was so bewitched by the place that he decided to stay.Дuring a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts one weekend, he saw a 1914 photograph of farm boys in Germany, and started thinking about the birth of the machine age. Powers moved to Tennessee five years ago, when he was working on вЂњ The Overstory,вЂќ a multigenerational epic that centers on the mysterious lives of trees.

вЂњDonвЂ™t get me started on these guys,вЂќ he added as he paused to examine one fern. вЂњThere could be 50 species of moss on a foot of rock,вЂќ he said. He was currently fixated on a seemingly unremarkable mossy boulder surrounded by ferns. He has spent countless hours here, writing in his electronic notebook, swimming in the frigid churn until his limbs are numb and staring up at the canopy of alders, sycamore, beech, eastern white pine, hemlock, pawpaw and maple that has become as familiar to him as his own living room. On a cool, rainy morning in August, the novelist Richard Powers was in one of his favorite hiding places, a tiny pebble cove along a mountain stream in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Living earth shoulders