The Botanist

Once upon an ever-living age, there was a botanist hidden far within the Muir Woods above a city carved into the hillsides. She had adopted recluse ideals becoming a cast away by choice. To her the city was tiresome and silly, people had left nature behind to focus on what made them feel alive, not what kept them alive. So she threw herself head first into her work, becoming acquainted with every plant she could.

As years passed she began to cherish all plants in the woods root to blossom, from the playful poms of the golden shrubs to the ancient hides of the great trees. Her deep care was returned with equal nurture from the plants, morphing their relationship into something familial.

The coastal redwoods gave her protection, a home shaped from their own bark, the turkey tail mushrooms provided her with meals, and the ferns kept her warm and invisible. Plants in every layer of the forest helped her in her research, and as their bond grew so did the botanist’s ambition.

She was aware, with a close alertness, that the city below was quickly growing. New inventions were spurring incredible advancements and people came in droves to live with, and experience, them all. “The forest has to keep up,” the botanist thought, so she began experiments trying to make a super plant. To her fault, however, her methods were based on what she knew from her years in the city, causing the experimental plants to become docile and dependent on her meddling to survive. Nothing she tried worked.

In a crestfallen slump she vacated deeper into the forest, away from her work and away from the plants helping her. The reflection of change she hoped to become was disappearing in muddied waters. With no solution to be found she left the Muir Woods to explore different biomes, areas, and continents, noting every new plant and experience she discovered.

The botanist spent ages learning on her journeys: she fought off leopards in The Snowies of Australia while viewing the Anemone Buttercup, escaped capture from agents of big tech companies trying to prevent her efforts in the Sierra Juárez Mountain range of Oaxaca, wandered through harsh conditions of the Taymyr Peninsula, observed the Antarctic pearlwort, was hypnotized, and led off-course, by the eerie gaze of barn owls occupying abandoned cabins in Ontario, and noted the effects of climate change on African vegetation. Her personal world grew as she travelled the globe, but even so she couldn’t come up with a plan.

One day, on a ship back home through uncharted waters, she stumbled on something completely unexpected. A single plant floating in mid air, fully blossomed with beautiful flowers like nothing she had ever seen. There were no roots tying it down to the dying earth and it beamed light like a distant star. Saucer-like clouds formed at its peak and bowed down to its base. It was in-between the open ocean and the horizon of the darkening sky. She had the captain halt the ship and took time to harvest it, although she knew doing so would jeopardize its life. After safely securing it in her possession she rushed back to her study in the woods.

She spent months analyzing and caring for the plant as best she could. However, a problem the botanist saw coming arose, it began to die with her interference. Each day it’s blossom would shrivel and its light would grow weaker. It could no longer float in the air and it had to root itself into the ground.

The botanist grew distraught with a grand sense of failure and eventually left the plant to die unto itself. One night, after weeks of being left alone, the plant began to grow again. It rose into the air until its new roots snapped away and its light beamed through the canopy of the woods. Everyone in the city below noticed it shining and stopped to view the beacon reaching toward creation. The botanist woke up to an almost blinding sensation, and as she peeked through the shield of her fingertips she realized she was the only one with a need in the woods.