Author Event: Richard Horan and *Seeds*

We have a very fun event with Richard Horan and his nonfiction book, Seeds.

Well, the full title of the book is Seeds: One Man’s Serendipitous Journey to find the Trees that Inspired Famous American Writers: From Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton.  That’s more descriptive, but quite a mouthful (and makes my fingers tired to type it!), so I’ll stick with Seeds for the rest of this post!

The book has its roots (ha-ha!  A tree joke!) in a summer road trip Richard Horan and his family took to Springfield, Illinois to tour Abraham Lincoln’s home. While perusing the home’s archives, Horan noticed a photo of Lincoln standing next to a young basswood tree. When Horan ventured outside, he was amazed to discover that the tree still stands in front of Lincoln’s house.  He gathered a few seeds and took them home to grow.

Horan was inspired, and began making more pilgrimages to the homes of celebrated American figures, with “harvesting trips” to the West Coast, New England, and Deep South. Along the way, his compulsive seed-collecting morphed from a hobby into a clearly defined mission – to uncover the stories behind the trees that served as silent observers to American history.

Silent observers.  I’ve thought of that often as I walk the woods and streets in our town.  When we moved to Concord four years ago, my kids quickly grew tired of me telling them “this happened here!” and “that happened there!” and “we’re walking where Thoreau walked!”

I didn’t know there was a name for this – the parts of nature that have remained throughout history.  These are called “witness trees.”  I’m so glad Rick Horan has shown me that I’m not alone in making these connections to that tree, this group of rocks, the pond.

Rick visited dozens of author’s homes while collecting seeds and creating the stories that would become Seeds.

His quest included a stop in Concord, where he walked in Thoreau’s steps at Walden Pond, collected Red Oak acorns and White Pine cones from Emerson’s land, and wondered about the origins of the apple tree in front of the Concord Museum.

He is passionate about his quest, is a firm believer in “things happen for a reason” (or don’t happen, as you’ll read in several chapters where his harvesting missions didn’t go quite as he had expected).

Read the book to travel across the country in his footsteps, and in the footsteps of your favorite American authors.

Rick Horan lives in Oswego, New York, where an arborist is working to cultivate the seeds he has collected.