"Pale teardrop-shaped seeds borne by snow-white tufts float on the June breeze. They strand in twigs and grass and multiply into heaps like mislaid snowbanks. Seeds that fall into fertile soil burrow a snaking taproot into the earth and release a tender shoot that turns firm and woody, soon to unfurl a shake of heart-shaped leaves. In 1884, ten-year-old Hannah Wolden planted a cottonwood seedling next to her family’s farmhouse on the shore of High Lake. Two years later, her mother—Bertha—gave birth to the fifth Wolden child, a son with blond hair and blue eyes whom she and her husband Peter named Bernt Olaf. Close in age, the boy and the tree grew up together, part of the same landscape."