The Word Written in Wood

Walk into any forest in October and pick up an acorn. Hold it in your palm — it weighs almost nothing. Yet inside that small, unremarkable shell lives the complete blueprint for a white oak tree that could stand for three hundred years, grow sixty feet tall, and shelter ten thousand creatures. Every detail is already written there: the pattern of the bark, the shape of each leaf, the architecture of branches that will one day cast shade over your grandchildren's grandchildren.…