Chestnut-ing

I'm on a business trip but spent the afternoon riding on a farm cart covered in hay bales, looking at squiggly chestnut shoots. These are the future of the American chestnut. Some have died, some are weakened by cankers, some shoot up toward the sky.
In the fall, the chestnut trees drop thousands of spiny pods, each containing three seeds. They feel like an urchin and at the farm they litter the ground.

Some are from the trees that are now the parents to the blight-resistant strain currently in testing.

In that little spiny urchin could be history changed. I picked up a chestnut seed and put it in my pocket. It'll remind me what hope can look like, no matter the odds.