Executive Overview
In the literary landscape of contemporary short fiction, Luis Ortiz’s short story "The Arborist," featured in The Missouri Review’s online-only biweekly series BLAST, offers a poignant meditation on alienation, ecological loss, and the silent, enduring witness of trees. Set against the backdrop of a culturally sterile and tree-averse small town named Greenwood, the narrative follows a peculiar, tree-revering adolescent who navigates the friction of a forced relocation from the bustling, arbor-dense neighborhoods of the city.
Through meticulous observations of suburban apathy toward nature—manifested in the routine leveling of centuries-old oaks and locust trees for parking lots and signage—Ortiz crafts a nuanced critique of modern development. Yet, "The Arborist" transcends a standard environmental lament. It investigates the deeply personal architecture of memory, the chasm between immigrant generational experiences, and the unexpected intimacies forged between societal outsiders. This review and literary analysis unpacks the thematic richness of Ortiz’s work, examining its exploration of botanical reverence, the psychological weight of displacement, and the haunting persistence of nature in an increasingly engineered world.
Detailed Chronology
The Geography of Displacement and Greenwood’s Botanical Erasure
The narrative begins with a stark assessment of the natural world: trees as the structural, life-sustaining "living bones of the world." For the unnamed protagonist, this perspective is not a poetic abstraction, but an empirical truth. However, this reverence places him at immediate odds with his new home in Greenwood, a town defined by its institutionalized hostility toward foliage.
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The chronology of loss in Greenwood is swift and unmourned:
- Month One: A forty-foot locust tree in front of the bank is felled to optimize visibility for a new commercial sign.
- Shortly Thereafter: A centenarian oak on Market Street is reduced to wood chips to accommodate a convenience store expansion.
- Ongoing Incidents: Local indifference is underscored when a motorist crashes into a prized Japanese maple, snapping its trunk. Outside town limits, forty acres of cleared woodland sit unsold, resembling a post-industrial wasteland devoid of human or animal life.
The protagonist’s father, nostalgic for his youth on a farm near Ponce, Puerto Rico, champions the move to Greenwood as an embrace of a simpler, more serene lifestyle—a "reductive" ideal symbolized by donning a baseball cap and escaping urban crowds. This move creates a profound generational and emotional disconnect. While the father pines for an idealized agrarian past that no longer exists, the son remains acutely anchored to the present concrete reality, recognizing Greenwood not as a sanctuary, but as a "Deadwood."
The Glass Tree and the Awakening of Shared Mythologies
Seeking solace from his isolation, the protagonist explores an antique emporium run by eccentric sisters clad in medieval attire. Among the curiosities, he discovers a thirty-inch, winter-bare glass tree. Through a meticulous negotiation involving an upended jug of loose change, bubble wrap, and a borrowed gardening wagon, he transports the fragile artifact to his sparse bedroom.
When morning light filters through the glass, it refracts sepia sunbeams into grasping fingers that claim his stark living space. This inanimate object serves as a catalyst, bridging his solitary childhood—spent cataloging leaves using the Linnaean system—with a burgeoning desire for connection.
This connection materializes through Vera, a classmate with an affinity for the uncanny. Sharing a bus ride and a mutual alienation from the "on-fleek" social hierarchies of their peers, Vera confides in the protagonist about a nocturnal phenomenon: a glowing, ghostly apparition of a maple tree rising from an old stump behind her house.
The Midnight Vigil and the Convergence of Memory
Skeptical yet deeply empathetic, the protagonist agrees to a midnight vigil in Vera’s backyard. The ensuing sequence subverts traditional ghost stories. Instead of fearing a vengeful specter, the teenagers interrogate the nature of non-human apparitions. The protagonist reflects on his mother’s stories of La Madremonte—the mythical forest guardian of the Colombian selva—and her belief that trees harbor an ancient, generous magic.
Standing on tiptoes at the kitchen window, peering out into the dark, the adolescents experience a fleeting, shared vision: a neon-flickering, brilliant phantom of a tree illuminating the gloom. Though the vision vanishes as quickly as it arrives, leaving no photographic proof, it cements an unbreakable bond. It is a moment of profound validation, proving that perception is not merely about objective reality, but about the willingness to witness what others dismiss.
Supporting Context & Metrics
Thematic Vectors in "The Arborist"
To fully appreciate the narrative density of Luis Ortiz’s work, several intersecting literary and cultural themes must be examined:
| Thematic Vector | Manifestation in the Narrative | Underlying Significance |
|---|---|---|
| Ecological Grief | The systemic removal of mature urban trees (locust, oak, maple) for commercial convenience. | Reflects modern society’s detachment from ecological systems and the psychological toll of environmental degradation on sensitive individuals. |
| Generational Disconnect | The friction between the father’s idealized Puerto Rican agrarian nostalgia and the son’s urban-rooted reality. | Highlights the immigrant experience of displacement, where memory is often romanticized while the next generation confronts immediate realities. |
| The Inanimate as Living | The protagonist’s fascination with the glass tree, chalk drawings of extinct trees (Wattieza), and sneaker-laden ash trees. | Blurs the line between organic life and human artifice, suggesting that human artifacts often mimic or attempt to preserve botanical resilience. |
| Outsider Solidarity | The relationship between the protagonist and Vera, both alienated by small-town dynamics. | Demonstrates how shared eccentricities and a mutual appreciation for the unseen forge deep, sustaining human bonds. |
The Authorial Lens: Luis Ortiz’s Multidisciplinary Background
"The Arborist" is deeply informed by Luis Ortiz’s eclectic professional and artistic background. Having worked as an advertising executive, swimming coach, illustrator, lifeguard, typesetter, teacher, book editor, 911 operator, and art director, Ortiz brings a sharply observational, visual eye to his prose.
Writing in his second language, Ortiz employs precision and economy. His background as an illustrator is evident in the tactile descriptions of the glass tree’s rough bark, the sepia refraction of morning light, and the chalk sketches drawn on the classroom blackboard—ranging from standard maples to the prehistoric Wattieza. Furthermore, his early experiences publishing a Puerto Rican poetry zine (XYZ) as a teenager resonate with the protagonist’s quiet, defiant act of cataloging and preserving the world on his own terms.
Official Statements and Critical Reception
While "The Arborist" operates primarily as a work of literary fiction rather than a political treatise, its publication within The Missouri Review’s BLAST series—dedicated to prose "too vibrant to be confined between the covers of a print journal"—underscores its critical acclaim.
Literary critics and editors have noted that Ortiz’s portrayal of suburban tree removal strikes a raw nerve in an era defined by climate anxiety and rapid urbanization. The protagonist’s internal monologue—asserting that “trees are the living bones of the world. This is not meant to be poetic”—has been cited by reviewers as a manifesto for a new kind of ecological realism. Rather than romanticizing nature from a safe distance, Ortiz presents it as an essential, foundational infrastructure of human dignity that is actively being dismantled by bureaucratic and commercial apathy.
Future Outlook: Legacy and Environmental Consciousness
As contemporary literature increasingly grapples with the Anthropocene, works like "The Arborist" provide a vital framework for understanding the intersection of personal psychology and ecological awareness. The story avoids heavy-handed didacticism, opting instead for a quiet, character-driven exploration of how individuals retain their humanity—and their sense of wonder—in environments hostile to growth.
Though the protagonist ultimately leaves Greenwood behind, moving from his small-town roots toward academic pursuits at Cornell while his mother returns to Colombia, the legacy of his botanical reverence persists. The narrative suggests that our relationship with the natural world is not defined merely by geographic proximity to forests, but by our capacity to perceive the "old magic" embedded in everyday life. In an era where urban canopies continue to face threats from commercial expansion, Luis Ortiz’s work stands as a lasting reminder to look closer, to honor the silent witnesses of our history, and to recognize that what we cut down leaves a phantom ache that only collective attention can begin to heal.
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