LeVar Burton Reads · LeVar Burton and Stitcher

"The Hidden Forests of Earth and Mars" by Anna Zumbro

March 26, 2024·44 min·3 clips

Dad tells Paloma: 'Forests know time differently — some wounds don't heal in a human lifetime, but why should that be all that matters?'

The frame is quiet. LeVar Burton begins with humanity as unfinished, still learning through exhaustion, change, and hard choices. Earth has become hostile. Fires, drought, and adaptation press in on a narrator who could start over on Mars. Then the story drops close to the ground. Scarlet does not want to look for bugs. The narrator crouches by an ancient stump. Tabby waits in memory, along with her parents' divorce, the custody fight, and the awful demand that she choose who to leave. That old wound becomes a private guide for later choices. Fate stays small: a magic eight ball, maybe a coin toss, hanging over the decision between Earth and Mars. The stump answers in its own way. Under the rot, green appears, and that bit of chlorophyll changes the mood. Life is still there. The narrator thinks about roots, microbes, shared nutrients, and forest socialism. Mars offers a different kind of system, with roles, support, commune-like hope, and the fragile promise that no one gets forgotten. The story does not quite trust Eden. Mars may gleam, but people bring their failures with them. The forest keeps pushing back. Trees become rivals and friends, tied through scent and fungus, unable to fully let one another go. Leaving Earth is not a clean escape. It is a question about what the living owe the damaged, the dying, and the beloved.

As heard by us

A hostile-Earth story that finds its force in trees, custody, and the hard choice to begin again.

Anna Zumbro's story turns on a hostile Earth, a Mars settlement, and the uneasy choice to start over. LeVar Burton reads it with a close, steady touch that keeps the focus on the human cost of that decision, which suits a piece built around conscious living and the pressure that…

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Why you'd press play

For when you want climate pressure, family fracture, and a story about hard choices on Earth and Mars.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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