There were far fewer cuttings to distribute than the visitors had imagined in September. Some men had arrived expecting wagonloads, perhaps believing that success meant the original trees could now provide an endless supply. Clara explained that removing too much would weaken her nursery stock and reduce the chance of survival the following year. Most understood. A few grumbled about waiting, and one man declared he could simply cut branches from the creek and try them himself. Clara told him that he could, provided he had permission to take the wood and was prepared to learn from whatever happened.
The winter workshops began in a church basement, because the county office was too small for everyone who signed up. Clara stood at the front beside a blackboard while Vance explained basic soil and water conditions, and Margaret showed photographs of eroding banks before and after living plant material had become established. Clara then described her own planting from the beginning, including the cuttings she lost in the first flood and the ones that failed during the drought. Her voice shook when she first faced the room. Then a little girl in the front row asked whether every tree began as a seed, and Clara forgot to be frightened because she knew how to answer.
She drew a twig on the blackboard and showed where a dormant bud might produce a shoot and where roots could form under suitable conditions. She explained that dormant did not mean dead and that not every branch was capable of returning to growth. As she spoke, the adults leaned forward, but Clara found herself watching the children. They were untroubled by the fact that their teacher was nineteen or that six months earlier some of their fathers had laughed at her through the fence. They only wanted to understand how something as ordinary as a branch could become a tree.
After the first session, Vance approached with his hat in his hands. "You have a talent for teaching," he said.
Clara smiled. "I wanted to be a teacher before I inherited the farm."
"I don't see why one ambition must destroy the other."
The remark followed her home. She had spent the year imagining her choices as opposite roads, one leading away to Indianapolis and one leading back into the drowned land. Now she was beginning to see that there might be ways to use what she learned in either place. She wrote to the teachers college about part-time coursework and asked the local school superintendent whether he still needed substitute help. She received a reply stating that there might be openings the following term, and for once she did not treat the uncertainty as an insult.