Remembering THE AVATAR II

Poul Anderson, The Avatar (London, 1985), I, p. 1. (II occupies pp. 2-15. There are L (50) chapters in 404 pages.)

I forgot a central point which is the reason for the title. The Elder Race observes a living planet, in this case Earth, by using particular organisms as its "avatars" through which data and experiences are somehow accessed. 

I is narrated by a birch tree which describes its life cycle in two paragraphs. Leaves drink sunlight and dance in the wind although the tree neither sees nor hears so how does it know and tell us this? It says that each cell feels secretly. So secretly that it is not really happening? The tree marks it all because it lives. Yes, a plant is affected by and bears marks of everything that happens to it but this stops short of consciousness. I thought that the tree would awaken into consciousness at the moment when it was selected as an avatar but this does not happen. I ends by stating that the tree was not aware and did not understand but nevertheless knew. Contradiction. Concluding sentence:

"I was Tree." (p. 1)

I know about the avatars because I have read the book before. On a first reading, all that we know in I is that an unconscious organism is unaccountably narrating.