By Sean Sullivan

In fire brigades of old, townsfolk showed and lined up in service of a community in need. In that era, when some structure was ablaze, buckets of water were passed hand to hand until they could be thrown on the flames.

On a sunny Sunday last month, locals likewise gathered to convey something essential from neighbor to neighbor.

Since its founding about a year ago, Ten Trees Books had operated out of its Main Street location. The small business shared space at The Hive, a retail incubator that seeks to give startups a smoother runway toward success.

Ten Trees has achieved liftoff during that time, and its founder decided it was time for the bookseller to venture out on its own.

It’s a big move but not a distant one. Ten Trees found and has leased retail space just across Main Street, in the storefront that Calliope Paperie previously occupied.

That its new location is less than a stone’s throw away posed something of a conundrum for the bookseller. Too close to transport its bound editions by truck, too far to shlep those hundreds of pounds of paperbacks and hardcovers by hand.

As a solution, a book brigade was suggested.

Ten Trees devotees and customers had heard about the plan, and stood side by side on Oct. 19 for the big move. Volunteers passed stacks of books from one to the next, transporting the volumes to the store’s new home.

To traverse Route 27, members of the brigade traveled the thoroughfare in small groups, where willing hands accepted those bundles of books and continued passing them toward their destination.

“You just grab a handful of books and pass them on to the next guy,” said Kim Rickard. “We basically created a human chain.”

She founded and owns Ten Trees, and was busy the day after with volunteers alphabetizing and organizing the tomes.

“I couldn’t believe the outpouring from the community.”

A relatively recent addition to Natick with her family, Rickard saw the need for a local bookstore and decided to fill it. The store was named as a tribute to the ten ash trees the town was forced to remove from the Natick Common due to their poor health.

They were replaced with a crop of new and diverse species, a gesture that Rickard saw as a nod to and a hope for the future. This reflected an ethic of community, she said, a sense of spirit that convinced the family they’d found their forever home in Natick.

Though the move for Ten Trees was a lateral and local one geographically, Rickard said she has high hopes for the budding bookstore.

“I really wanted it to be about how special Natick is,” she said. “I think there’s nowhere to go but up.”