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How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World
A tender, fearless debut by a forester writing in the tradition of Suzanne Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Robert Macfarlane. Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper. In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth. How do we respond to the harmful legacies of the past? How do we use our species' incredible power to heal rather than to harm? Tapper walks us through the fragile and resilient community that is a forest. He introduces us to wolf trees and spring ephemerals, and to the mysterious creatures of the rhizosphere and the necrosphere. He helps us reimagine what forests are and what it means to care for them. This world, Tapper writes, is degraded by people who do too much and by those who do nothing. As the ecosystems that sustain all life struggle, we straddle two a status quo that treats them as commodities and opposing claims that the only true expression of love for the natural world is to leave it alone. Proffering a more complex vision, Tapper argues that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. With striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts--like loving deer and hunting them, loving trees and felling them--can be expressions of compassion. Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world, reminding us that what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.
229 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2024
173 people are currently reading
4513 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 164 reviews
October 17, 2024
If you know anyone who still has a "nature will be fine if we just leave it alone" attitude, give them this book. For more ecologically literate readers, this is a cathartic read and may contain some useful nuggets of information here & there but, just FYI, it's more of a memoir.
I'd love to see a follow up to this book called "How to Love a Forest: A Practical Guide" aimed at landowners and people who want to learn how to manage landscapes (invasives removal, deer hunting best practices, forestry 101, etc.).
I'd love to see a follow up to this book called "How to Love a Forest: A Practical Guide" aimed at landowners and people who want to learn how to manage landscapes (invasives removal, deer hunting best practices, forestry 101, etc.).
January 24, 2025
I wanted to love this book because I want to restore a forest like he does with Bear Island. I read it hoping it would be about rewilding and how to take care of forests. Instead, it was overly poetic and spent lots of time justifying the need to cut down trees, hunt deer, and spray herbicide. Those are not revolutionary ideas in native restoration. His use of language reminds me of teens trying too hard to insert metaphors, similes, personification, and sensory details. Disappointed with the weak writing and simplistic message.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 3, 2025
I really wanted to like this book, but after the first chapter or two you’ve already read every idea this book covers.
I think it suffers greatly by its mix of biographical prose and technical forestry talk. If this was pulled off properly, I think it would be super engaging and a great book, but the unfortunate truth for me is that the writing is very bland and almost immature from a creative writing aspect in regards to the “poetic” parts. It’s overly metaphorical and extremely repetitive, often repeating itself literally paragraphs later using almost exactly the same wording. It reminds me of poetry classes I’ve taken where new writers are trying really really hard to be deep and create striking images but it just turns out trite and generic. This persists from chapter to chapter. As for the technical speak, it suffers the same fate. Any new ideas introduced to non-foresters are quickly covered into the ground and there’s no new information after the first couple chapters.
The first ideas introduced about the spheres of death and life building upon each other got me really excited and I was interested to see them developed further, but they never continue any deeper than just stating that these things happen. The pacing feels lethargic as you get further and further still gaining no new information. The book looks really good on the bookshelf though, so that’s something. After glancing through some reviews, it’s nice to see some folks agreeing with me since I was honestly pretty surprised seeing how highly rated this is. Easy skip, IMO
I think it suffers greatly by its mix of biographical prose and technical forestry talk. If this was pulled off properly, I think it would be super engaging and a great book, but the unfortunate truth for me is that the writing is very bland and almost immature from a creative writing aspect in regards to the “poetic” parts. It’s overly metaphorical and extremely repetitive, often repeating itself literally paragraphs later using almost exactly the same wording. It reminds me of poetry classes I’ve taken where new writers are trying really really hard to be deep and create striking images but it just turns out trite and generic. This persists from chapter to chapter. As for the technical speak, it suffers the same fate. Any new ideas introduced to non-foresters are quickly covered into the ground and there’s no new information after the first couple chapters.
The first ideas introduced about the spheres of death and life building upon each other got me really excited and I was interested to see them developed further, but they never continue any deeper than just stating that these things happen. The pacing feels lethargic as you get further and further still gaining no new information. The book looks really good on the bookshelf though, so that’s something. After glancing through some reviews, it’s nice to see some folks agreeing with me since I was honestly pretty surprised seeing how highly rated this is. Easy skip, IMO
October 17, 2024
I was captivated by Ethan Tapper's biographical account of his work to help a 175 acre section of a forest rejuvenate and become healthier, from it's trees and animals to the underground world that sustains it. As a forester, he writes with a knowledge of how the forest once was and what it has become after centuries of abuse in the way of clear cutting and grazing and the introduction of nonnative species. He writes with a passion for the work he feels a responsibility for. He writes very descriptively of the forest he loves so that I could see the places he describes. He weaves in a history of the forest through the ages and the current crises we are experiencing right now. At times I felt despondent and helpless and at times hopeful that if enough people could read his words and heed some small part of what he is saying there might be a chance we can repair some of the damage humans and other animals have caused to the only place we have to inhabit. I highly recommend this book.
March 9, 2025
I decided to read this bc I needed an audiobook and this was available on Spotify. I didn’t dislike this as much as I thought when I was listening to the introduction, the writing style did grow on me. This guy makes a solid attempt to acknowledge the history of the land, and his ancestors impact by colonizing it. The thing that rubbed me the wrong way the most tho was the way that he explained that forests used to take care of themselves but now it is irresponsible to leave them alone when we’ve done so much to damage forests and set them up for failure. While I agree with the general sentiment of taking responsibility for our ecosystems on earth, the precolonial americas were NOT pristine unaltered wilderness. Native Americans played an instrumental roll in the success and prosperity of ecosystems and there is a lot missing from this book where the author fails to acknowledge that his actions are not his own brilliant and revolutionary idea but rather are continuing a long established legacy of stewardship.
December 19, 2024
I honestly don’t know how to feel about this book. Some parts were very beautifully written and others were repetitive and didn’t make any sense. I also feel like I may be a harsh critic because I know all the things the book talked about whereas it’s probably targeted towards a reader who doesn’t have a deep understanding of the environment and ecosystem processes. So I think it’s worth a read if you’re interested in learning about that stuff but at the same time the writing felt slightly self centered at times…
May 5, 2025
There were definitely interesting tidbits along the way, but felt like it lacked any definitive plot.
A large majority of the book was just the author’s musings on restoration ecology that were repeated over and over. This book could have been 50% shorter and gotten the point across.
Lots of moments where he repeatedly mentions why he is a good and revolutionary person for cutting down trees, spraying Japanese barberry with glyphosate, and killing deer.
However, I do think this book would be of more value for someone who is not familiar with the topics discussed in the book. I suppose it bored me, in part, because I already knew a lot of the information.
A large majority of the book was just the author’s musings on restoration ecology that were repeated over and over. This book could have been 50% shorter and gotten the point across.
Lots of moments where he repeatedly mentions why he is a good and revolutionary person for cutting down trees, spraying Japanese barberry with glyphosate, and killing deer.
However, I do think this book would be of more value for someone who is not familiar with the topics discussed in the book. I suppose it bored me, in part, because I already knew a lot of the information.
January 17, 2025
DNF: it was like listening to someone’s existential crises. Too woo woo, heady. I felt like nothing new was being said or added to the climate/forest/invasive species conversation. Idk. Just felt like one dude’s take on the same ole same ole.
December 19, 2024
Me when I spoke to Ethan Tapper at a forestry conference and he signed my book…
February 20, 2025
I started following this guy on TikTok and really enjoyed his videos, and when I saw he was releasing a book I just had to read it! It ended up being a nice light and easy read detailing a forest’s journey through stewardship should be in an age of climate change, through the eye(s) of a forester, a punk rocker and just a cool guy. Throughout this book you can feel Tapper’s passion that he puts into his work through the pages, always displaying his patience and hopefulness as acts of love for a forest can take time!
July 25, 2025
Ugh. I tried so hard to like this book. It’s so repetitive. And the author tries way too hard to come across as poetic and whimsical. I was hoping to learn a little bit from this book but I struggled through every last page trying to glean some sort of actual meaning out of the wanna be whimsical wordiness.
November 7, 2024
Loved having Ethan come to Thompson Free Library and just finished the book, which is a hopeful trip through the Anthropocene! Mary it inspire all of us towards better forest management.
December 30, 2024
“In the little village at the foot of the mountain, a man with one good eye bought an unloved and unwanted parcel of land,” is how Tapper’s journey to heal a forest begins (73). After suffering from a life altering accident, Tapper becomes a forester in Vermont and it becomes his life’s work to bring an injured forest, Bear Island, back from the brink of collapse.
I learned a lot about forestry/forest ecology and how the use of herbicides, hunting, and logging can be used for healing and protecting forests and biodiversity vs. exploiting and harming them, when done with good intention. This read like a National Geographic episode with rich descriptions of the flora & fauna and pearls of wisdom scattered throughout.
I didn’t expect this book to be as existential going in, but found those aspects incredibly meaningful. As humans, we have a lot to learn from nature about life & death and how we should not fear death, especially through the example of how ancient trees experience a long graceful death, a decades or sometimes centuries long perimortem period. Additionally, every tree and animal in the forest is connected, and owes its life to the death of another. Every animal subsists off the deaths of other living things (87).
Quotes -
- We have been born into a reality in which each generation takes their freedom from the same shrinking and finite pool. We have been told that we are radically free and then handed a world in which each generation is less free than the last (135).
- My life is just the latest chapter in an endless history, a brief moment on the edge of a massive skein of time (18).
- The tragedy of death will be lost in the abundance of life (29).
- We live in a forest of our grandparents’ choices: a changing climate, unjust institutions, a broken, bleeding world (50).
- I belief that the true nature of our power is not to degrade and destroy but to protect this living world and to protect each other (92).
I learned a lot about forestry/forest ecology and how the use of herbicides, hunting, and logging can be used for healing and protecting forests and biodiversity vs. exploiting and harming them, when done with good intention. This read like a National Geographic episode with rich descriptions of the flora & fauna and pearls of wisdom scattered throughout.
I didn’t expect this book to be as existential going in, but found those aspects incredibly meaningful. As humans, we have a lot to learn from nature about life & death and how we should not fear death, especially through the example of how ancient trees experience a long graceful death, a decades or sometimes centuries long perimortem period. Additionally, every tree and animal in the forest is connected, and owes its life to the death of another. Every animal subsists off the deaths of other living things (87).
Quotes -
- We have been born into a reality in which each generation takes their freedom from the same shrinking and finite pool. We have been told that we are radically free and then handed a world in which each generation is less free than the last (135).
- My life is just the latest chapter in an endless history, a brief moment on the edge of a massive skein of time (18).
- The tragedy of death will be lost in the abundance of life (29).
- We live in a forest of our grandparents’ choices: a changing climate, unjust institutions, a broken, bleeding world (50).
- I belief that the true nature of our power is not to degrade and destroy but to protect this living world and to protect each other (92).
January 8, 2026
This book felt like a hug from Chris and Walt in NR 1.
All the gratitude and love for Tapper for this read.
All the gratitude and love for Tapper for this read.
October 18, 2025
It could never quite decide whether it wanted to be profound and resonant or just Ethan’s repetitive musings. The central conceit is a gorgeous one - though it's not novel and by the end it’s wrung through a thousand metaphors coming to the same conclusion.
September 29, 2024
This is a beautiful journal written by a forester/punk rocker.
Two great tastes that taste great together? Lumberpunk. 😂
Ethan Tapper loves a forest. And here he wrestles with it and the bittersweet knowledge of what is happening to ecosystems all over the earth. He writes a melancholy and hopeful book about the blooming and destruction of forests, and our part in it, and our choice in it.
His writing is gorgeous and bleak and somehow never preachy. I loved this book.
Two great tastes that taste great together? Lumberpunk. 😂
Ethan Tapper loves a forest. And here he wrestles with it and the bittersweet knowledge of what is happening to ecosystems all over the earth. He writes a melancholy and hopeful book about the blooming and destruction of forests, and our part in it, and our choice in it.
His writing is gorgeous and bleak and somehow never preachy. I loved this book.
June 6, 2025
Glad to leave this changed and changing book behind. I think Ethan Tapper could have done with slightly less juxtaposition in this. I was hoping to learn about management, but found it to be this to be more of an internal monologue that suffered from lack of plot and the message of the book being constantly shoved down your throat.
December 16, 2024
A fun read. I would have liked more of a lean into the forest and less into the prose, but the author was clearly trying to poeticise his relationship to his slice of forest which is fine. Overall a good read and the sort of thing I am glad to see more of these days
August 13, 2025
The book was remarkably repetitive and this detracted from the message Tapper wanted to send. Overall a good read, but definitely becomes the sort of thing you gloss over full paragraphs in.
October 11, 2025
This book would’ve been a really good essay. It was fun when he mentioned Burlington for the first time, exhausting when he mentioned it for the 10th time. This held true for most of the points, ideas, and descriptions. I really can’t stress enough that I would’ve enjoyed this book if it was a fraction of the length, instead it was a bore. :/
February 10, 2025
Tapper presents a memoir of his restoration of a forest he calls “Bear Island”. It is a beautiful and emotive recollection, and emphasised how there is no inaction that is better than sustained, practical action when it comes to preserving biodiversity of ecosystems.
June 3, 2025
Such a beautiful, poetic, devastating, and hopeful book!
September 5, 2025
The most emo and dramatic book I've ever read by a man- not a bad thing!
December 2, 2024
Earnestness and emotion are rare things to birth into our measured world, hellbent on jugement. To bear witness to pure conviction, as a reader, can be uncomfortable.
But don't look away. Just give in to this sincere memoir by a forester who bravely steps into daunting eco-literary footsteps to add his full-throated prose. While he shares his wooded days and hard decisions, keep your eyes open. Be open to his call to action.
I grew up in a forest just a stone's throw from Bear Island, the land Tapper has begun to rehabilitate. My academic and professional experiences have nothing whatsoever to do with forestry. Yet, as a kid, my hikes through our family's mountainside forest left me curiously eco-adjacent:
Why are there barbed wire and stone walls running across the ridge?
How did this huge pine come to stand alone in a tangled hardwood stand?
Where did all these boulders and deep ravines come from?
Why are there pin-straight, perfect rows of red pine on a perfect square patch of forest?
Who used these logging roads? What trees were logged?
Who made this ancient scraping tool that my mother found in our garden?
What did the house that once stood above this cellar-hole look like?
So it seems, forestry is a useful perspective to use when, as an adult who is doing her best to take care of the family forest with limited tools (and even more limited energy and body strength!), I also need to make unsentimental decisions.
That beech is gorgeous... but it grows like a snake every summer and coils above everything else. Do I cut it down in favor of poplar, maple, or cherry?
How many more years will this dying, ancient apple grove have, even if I cut back sun-choking overstory nearby? Is it worth my effort? Or will I introduce cracking winter winds the trunks can't withstand? What animals would this help or hinder?
If I plant elderberry here, will I mess up something else?
Do I burn this brush pile or let it rot?
If I put a waterbar here, will it help?
I'm flying blind, frankly, but doing my best with years of pragmatic observation and encouragement--with books like this one--to be ruthless now in a quest for diversity and resiliency.
What I do know is that I'd look forward to more books from Tapper, as his appreciative hyper-local neighbor who can use all the brutal advice he's willing to give on barberry, beech, and more.
But don't look away. Just give in to this sincere memoir by a forester who bravely steps into daunting eco-literary footsteps to add his full-throated prose. While he shares his wooded days and hard decisions, keep your eyes open. Be open to his call to action.
I grew up in a forest just a stone's throw from Bear Island, the land Tapper has begun to rehabilitate. My academic and professional experiences have nothing whatsoever to do with forestry. Yet, as a kid, my hikes through our family's mountainside forest left me curiously eco-adjacent:
Why are there barbed wire and stone walls running across the ridge?
How did this huge pine come to stand alone in a tangled hardwood stand?
Where did all these boulders and deep ravines come from?
Why are there pin-straight, perfect rows of red pine on a perfect square patch of forest?
Who used these logging roads? What trees were logged?
Who made this ancient scraping tool that my mother found in our garden?
What did the house that once stood above this cellar-hole look like?
So it seems, forestry is a useful perspective to use when, as an adult who is doing her best to take care of the family forest with limited tools (and even more limited energy and body strength!), I also need to make unsentimental decisions.
That beech is gorgeous... but it grows like a snake every summer and coils above everything else. Do I cut it down in favor of poplar, maple, or cherry?
How many more years will this dying, ancient apple grove have, even if I cut back sun-choking overstory nearby? Is it worth my effort? Or will I introduce cracking winter winds the trunks can't withstand? What animals would this help or hinder?
If I plant elderberry here, will I mess up something else?
Do I burn this brush pile or let it rot?
If I put a waterbar here, will it help?
I'm flying blind, frankly, but doing my best with years of pragmatic observation and encouragement--with books like this one--to be ruthless now in a quest for diversity and resiliency.
What I do know is that I'd look forward to more books from Tapper, as his appreciative hyper-local neighbor who can use all the brutal advice he's willing to give on barberry, beech, and more.
December 31, 2024
This was poetic, powerful, and persuasive. I am glad I wrapped up the year with a culminating work on how to actually build an ecological haven. Truly a paradigm shift in my thinking of the natural world and a good follow on for books like those of Robin Wall Kimmerer and Suzanne Simard.
I felt a kinship to the author of simultaneously trying to be tough and gritty whilst also being sensitive and fragile. I feel his life is really what I want long term ... that is to take care of the earth, as humans have agreed to in so many spiritual traditions.
I loved his taking on so many false dichotomies and standing amidst such dissonance in ways such as being willing to fell a tree while hoping for a stronger forest, hunting deer, and spraying herbicide.
Inspiring and hopeful stuff for the environmental community.
I felt a kinship to the author of simultaneously trying to be tough and gritty whilst also being sensitive and fragile. I feel his life is really what I want long term ... that is to take care of the earth, as humans have agreed to in so many spiritual traditions.
I loved his taking on so many false dichotomies and standing amidst such dissonance in ways such as being willing to fell a tree while hoping for a stronger forest, hunting deer, and spraying herbicide.
Inspiring and hopeful stuff for the environmental community.
June 30, 2025
A call to action that is a profound, depressing, inspiring, and difficult read due to the inconvenient truths of climate change and human greed.
October 11, 2025
Started strong but DNF (p. 177). I got lost in some of the repeated themes, which always makes me think a writer is stretching a story into a novella, a novella into a novel, a thought into an article, or an essay into a book. Seems like a great guy and love the mission but not having been to Bear Mountain and wanting to keep reading more, felt
I’d had my share.
“How to Love a Forest” by Evan Tapper
“There is no one coming to save us; only ourselves, and perfect and powerful and imbued with responsibility. There are no perfect solutions; only endless bittersweet compromises, choices that dare us to ImagiKnit means to live in this world with compassion. There’s so much that is wrong and so much worth saving.” P.11
“Through the miracle of photosynthesis, plants turn four nonliving things – light, air, water, Earth into living tissue, guiding matter across the threshold from abiotic to biotic, from inert to alive.” P.19
“In the orchard, the bacteria, the fungi, the boring and defoliating insects are villains, threats to the order and productivity of this engineered system. In the forest they are the necrosphere: the community of death, the midwives of the profound and beautiful process of tree mortality, the creatures that guide to trees toward the unraveling that marks the end of their biological lives.” P.20
“Across generations of growth and decline, they form a monoculture in the forests under story, an impenetrable mass of a species that will never be healthy and that will also not allow anything else to exist. Beech bark disease has transformed to beach from a pillar into a pest, from a foundational part of this forest community into a species that stands between this forest and it’s diversity, it’s health, it’s resilience.
I saw. Like the beech sprouts, I am hopeful and hopeless, an orphan of the Anthropocene. Like the beech sprouts, I was born into a world of extinction and invasion, degradation and deforestation, fragmentation and loss. Like the beach sprouts, I know only the aftermath: a landscape of disconnection and uncertainty, a world of drought and famine and disaster, at changing climate and ecosystem on the run.” P.38-39
“Ecosystems are a balancing act, both resilient and sensitive. The species that is a normal and even beneficial part of a forest ecology – like deer, like beech-can become a biodiversity threat when confronted with the loss of a predator, a dramatic change and habitat, a non-native pathogen, or a change in environmental conditions. In this moment, the beech on the mountain suffers, while the deer on the mountain thrive. Both are threats to the integrity of this forest.” P.48
“Trees are modular organisms, compromising many repeating modules. Within a tree each branch is a kind of suborganism, an entity with the autonomy to compete with neighboring branches, to support its own energetic economy, to live in a die alone. For this reason, some researchers and botanist have reimagined trees as a colonial organisms: more like colonies, or collectives, than individuals.
The autonomy of branches is real and is also an illusion. Each branch is connected to a trunk, to a common root system, to a community of other branches. A branch cannot live without the water and nutrients channel through the trees route system, without the sturdy architecture of the trunk, without the many processes and properties and functions provided by the tree as a hole. The fate of each branch is bound to the fate of the other branches, nested within the fate of a larger collective entity.
The relationship between branches and trees is a fractal, a pattern that repeats itself at different scales. Within a forest, each tree is an autonomous individual, competing with neighboring trees or light and resources, for the ability to reproduce and to pass it genes to future generations. At the same time, a tree could not live alone. Each tree is dependent on the seed disperses and pollinators, the invertebrates and their predators, the bats and the birds, the necrosphere and the rhizosphere, the creatures and the processes in the functions of the forest community. A tree cannot stand alone.” P.117-118
“As they come, they built houses and driveways, turn fields and forests and the houses lawns of cut grass, to find the remaining expenses of forest and a smaller and smaller pieces. Each person is innocent: a winter tick on the flank of a moose, taking just one small share of the sweetness of the world. each wonders how a tie so small could injure something so massive and so boundless and so vital. Slowly, and with good intent, they kill the thing that they love.” P.127
“The house was a vision of hope and prosperity and freedom.
Today, the house leans into the wind, three stories of chipping paint and rotting shutters. Today, the lives of the people who built this house or myths, as for garden as the ancient forests that they once cleared. Only the house remembers the aching bodies in the hardened hands, the generations of birth and death, joy and struggle. Only the house remembers the apples in the cellar and the butter in the churn, the eggs frying as children swung their legs at the kitchen table, the horses in the barn whickering into their oats.” P.130
“I marvel at Jack’s Forest, this profound expression of care and compassion in a world of exploitation and short-sightedness. Jack has no children, no one that he is managing this forest for. He is simply building a better legacy for those who may someday follow, whoever they are. He is cared for this forest not because he had to but because he has chosen to – because he is called toward responsibility. Like each of us, Jack has a house to keep in a force to tend; a life of his own and a life to give to the world. Like each of us, Jack must find a way to care for the garden of his imperfect life while tending to the garden that we all share.” P.134
“I watch the cars travel the twin lanes of the highway, gone in five seconds. Inside each other people living complex lives: seeking happiness, purpose, and freedom. I wonder what this world would become if they could see, just for five seconds, that we are branches on the same tree, trees in the same forest. I wonder what this world would become if we realize that freedom does not belong to us – that it is borrowed from this living world, borrowed from those without freedom, borrowed from the world of the future. I wonder if we could learn to seek individual freedom within collective freedom, individual liberation within collective liberation, individual prosperity within collective prosperity. I imagine, in this epoch of loneliness, what would happen if we reached toward freedom together.” P.136
I’d had my share.
“How to Love a Forest” by Evan Tapper
“There is no one coming to save us; only ourselves, and perfect and powerful and imbued with responsibility. There are no perfect solutions; only endless bittersweet compromises, choices that dare us to ImagiKnit means to live in this world with compassion. There’s so much that is wrong and so much worth saving.” P.11
“Through the miracle of photosynthesis, plants turn four nonliving things – light, air, water, Earth into living tissue, guiding matter across the threshold from abiotic to biotic, from inert to alive.” P.19
“In the orchard, the bacteria, the fungi, the boring and defoliating insects are villains, threats to the order and productivity of this engineered system. In the forest they are the necrosphere: the community of death, the midwives of the profound and beautiful process of tree mortality, the creatures that guide to trees toward the unraveling that marks the end of their biological lives.” P.20
“Across generations of growth and decline, they form a monoculture in the forests under story, an impenetrable mass of a species that will never be healthy and that will also not allow anything else to exist. Beech bark disease has transformed to beach from a pillar into a pest, from a foundational part of this forest community into a species that stands between this forest and it’s diversity, it’s health, it’s resilience.
I saw. Like the beech sprouts, I am hopeful and hopeless, an orphan of the Anthropocene. Like the beech sprouts, I was born into a world of extinction and invasion, degradation and deforestation, fragmentation and loss. Like the beach sprouts, I know only the aftermath: a landscape of disconnection and uncertainty, a world of drought and famine and disaster, at changing climate and ecosystem on the run.” P.38-39
“Ecosystems are a balancing act, both resilient and sensitive. The species that is a normal and even beneficial part of a forest ecology – like deer, like beech-can become a biodiversity threat when confronted with the loss of a predator, a dramatic change and habitat, a non-native pathogen, or a change in environmental conditions. In this moment, the beech on the mountain suffers, while the deer on the mountain thrive. Both are threats to the integrity of this forest.” P.48
“Trees are modular organisms, compromising many repeating modules. Within a tree each branch is a kind of suborganism, an entity with the autonomy to compete with neighboring branches, to support its own energetic economy, to live in a die alone. For this reason, some researchers and botanist have reimagined trees as a colonial organisms: more like colonies, or collectives, than individuals.
The autonomy of branches is real and is also an illusion. Each branch is connected to a trunk, to a common root system, to a community of other branches. A branch cannot live without the water and nutrients channel through the trees route system, without the sturdy architecture of the trunk, without the many processes and properties and functions provided by the tree as a hole. The fate of each branch is bound to the fate of the other branches, nested within the fate of a larger collective entity.
The relationship between branches and trees is a fractal, a pattern that repeats itself at different scales. Within a forest, each tree is an autonomous individual, competing with neighboring trees or light and resources, for the ability to reproduce and to pass it genes to future generations. At the same time, a tree could not live alone. Each tree is dependent on the seed disperses and pollinators, the invertebrates and their predators, the bats and the birds, the necrosphere and the rhizosphere, the creatures and the processes in the functions of the forest community. A tree cannot stand alone.” P.117-118
“As they come, they built houses and driveways, turn fields and forests and the houses lawns of cut grass, to find the remaining expenses of forest and a smaller and smaller pieces. Each person is innocent: a winter tick on the flank of a moose, taking just one small share of the sweetness of the world. each wonders how a tie so small could injure something so massive and so boundless and so vital. Slowly, and with good intent, they kill the thing that they love.” P.127
“The house was a vision of hope and prosperity and freedom.
Today, the house leans into the wind, three stories of chipping paint and rotting shutters. Today, the lives of the people who built this house or myths, as for garden as the ancient forests that they once cleared. Only the house remembers the aching bodies in the hardened hands, the generations of birth and death, joy and struggle. Only the house remembers the apples in the cellar and the butter in the churn, the eggs frying as children swung their legs at the kitchen table, the horses in the barn whickering into their oats.” P.130
“I marvel at Jack’s Forest, this profound expression of care and compassion in a world of exploitation and short-sightedness. Jack has no children, no one that he is managing this forest for. He is simply building a better legacy for those who may someday follow, whoever they are. He is cared for this forest not because he had to but because he has chosen to – because he is called toward responsibility. Like each of us, Jack has a house to keep in a force to tend; a life of his own and a life to give to the world. Like each of us, Jack must find a way to care for the garden of his imperfect life while tending to the garden that we all share.” P.134
“I watch the cars travel the twin lanes of the highway, gone in five seconds. Inside each other people living complex lives: seeking happiness, purpose, and freedom. I wonder what this world would become if they could see, just for five seconds, that we are branches on the same tree, trees in the same forest. I wonder what this world would become if we realize that freedom does not belong to us – that it is borrowed from this living world, borrowed from those without freedom, borrowed from the world of the future. I wonder if we could learn to seek individual freedom within collective freedom, individual liberation within collective liberation, individual prosperity within collective prosperity. I imagine, in this epoch of loneliness, what would happen if we reached toward freedom together.” P.136
November 23, 2024
A wonderful, educated, and inspirational book. It is easy to read with a fantastic message. So many books like this are usually too long, burdensome, and just boring. This book finds the perfect balance. I would definitely recommend it for everyone.
February 11, 2025
Everyone should read this book. Beautifully written, and such an important message about living in, and making a difference to this beautiful world we live in.
August 13, 2025
A love story to a forest. Sort of. In the beginning , the prose was lyrical and whimsical, drawing me into the forest and captivating me. As someone who also loves forests, I thought, ‘what a lovely little book.’
Mid-way through, I was growing bored. The language was becoming repetitive and overdone. So many words to say so little. The author’s savior complex started to get hard to stomach . When the clouds of herbicide showed up to “save the forest,” without any attention to the cost to the ecosystem, my mind began to rebel.
I still think it’s a lovely little book, with caveats. There are some beautiful passages in this book. I think the author means well, and really does love his land. It was hard for me to get past some parts, but the message is still good and it may do your heart a little good to read it.
Mid-way through, I was growing bored. The language was becoming repetitive and overdone. So many words to say so little. The author’s savior complex started to get hard to stomach . When the clouds of herbicide showed up to “save the forest,” without any attention to the cost to the ecosystem, my mind began to rebel.
I still think it’s a lovely little book, with caveats. There are some beautiful passages in this book. I think the author means well, and really does love his land. It was hard for me to get past some parts, but the message is still good and it may do your heart a little good to read it.
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