To Hear The Trees Speak

by Olivia Sprinkel

Imagine if you could hear the trees speak. How would it change your life? Your relationship to the world around you? This is the story of what happened when the trees whispered me to quit my job, leave my life in New York and go on a journey to listen. It is the story of what I learnt from ten trees on five continents – and the lessons that the trees have for all of us on how to be in a rapidly changing world.

Olivia Sprinkel was sitting in her office in New York, an experienced international sustainability strategy and communications consultant, and as a newly single woman, she decided she had to make a change in her life and undertake a journey. To Hear the Trees Speak: Adventures in Listening is the story of her travels to Europe, North and South America, Australia, and South Asia, to discover ten of our world’s essential trees and their habitats. The ten trees range from the banyan and bodhi to the olive, giant sequoia and beech.

Powerfully crafted, this is important and accessible nature writing blended with insightful memoir.

Hardcover

Reviews

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olivia Sprinkel was working her way through her emails in her New York office when she saw a devastating headline in a newsletter -

“Giant African baobab trees die suddenly after thousands of years.’

Reading further she read that the cause of the collapse of these trees was attributed to climate change. This was her call to arms. Working as a sustainabilty consultant, her role involved talking to businesses about sustainability and carbon emissions. The news about these trees propelled her into contemplation of her own role and the message behind the death of the trees. She wondered what trees could teach us about how to live and began to plan a journey around the world to go and listen to trees. This is the story of her journey, visiting 10 trees around the world.

This is a travelogue with a difference, philosophical, informative, meditative, timely. A journey exploring trees in countries including India, Finland, Sri Lanka and Brazil. The author visits conservation programmes, retreat centres, an oak tree in Sheffield, an olive tree in France. I have been reading my way through tree books over the last few years and this adds something rather unique and special to my tree collection. This isn’t a book you can read in one burst. I am using this as an aid to meditation and understanding, a guide to my own journey piggy backing on that of the author. I have never visited most of these places, I have never heard of many of these trees. I am taking my time with this book to dive into maps, search out places and identify trees. I want to listen to the message of the trees.

At the back of the book are a series of wonderful “practices.” Each practise comprises 4 elements - Writing; Connecting; Listening; Walking. These include prompts for things like journaling, planting, noticing different aspects of your walk.

If you are ready to listen to the trees, this book will be perfect.

[NoMo Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

We meet Olivia at a moment of change - following her as she leaves her old life in New York behind, and sets out on both a physical and spiritual journey. We travel with Olivia as she visit 10 different types of tree in turn across the world – absorbing the lessons that the trees and those connected to them can teach her about sustainability or nature in this tipping point of change for the world, as well as herself.

In amongst the imparted knowledge and wisdom on the trees and the wider environment of the places that she travels, there is a parallel narrative centred around Olivia's own growth - she is in a place of reckoning with her identity, as she comes to terms with her newly single status and also the fact that she will not be a mother. Olivia just naturally expected that she would marry and have kids at some point, but now finds herself without either and needing to root herself into the world in a different way. Whilst her childlessness isn't the central theme of the book, it is one that she repeatedly returns to as she reflects on her relationship with and within the world - and through her journey in nature, she finds the peace needed to accept the life that she is living, rather than the one that was expected.

[Ruth Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book can change how you see the world. A great book can change how you interact with it.
This book has changed the way I hang out with trees. Although I’ve always enjoyed the magic of forests and eagerly hoovered up facts about their mychorrizal networks and climate-regulating superpowers, I suppose I’ve always thought of trees as beautiful features in my environment rather than neighbours in my community - resources rather than relations.
Olivia’s fascinating encounters with trees around the world, from birch and beech to banyan and bodhi has helped me see them as elders (pun intended) with wisdom to share.
This is a fact-packed book - who knew Sri Lanka had a Minister of Coconuts?! - but also a deeply thoughtful reflection on how to live, including how to be a parent in the wider sense - with or without kids.
After savouring this joyful book, I find myself not only looking up AT trees but TO them.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book - it slowed me down and made me listen more attentively to myself and the trees around me.

The writer has a calling, which she acts upon, to go on an epic journey to visit trees around the world and understand their messages. In doing so with an open mind she discovers many life lessons and answers to her own questions.

A gem of a book.