The Songs of Trees
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WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING “Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture.” —Science Friday The author of Sounds Wild and Broken and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s most magnificent networkers — trees David Haskell has won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, he brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees, exploring connections with people, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. He takes us to trees in cities (from Manhattan to Jerusalem), forests (Amazonian, North American, and boreal) and areas on the front lines of environmental change (eroding coastlines, burned mountainsides, and war zones.) In each place he shows how human history, ecology, and well-being are intimately intertwined with the lives of trees. Scientific, lyrical, and contemplative, Haskell reveals the biological connections that underpin all life. In a world beset by barriers, he reminds us that life’s substance and beauty emerge from relationship and interdependence.
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I cannot recall encountering another book that used more words I didn't know. There are times that Haskell can be a teensy bit pedantic, but often, he plucked words out of obscurity that fit his usage well, and the book generally thrums with his keen intellect. I'm married to an arborist, so was predisposed to love this book, but it really is fantastic. Chapters include in-depth explorations from a ceibo tree in the Amazon to a Callery pear in New York City, and Haskell's eye for detail makes learning a great deal while reading enjoyable. Here's one of my favorite passages:
“Muir said that he walked ‘with nature,' a companion. Many contemporary environmental groups use language that echoes Muir, placing nature outside us. ‘What's the return on nature?' asks the Nature Conservancy. ‘Just like any good investment, nature yields dividends.' The masthead for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Europe's largest environmental group, promises that the organization is ‘giving nature a home.' Educators warn that if we spend too long on the wrong side of the divide, we'll develop a pathology, the disorder of nature deficit. In the post-Darwin world of networked kinship, though, we can extend Muir's thought and understand that we walk within. Nature yields no dividends; it contains the entire economy of every species. Nature needs no home; it is home. We can have no deficit of nature; we are nature, even when we are unaware of this nature. With the understanding that humans belong in this world, discernment of the beautiful and the good can emerge from human minds networked within the community of life, not human minds peering in from outside.”
