The Songs of Trees

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.”