David George Haskell

This is the best book about a guy staring at the same spot on the ground for a year that you could possibly imagine.

That's honestly not an inaccurate description. The author picked out a small patch of ground in an old-growth forest in Tennessee -- he refers to it as "the mandala" by analogy with Buddhist sandpaintings meant to represent the cosmos in miniature -- and returned to it regularly over the course of a year, examining it closely and musing on what he found there. And those show more musings are fantastic, a thoughtful, poetic blending of science, philosophy, and human emotion that illuminates the natural world and reflects on our place in it in a way that feels to me utterly and profoundly right. It's also full of lots and lots and lots of insights and facts about various plants, animals, and fungi that leave me repeatedly exclaiming "How did I never know this before?!"

Rating: 5/5. I think that's actually the first book this year that I've given the full 5 out of 5 to, so that should tell you something about just how highly I think of it. show less

This is the story of a biologist from the University of the South in Tennessee who spends some time each week in a mandala, a 12'x12' piece of old-growth forest, near to his university, mostly just observing. Each short chapter deals with a different aspect of the living community in the mandala, whether it be plant or animal life. This story would not work if the author didn't have such a rich background in the sciences or such a gift with words. Somehow he was able to transport me to this show more small world and make it utterly fascinating, week after week. I learned how plants and trees prepare themselves for the winter, why vultures are the purifiers of the forest, what forms of life live underground, why forests are saving us from the full-out effects of climate change, and the evolutionary kinship we humans have with the forest. A peaceful read, and an enlightening book. show less

For sure, I’d anticipated that this exploration of the connections and communications between trees and everything else on the planet would be interesting and informative. But I hadn’t anticipated that it would also be so moving.

As both observer and participant, Haskell examines a dozen species of trees in a dozen locations* around the world, and captures the results in gentle, evocative essays that have botanical (and zoological!) characters and settings as fascinating as any fiction. show more (*He gives the GPS coordinates for each tree's location, and I googled most of them.) The content is both scientific and philosophical, and brought to mind other collections by naturalist essayists that I’ve loved, for example Bernd Heinrich, Rowan Jacobsen, Michael Pollan and Taras Grescoe. Lovely. show less

John Muir said, "When we try and pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." Haskell's book is about how trees serve as a marvelous nexus that connects individual humans to one another and to other denizens of nature. (Haskell is adamant that humans and our machines not be thought of as "non-natural" or "outside of nature".) It builds upon themes from his prior book, The Forest Unseen, but indulges in some much more poetic writing that serves his show more purpose of reminding us of our attachments to all around us. For me, personally, Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees was a more profound awakening. But had I not run across that book first, it might have been The Song of Trees that opened my eyes to a greater awareness of the truth Muir wrote. show less