Down the road from our home is a grove of Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) trees. Native to the area, “Doug Firs” are easily found in most any field guide to trees that encompasses a geographic range in which northwest Oregon is included. However at the edge of this little grove is another tree – deciduous and smaller – that long perplexed me. Nothing in guide after guide to which I turned for guidance seemed to have anything quite like it depicted.
While the National Audubon Society has a long and justly respected name in the world of natural history books, the history of these books themselves has been a bit – shall we say – “up and down.” Those sufficiently long in the tooth (such as myself) may well remember the well-crafted volumes by such authoritative authors as Richard Pough, with their well-wrought and thorough yet never prolix text, finely detailed black & white illustrations, and in later editions even central color plate sections. Then of course, there was that later series…
Translated from the original German by Jane Billinghurst, whose superb skills have brought Peter Wohlleben’s other Greystone published editions into English, his forthcoming “The Heartbeat of Trees” presents a more human-centered examination of the relationship we have long had – and according to Herr Wohlleben, still have, if we take note of it – with the natural world.
Mark Avery and I have now both reviewed James Canton’s “The Papers,” each approaching it from our own different perspectives. That’s the beauty of reviewing books – different reviewers, bringing a diverse range of knowledge and experiences to the books they review, can easily interpret the same book in different ways yet still agree it is worth recommending.