The Common Uncommon
A Forest Journey
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Apr 21, 2026
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
From the renowned author of A Year in the Maine Woods, the intimate reflections of a lifetime spent observing the natural world.
For forty years, Bernd Heinrich has been ensconced in the woods of the northern, or boreal, forest, living in his log cabin amidst a vast sea of spruce, fir, and larch in the mountains of western Maine. In a land of winter snow, summer heat, and at times fire, drought, and flood, all life confronts vast and occasionally rapid environmental changes, as one day, and one season, may be a completely different environment from the next.
The Common Uncommon captures the rhythms of Heinrich’s seasonal life. From the forest he first encountered as a child of German refugees, Heinrich combines his powers of observation with professional expertise, as he notes the beautiful, but not entirely idiosyncratic characteristics—the “common uncommon”—of spiders, ants, chestnut trees, porcupines, owls, and mice. From the elusive single-cell organism called a euglena, which swims in fresh water and is part animal, part plant, to the resourceful wood frog, which nearly freezes into ice each winter while protecting its cells with glucose, Heinrich’s musings on life in the forest stunningly capture the five states of Being, Becoming, Interbeing, Remembering, and Returning. With sharp, evocative prose, The Common Uncommon is a narrative of small surprises in nature, some delightful and some—brought on by climate change—devastating, all seen through the hawk eyes of a world-renowned naturalist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biologist Heinrich (Racing the Clock) pays homage to Maine's boreal forests in this touching memoir. As climate change threatens earth, he argues that Maine, with its rich forests teeming with animal populations, is "a model of nature as it ought to be." The octogenarian author relates how he moved to Maine in 1952, at age 12, from Germany, and in 1980 built a log cabin on his family's farmland, where he pursued a career as a writer, teacher, and biologist. Among other memories, Heinrich reminisces about raising a wild Canadian gosling, hunting deer, and searching for invasive gypsy moths. He stresses the importance of living in synchronicity with nature and in observance of natural cycles. Noting how Maine's cold snaps and thaws prompt maple trees to yield their sap, he describes the process of making syrup ("I was kept busy... feeding the fire to sustain a billowing white steam cloud rising up above the froth of the boiling sap"). Likewise, he recounts planting 15 wild American chestnut seedlings, which at the time were nearly extinct, next to his cabin and then observing how insects and blue jays helped them pollinate. At last count, he found 1,300 offspring had spread through the forest. His empathy for nature effectively demonstrates the beauty of "belonging to something larger than ourselves." This is an eloquent account of a long life well spent in the woods.
