In Trees
An Exploration
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller On Trails comes a wondrous new journey through the wilds of nature and the gnarls of history, exploring how trees—from the mightiest sequoia to the tiniest bonsai—can teach us to grow wise.
One day, on a whim, Robert Moor set out to climb a tree near his home—unwittingly embarking on what would become a decade-long adventure of intellectual and spiritual transformation.
Pursuing the hidden wisdom of trees, he digs through forgotten archives, scales to the top of a giant sequoia with Sir David Attenborough, trudges through swamps in Papua to reach a treehouse-dwelling tribe of hunter-gatherers, and travels to a remote research camp in Tanzania, where he spends one very uncomfortable night sleeping in a chimpanzee nest. Galvanized by a radical new outlook on both our gnarled past and our ever-branching future, he ultimately falls in with a ragtag clan of climate activists risking everything to halt construction of an oil pipeline and save an old-growth forest.
Along the way, Moor learns the art of “treethinking,” which, he discovers, has the power to break open some of humanity’s oldest questions: What is the secret to truly growing old? How do we set down roots in an increasingly chaotic world? Can we ever learn to pursue our future in the farsighted, deeply entangled manner of an ancient forest?
A witty, relentlessly curious excursion through philosophy, history, and science, what begins as an ode to the miracle of trees blossoms into a joyous, daring, and fiercely hopeful effort to “arborize humanity.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Moor (On Trails) defines trees as "a way of being" in this impassioned examination of their history and biology. Since human ancestors lived among their branches, trees have shaped humanity's sense of time, self, and life, Moor argues. He recounts his own experience climbing trees, including a course he took in England, where, high up off the ground, he felt "precarious, grateful, and, most of all, alive." Elsewhere, he shares findings from tree science, explaining how they exhale by opening pores on their leaves that allow water to evaporate; shed and regrow their branches; and, in some species, change sexes throughout their lifetimes. Moor also explores his family tree and learns about a slave-owning ancestor, which prompts him to travel to Alabama to reckon with this legacy. Trees inspire his view of history: "The present grows, always, upon the deadwood of the past," he writes. This "arborescent thinking" encourages him to participate in a protest atop a tree slated for felling and inspires his own desire for rootedness: "to stay put, to slow down, to learn my local ecology." Synthesizing reportage and philosophy, Moor's nature writing is beautiful and refreshingly original. The result is a moving testament to the power of trees.
