book:How to Read a Tree, Tristan Gooley
I was gifted Tristan Gooley's How to Read a Tree last month. I flipped through it, saw the illustrations and some snippets of text, and experienced something best described as !!!
once I wrapped up my previous book I started on How to Read a Tree. to my eyes, it's a bit of a weirdo book, because it's not a botany book in the usual way. I had no idea who Gooley was, and apparently he's made headlines applying natural navigation methods over very long distances. Stuff like sailing solo across the Atlantic. He's a navigator & geographer of sorts, and so this is a book about trees from that perspective.
That's what made it so interesting to read. The book doesn't spend time deliberating the key features of different tree species — look elsewhere for that. What it does focus on is more akin to teaching the basics of a language, where things like species and shape are the letters that convey information about that place. Which trees grow closer to water, why is one side of the tree almost leafless while the other is flourishing in green, why does the autumn leaf-fall come at different times for two trees within sight of one-another? And once you know the answers to these questions, what does the forest say to you?
It's a fascinating and generally-lightweight read, and I'd recommend it. Gooley uses both anecdote-metaphors and examples to work through concepts, so there isn't a high demand for prerequisite knowledge. I did find the metaphors tiresome at times, but I can appreciate that I have formal education in ecology & I have very little experience with things like "Christmas shopping" or "watching football". In any case, I wouldn't go so far so as to say the anecdotes diminish the enjoyment of the book.
perhaps the best explanation of why this is a nice book is that it bestowed upon me the kind of exhilarating feeling that inspired this post from last year. The book taught me how to understand the language of tree-species and tree-shapes, and trees are common around here. There is now a whole lot of new stuff for me to look at.
Right after I finished the book, I had to take a half-hour bus ride. I spent the whole time staring out the window. All the trees along the road-side leaned towards the North-East, and their North-East sides were more densely packed with (currently leafless) branches. The wind here usually comes from the South-West or West, blowing towards the North-East — exactly what was written in the trees.
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thanks for reading!🪱🦀
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