How to Love a Forest

The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World

By: Ethan Tapper

Narrated by: Evan Sibley

A tender, fearless debut by a forester writing in the tradition of Suzanne Simard, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Robert Macfarlane

Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper. In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth. How do we respond to the harmful legacies of the past? How do we use our species’ incredible power to heal rather than to harm?

Tapper walks us through the fragile and resilient community that is a forest. He introduces us to wolf trees and spring ephemerals, and to the mysterious creatures of the rhizosphere and the necrosphere. He helps us reimagine what forests are and what it means to care for them. This world, Tapper writes, is degraded by people who do too much and by those who do nothing. As the ecosystems that sustain all life struggle, we straddle two worlds: a status quo that treats them as commodities and opposing claims that the only true expression of love for the natural world is to leave it alone.

Proffering a more complex vision, Tapper argues that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. With striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts—like loving deer and hunting them, loving trees and felling them—can be expressions of compassion. Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world, reminding us that what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.

Forests are communities, defined by connection and sustained by death as much as by life. What if we could understand them while letting them remain exquisite mysteries?

©2024 Ethan Tapper (P)2024 Blackstone Publishing

Hope lives

The message to keep trying- keep restoring habitats big or small, one flower pot, one yard at a time.

Brilliant

Tapper writes of his thoughtful care for a forest, Bear Island, with such grace and openness. His wonder abounds, but he also traces history, explains botany, shares lore, and delivers his urgent message without fanfare. How to Love a Forest made me think deeply and differently about the forest that is my responsibility, that is under my care. I am grateful for this book and the humility of its author.

A Wonderful Book

This is the best audiobook I have listened to in many years. It very much reminds me of A Sand County Almanac. I listened to this book twice and then bought the hardcover. I’ll carry this book with me for the rest of my life.

Must read for those who wish to love a forest well

Ethan has put together a book that speaks words of truth about how we relate not only to the forest but to the world around us. This is a must read/listen in my opinion for anyone who truly wishes to love a forest. I would describe the work as being Neo-trancendentalist, you know, like if Robert Frost or Thoreau woke up today and kept writing.

Profound insights into appreciating Nature

Too many golden nuggets to comment on!! Learning how not only love a forest but also how to maintain a healthy and ecologically viable and sustainable environment is the foundation of this book. His words and imagery describing the devastation and the glory is worthy of multiple reads.
Highly recommended - especially Chapter 9 where he presents the dilemma of invasive plant species and the importance of attending to them. I never
Thought I would approve of herbicides but now am rethinking my prejudice!