|
|
|
Book Review
| Teaching the Trees: Lessons from the Forest. By Joan Maloof. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005. xvi + 156 pp. Illustrations, appendix, notes. $24.95.
|
| Biologist Joan Maloof wants you to get into the practice of looking down instead of up when coming to a tree. More of the action is there. Even though most of it is "dead matter" (p. 132), a whole circle of life exists at the base of any tree, "a magical web of relationships" among fungi, flora, and fauna (p. xiii). Inspired by poet Ranier Maria Rilke and her own idiosyncratic interests, Maloof delves into these realms and presents a companionable primer for the general public on how to appreciate trees and forest ecology. |
1
|
|
Maloof organizes the book into short chapters, most of them focusing on a specific tree species in and around her home in the Maryland woods. From an eye-opening walk through an old-growth forest, where she discusses the fascinating health benefits of its ancient air (some studies suggest the airborne chemicals have cancer-fighting properties); to numerous profiles of unique insects, whose reliance on certain tree species forms a poetic dependency, Maloof repeatedly stresses how little we know about the sacred forest. Of old-growth air, whose inhalation allows "the forest [to] actually become... a part of our bodies" (p. 4), she says "we are literally breathing things we don't understand" (p. 3). (A Sierra Nevada study could only identify 70 of 120 chemical compounds). We also know little about tiny organisms, like fungi, that thrive on a tree's living and decaying matter. Many of these creatures remain unidentified. "There is so much left to learn about the living things here," she says, openly wondering "why we spend so much time and energy looking for life elsewhere in the universe" (p. 93). |
2
|
|
All these treasures in our own backyards reveal the forest's wonder and majesty, but they also teach us about humanity's lack of synchronicity with nature. Our market-driven valuing of pines ignores the fact that we are never "away" (p. 45) from nature—some habitats can never be rebuilt, particularly on tree plantations. Furthermore, our tendency to weed out old trees eliminates a whole host of lessons about the forest ecosystem that is impossible to learn from immature trees. |
3
|
|
Although Maloof's rhetoric lacks the jaunty punch of Hannah Holmes's explorations in Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), her brief insights build a minor charm by book's end. Her commitment to the macroscopic lessons gleaned from microscopic details has a sincere rhythm and direction. All of it is poetry (summed up by Rilke, her personal favorite), a poetry about showing "some simple thing, something shaped through generations,/that lives as ours" (p. 145), thus revealing "every link" (p. 95) and "layer upon layer" (p. 92) as part of any tree's chain of being. "You have a choice in how you view" all of this, Maloof says, eloquently arguing the point with the holly tree as foil: "More pine plantations: fewer hollies. No hollies: no holly berry midges, no mystery fungus, no holly leafminer, no Opius wasps, fewer birds, less colorful Christmases. Every link... every link" (p. 95) indeed. |
4
|
|
Lori Vermaas is a production editor with the Journal of Paleontology, holds a doctorate in American studies from the University of Iowa (2000), and is the author of Sequoia: The Heralded Tree in American Art and Culture (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003). Her research interests include American environmental attitudes (primarily revealed in expressive culture) and the history of trees in American culture. |
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|