Have you been forest bathing recently? Did you know that spending two or more leisure hours under a canopy of trees provides a variety of health benefits so potent that the Japanese government has designated forest therapy paths? Have you listened to the songs of trees?
After publishing Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen, Sewanee professor David George Haskell repeatedly visited a dozen trees around the world. His keen–and infinitely patient–powers of observation and fluent prose convey a deep and specific understanding of the connectedness of all species and describe the audible evidence of health or disease that really listening to trees provides.
The Songs of Trees: Stories From Nature’s Great Connectors will leave you with a new appreciation of the relationship of the arboreal world to the future of our planet, as well as fascinating insight on the many ways the biology of trees affects our daily lives.
Next time you’re forest bathing, take along Haskell’s contemplative study of the natural world. We have much to learn from trees, and there’s no better place to read than a leafy room lit with dappled sunshine.
For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. –Anne Lamott