The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate
This is a most amazing book! Reading even a small portion of it will open a new portal and provide you with an entirely new perspective on how you look at not just trees, not just forests, but perhaps all of nature and how humans interact with it! The key is to remember that trees are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots.
From the Forward: In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben shares his deep love of woods and forests and explains the amazing processes of life, death, and regeneration he has observed in the woodland and the amazing scientific processes behind the wonders of which we are blissfully unaware. Much like human families, tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them, and support them as they grow, sharing nutrients with those who are sick or struggling and creating an ecosystem that mitigates the impact of extremes of heat and cold for the whole group. As a result of such interactions, trees in a family or community are protected and can live to be very old. In contrast, solitary trees, like street kids, have a tough time of it and in most cases die much earlier than those in a group.
Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Wohlleben presents the science behind the secret and previously unknown life of trees and their communication abilities; he describes how these discoveries have informed his own practices in the forest around him. As he says, a happy forest is a healthy forest, and he believes that eco-friendly practices not only are economically sustainable but also benefit the health of our planet and the mental and physical health of all who live on Earth.
Author, Peter Wohlleben stated, “To work with trees is my life”. As a young boy in Germany, Peter loved nature. He went to forestry school, and became a forest ranger. At his job, he was expected to produce as many high quality saw logs as possible, with maximum efficiency, and by any means necessary. His tool kit included heavy machinery and pesticides. This was forest mining, an enterprise that ravaged the forest ecosystem and provided no long-term future for the health of the forest; a form of rape. He oversaw a plantation of trees lined up in straight rows, evenly spaced. It was a concentration camp for trees.
However, Mr. Wohlleben is a smart and sensitive man, and over the course of decades he got to know the trees as ‘people’ very well. Eventually, his job became unbearable to him. Fortunately, he made friends in the community of Hümmel, and was given permission to manage their forest in a less destructive manner. Today there is no more clear-cutting, and logs are removed by horse teams, not machines.
In one portion of the forest – this is my favorite – old trees are leased as living gravestones, where families bury the ashes of their kin. In this way, the forest generates income without murdering trees. Also, corporations sponsor other areas in the forest as a way to protect the trees long-term.
One Amazon reviewer had this to say about the book: “The Hidden Life of Trees” is an amazing book presenting trees as sentient, purposeful beings living in dynamic relationship with each other. This is a new aspect for most of us, but apparently has been part of the secret knowledge of foresters since the early 1990’s. Trees, have a sense of time, have memories, taste, smell, feel, explore, see, and hear, but not like we do. Trees even move, from generation to generation just not as individuals. Trees live on a much slower time platform than we do. This single fact has hidden the true life of the trees from us.
“The Hidden Life of Trees” is carefully and well presented with humor, with gentleness, with compassion, with joy, even with love. The book is not a scientific, heavy fact laden tome. It is a very readable presentation of the last two decades of research into the lives of our follow beings on Earth, the Trees.”
Reading this book has opened up a whole new world for me. Now whenever I travel around my town I have started noticing how some trees are well placed or not; how they reach out with their branches to try to touch each other; how they also give space for neighboring trees; how they might seem thirsty, etc. My world has expanded and it feels great!
The last time I recall having any real affinity to trees was when I was around the age of 21 when I had lain down in the soft needles of a towering Pine Tree outside our summer cottage in Wisconsin as a result of a too-large dose of LSD. I felt a great deal of comfort there. It was very peaceful and soothing to my soul. And later the next day well coming down I began to really notice nature end to see the beauty that it offered, which I never noticed before in my young life.
The Hidden Life of Trees was a smash hit in Germany. It is now being translated into 19 languages. An Amazon reviewer stated, “The book is built on a foundation of reputable science, but it reads like grandpa chatting at fireside. He’s a gentle old storyteller explaining the wondrous magic of beautiful forests to befuddled space aliens from a crazy planet named Consume. He teaches readers about the family of life, a subject typically neglected in schools. Evergreen trees have been around for 170 million years, and trees with leaves are 100 million years old. Until recently, trees lived very well without the assistance of a single professional forest manager… Forests are communities of tree people.”
This Book offers an even deeper understanding of how nature works through the portal of the trees in the forest. And it stands as an analogy to show us how all of nature works. It was a real eye-opener for me and I believe it will be for you as well! Let’s start to change the way we view trees starting today.
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