Tree people (you know who you are) should be aware of a book published this year by Nalini Nadkarni, about our intimate connection to trees, called Between Earth and Sky.
Nadkarni is an unusual and interesting figure. As a girl growing up in suburbia she loved to climb trees. As a young woman, after a brief tour through the world of dance, she came back to trees and became a “canopy scientist.” So she can still climb trees!
But what makes her book unique is her decision to bring poetry to the subject, as well as hard fact. Take a look at this example, by the great American poet W. S. Merwin.
He writes:
I am looking at trees
they may be one of the things I will miss
most from this earth
though many of the ones I have seen
already I cannot remember
and though I seldom embrace the ones I see
and have never been able to speak
with one
I listen to them tenderly
their names have never touched them
they have stood round my sleep
and when it was forbidden to climb them
they have carried me in their branches
— W. S. Merwin, “Trees”
Isn’t that lovely?
Kit Stolz 