International Day of Forests

March 20, 2025
The Forum Team

 

Joyous Spring!

The annual International Day of Forests takes place tomorrow, March 21. And to honor it, some of the members of our Forum team have shared their favorite forest and tree-related books, poems, and multimedia offerings with us, today. 

Elizabeth McAnally

Newsletter editor & Webmaster 

 
 

The experiential project by Emergence Magazine entitled “Breathing with the Forest” does an amazing job conveying the energy of the forest and our intimate relationship with it, connected through breath.

Anna Thurston

Research Associate, Living Earth Community project

 
 

As a nod to urban forests/street trees, I'd like to highlight the New York City Tree Alphabet from Katie Holten:

While in residence with the New York City Urban Field Station, artist Katie Holten created the New York City Tree Alphabet as a way to increase ecological literacy about climate change, urban conservation, and local engagement with the more-than-human world. In this font, each letter of the Latin alphabet is assigned a drawing of a tree from the NYC Parks Department’s existing native and non-native trees, as well as species that are to be planted as a result of the changing climate. (For example, A = Ash). The project grew from Holten's book About Trees (2015) and her public artwork Tree Museum (2009) which linked trees with community members telling their individual stories. Everyone is invited to download the free font, NYC Trees, and to write words, poems, messages, or love letters, in Trees.
 
 

Sam King

Outreach Coordinator, Journey of the Universe

 
 
 

  I am moved by Susanne Simard's meditations on what she calls the “Wood Wide Web” in Finding the Mother Tree, and especially the ways mother trees send nutrients and defense compounds to younger trees through interconnected networks of mycorrhizal fungi.

 
Also reminded of Peter Wohlleben's remarks in the Hidden Life of Trees, that trees communicate through crackling sound waves in their roots, at 220 hz, in a way that surrounding seedlings respond to by orienting their tips in their direction.

 

Sumana Roy's How I Became a Tree is also a gem worth highlighting.

 
 
 
 

Tyler Nelson

Research Associate, Living Earth Community project

 
 

And, since tomorrow is also World Poetry Day, Tyler Nelson has appropriately selected a couple of lovely tree poems for us. 

“Binsey Poplars” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
“Sabbaths – 1979, I” by Wendell Berry
 
The Man Who Planted Trees is a short book that he also recommends, especially the Chelsea Green Publishing version with wood engravings.

 
 
 

We'll end with the opening stanzas from Wendell Berry's “Sabbaths–1979”:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.