The Power of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Winter offers us all a chance to slow down and focus our energies on indoor pursuits. After nine months of working outdoors, organizing volunteers, cutting honeysuckle, planting trees, and restoring native habitat, the members and volunteers of Missouri Conservation Corps are ready for some indoor time with a good book (or two). This winter I have just finished reading Peter Wohlleben’s recently-published The Power of Trees.
Coming eight years after his fascinating work entitled The Hidden Life of Trees, this new work strays from the holistic, forest spiritualism embodied in the earlier book. While The Hidden Life of Trees was an exploration of the invisible and sometimes magical networks of roots and mycelia connecting trees to one another, The Power of Trees is a stark and sober assessment of the impact of corporate forestry and a changing climate on the world’s trees today. While this book is a darker and less playful look at the world’s forests, it is not without a note of hope and a clear but difficult path forward.
A novel way to approach the published works of Peter Wohlleben might be to start by reading this most recent work (Power) and then move on to his earlier work (Hidden Life). This way the reader who is new to Wohlleben’s work can start with the more difficult and sobering message found in “Power”, and end with the more fascinating and imaginative message embodied in “Hidden”.
In addition to these two works, Peter Wohlleben has also published books on nature interpretation, walks in North American forests, and on other topics related to forestry, interpreting nature, animals, and a series of books aimed at younger readers.
Stephen Bybee, Missouri Conservation Corps
