The Forest Unseen

A Year's Watch in Nature

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David George Haskell: The Forest Unseen (2012, Viking)

English language

Published July 4, 2012 by Viking.

ISBN:
978-0-670-02337-0
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5 stars (8 reviews)

2 editions

Review of 'The Forest Unseen' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

A slow, gentle meditation where, instead of twenty minutes focusing on a candle flame, Haskell devotes one year to one specific meter-wide circle of old-growth forest land; to observing the life within and around it. As with any meditation, attention shifts: macro to micro, tree to salamander to seed; also across time, particularly the seasonal changes. As with any meditation, attention drifts, typically to ruminations on humanity and our place in the World. Each chapter has one focus but follows tendrils, too, because the entire point of the book—and of all life—is our interconnectedness.

One year. January 1 to December 31. It seems only right to read it that way. The fauna and flora in New Mexico differ from those in Tennessee, as do the seasonal shifts, but the same fundamentals apply and it’s the general awareness that matters anyway: the slowing down to lend our attention to …

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5 stars

A year's meditation on the same nearby square of forest floor, as short essays by a biology professor relating and explicating the changing now to biological and evolutionary processes at all scales. Philosophical throughout, regularly upending the distinction between observer and subject, dissolving the objective stance for an interdependent understanding.

Review of 'The Forest Unseen' on 'GoodReads'

5 stars

Haskell presents a beautiful, complex and inspiring book about the human condition, masked in an exploration of nature. For one year, he revisits the same one square metre of forest countless times, documenting what he finds from nematodes to deer to golf balls to ephemeral flowers to fungi. The story is broad reaching, personal, and beautiful. Each chapter is another adventure into the history, ecology and specificity of another of the visitors to this small patch of land, helping to visualise the global in the tiniest of locals.

As Rachel Carson would hope for all nature writing, Haskell inspires a sense of wonder about the forest and the natural world, and simultaneously about the breadth of human ingenuity and discovery.

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Subjects

  • Nature observation
  • Seasons
  • Old growth forests
  • Philosophy of nature
  • Natural history
  • Old growth forest ecology

Places

  • Tennessee

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