“This Incredible Volume of Life”
A Feature Review of
How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World
Ethan Tapper
Hardcover: Broadleaf Books, 2024
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Reviewed by Scot F. Martin
I inhabit the Rouge River watershed in Southeast Michigan. Three or four years ago, the wet meadow in the park close to my house, through which the Upper Rouge flows, became infested with Phragmites australis, usually known simply as phragmites. This invasive reed can grow up to 16 feet tall, smothers native wetland plants by forming dense thickets and provides little to no benefit to native animal species. In fact, the Greek word the plant derives its name from means “fence.” I had, with the help of various groups and family members, eradicated most of the garlic mustard and dame’s rocket and had been steadily chipping away at the groves of common buckthorn, when the phragmites became noticeable. Phragmites is difficult to extirpate–especially once it has been established. A combination of fire and herbicide is the general protocol to get rid of it–and given that the park is in a suburban neighborhood, I can’t just set fire to the stand.
Perhaps you’ve seen great stands of phragmites–tall thin stalks with long blade-like leaves and a fluffy seed head growing where cattails used to flourish.
Ethan Tapper, Vermont forester, relates a similar, larger-scaled situation in his book, How to Love a Forest. He focuses on Bear Island, the name given to the 175 acre mountain forest property of his in New England, while my park is an island of fragmented riparian corridor that meanders through 48 communities to empty out in the Detroit River.
Some people probably decry the destruction that a forester (and lumber companies) bring to forests. Cutting trees is wrong, goes popular thinking. Tapper counters that: “Once I thought being a forester meant being a caretaker of trees. Now I see myself as the caretaker of a reimagined forest, the steward of every piece of this incredible volume of life” (24).
Ecological restoration isn’t easy and it regularly goes against the public’s conception of what needs to be done. Supposedly, Capitalism brings “creative destruction,” but restoration sometimes tears landscapes apart, echoing Jesus’s words that “unless a seed falls to the ground and dies…” and brings new, and rightly ordered life of native species.
Tapper again: “I wonder if we could find the humility to love a forest not because it is easy, but because it is difficult; not because it is simple but because it is complex, not because it is like us but because it is so different” (27).
And even more pointedly, “For forests, for landscapes, to become diverse and complex again, it is not enough for trees to grow. Forests need to experience disturbances and regenerate from them. Trees need to die” (86).
One criticism of the writing might be that Tapper repeats himself, circling back to concepts and ideas throughout, but that is a minor annoyance. One thing that is repeated is the frequent image of wolf trees in the Vermont landscape. Wolf trees are lone trees that are much, much older than surrounding trees, sometimes by 100-200 years. Wolf trees point to the history of the forest, when it was transformed, usually, to pasture, but can also point to the future of restoration.
Though he is a forester, Tapper also writes about hunting deer in the woods and again relates the idea of loving the earth doesn’t always mean you don’t get your hands a little bloody: “It was not until many years later that I learned that I could love deer and kill deer, that I could love trees and kill trees, and that to do so could be an act of profound courage and compassion” (170).
Ecological restoration sometimes means hard choices, the duties of love may mean killing a few individuals so that the species can survive in a given area and increase biodiversity, soil health, and reduce competitive pressure.
Granted those choices aren’t hard as when dealing with organisms that don’t belong: “I remind myself that this is an act of generation–not destruction–that I am here to manifest life, not death. I kill the barberries [an invasive Asian shrub] not because I hate them but because I love this forest so deeply. I think of the ephemerals and remember that I am not here to destroy an enemy. I am here to help a friend” (182).
In addition to working as a forester (both public and private), he plays in a punk band(!!!), and writes columns in newspapers and magazines. He has flashes of beautiful imagery, “In front of me, beech trees crowd around an oak stump, its edges rounded and softened by time. The beeches are witches at a cauldron, leaning inward, their bodies decorated with wooly clusters of scale, skirted by a growing mass of clones” (41) or “In the years to come, I imagine the resilience of the forest returning from exile, like a queen bumblebee emerging into the light of another spring” (194).
The author does answer his title, How to Love a Forest, in a number of ways: get to know the land, know what came before, strengthen what can thrive, cull what can’t, and eradicate invasive species as best as one can.
Tapper isn’t optimistic, but he is hopeful, yet his hope is grounded in a naturalism that only acknowledges that “Life, uh, will find a way” to quote a cinematic scientist. He ends by asserting that the world “is just awakening, just beginning to discover what it truly is” (213). Yet he misses , and I don’t blame him for this, but it is true, the telos of the world and its coming glorification.
I kill invasives in my watershed and sow the plants that should belong for two reasons: one, to create a healthy ecosystem that I am part of (much like Tapper does) and, unlike Tapper, to prepare a welcoming place for the coming King. I don’t know about you, but I’d like my home to look good when Jesus comes back.
Scot F. Martin
Scot Martin teaches high school English to (mostly) 10th graders, lives with his wife and one remaining child and also occasionally publishes in various journals and at his Substack Pilgrim of the Sweetwater Seas at scotfmartin.substack.com
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