The Hidden Life of Trees Review
The Hidden Life of Trees Review
I have always been that weird person who hangs out with trees. Running my fingers over the bark, and wondering what kind of life it has lived. I’ve often wondered what the tree has seen, and how it feels about time. When my son was a wobbly toddler, he would run his hands upon trees. Patting them gleefully. It was then I started teaching him to say, “Hi Tree!” As if it were a person you greet, honor, and respect.
It’s funny how the things that I have naturally done around trees, and how I appreciated them would carry me into reading “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben. I was immersed into this Author’s world, and learned that trees are astonishingly a living being closer to human than I ever realized. May all the times I have greeted a tree in the woods, was really greeting an old friend.
I don’t want to give away the entire book, so I will share only a few glimpses into it in hopes that you would want to read it too. Maybe it will inspire you to appreciate and honor nature. Perhaps it will resonate with you, and you too will realize how strangely human trees are. Maybe you will realize we are like trees.
Social Beings
Forming a community, trees grow in groups. To see a tree by itself or not among its own kind is a recipe for a lonely life. They thrive more outside a city. Within a city there will be a life of living fast and dying young.
There were many magnificent trees by my apartment that were being cut, and cleared to build more apartments. I would stare out the passenger window as my husband drove us home. “I wonder if they feel scared about being cut down, and dying, or if the other trees around them feel their fear.”
It turns out that my musings were closer to the truth than I had realized. It turns out that trees are social beings to have ways of communicating to each other through their root system with fungal networks and chemical releases. The trees being cut down were most certainly communicating to other trees its distress. Little did the surrounding trees know that diverting resources to the wounded tree would be of no help.
In Conclusion
I encourage you to read the book for yourself. Not only is it an easy read, but also a fascinating one. You will learn how they communicate, their "brain", the purpose of their crown, the inspiration for the world wide web known as the internet, how they are as parents, and also how they defend themselves. Their life is truly marvelous. Time works much more differently for them than us.
You can get the book below, or check it out at your local library. I do get a small kick back from the link below. If you choose to purchase it, you will not only be expanding your knowledge, but helping me create more!