From the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller On Trails comes a wondrous new journey through the wilds of nature and the gnarls of history, exploring how trees—from the mightiest sequoia to the tiniest bonsai—can teach us to grow wise.
To truly grasp the wisdom of a tree, you need to begin thinking like one…
One day, on a whim, Robert Moor set out to climb a tree near his home—unwittingly embarking on what would become a decade-long, globe-spanning adventure of intellectual and spiritual transformation. Pursuing the hidden wisdom of trees, he scales to the very top of a giant sequoia while filming a nature documentary with David Attenborough; he treks through swamps in Papua to reach a treehouse-dwelling tribe of hunter-gatherers; and he journeys to a remote research camp in Tanzania, where he spends a memorable night sleeping in a chimpanzee nest, seeking to understand our deep evolutionary history. Eventually, having gained a radical new outlook on both our gnarled past and our ever-branching future, he joins an intrepid clan of climate activists risking everything to halt construction of a new oil pipeline and save an ancient forest.
Along the way, Moor learns the art of “tree-thinking,” which, he discovers, has the power to break open some of humanity’s oldest questions: What is the secret to truly growing old? How do we set down deeper roots in an increasingly chaotic world? Most importantly, how should we—as individuals, as communities, as stewards of the earth—live?
A witty and relentlessly curious excursion through philosophy, history, and science, what begins as an ode to the miracle of trees blossoms into a joyous, daring, fiercely hopeful endeavor to arborize humanity.
“In Trees is dazzlingly erudite, playful, profound, adventurous and, above all, eloquently, fiercely alive. Full of brilliant, mind-bending insights and wonderful surprises, this is the most life-affirming book I’ve read in a long time.”
—John Vaillant, National Book Award finalist for Fire Weather
“Robert Moor’s brilliant In Trees is—like its subject—powerfully, fascinatingly arborescent. Moving from sky to earth, Moor unfurls in fine-grained prose the ancient, urgent story of how trees transform us. Reading it, I felt my senses of time, life, and process shift in ways I hadn’t experienced before.”
—Robert Macfarlane, New York Times bestselling author of Is a River Alive?
“Daring, inspired, and wide-ranging, this is much more than a book about trees. To read this book is to feel oneself anchored more firmly to the earth and, simultaneously, to become more open to life’s many branching, wild possibilities.”
—Ferris Jabr, New York Times bestselling author of Becoming Earth
“With adventurous journeys, lively storytelling, and provocative reflection, Moor invites us to know charismatic forests through the eyes of other worldviews in order to guide us through these urgent times.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Serviceberry
