From the book cover “A story of miracles and obsession and love and survival: the most hopeful book I’ve read in years.” Alexandra Fuller
I loved that author, Jim Robbins, a self proclaimed science writer, and story writer for The New York Times, was willing to tackle writing about David Milarch, a former farmer who had a near death experience and came back, quite literally, with a renewed sense of vigor. This vigor soon thereafter included a personal quest to seek out, clone and then plant as many ancient “champion trees” as he and his small group of workers can.
Perhaps file this book under your strange but true category, or maybe under weird, inspired and mostly believable? How you file it after reading will be up to you but it is certainly worthy of your time.
First off, this is not your standard book about trees. But it is most certainly a book of tree knowledge, climate change awareness, and talk about “light beings” and the afterlife. The author manages to deftly incorporate all these topics into a narrative which compels the reader to forge onward through its pages.
Robbins skilled storytelling manages to engage both despite and because of the almost unbelievable strangeness of the larger than life Milarch and his personal quest to save the Earth from the human folly of climate change. By seeking out, then cloning “copies of the cream of the big tree crop and planting thousands…all over the country or the world.” Milarch hopes to ensure they continue to live and thrive, benefiting earth systems for the future.
I enjoy books which make you question presupposed notions you might carry around with you and/or stretch your mind into new, more flexible positions. What do you know or think about near death experiences, does cloning champion trees seem a reasonable response to the urgent matter of climate change, what will it take to bring the average person to an understanding of the immense value of protecting forests? These are just some of the things that you might ponder while reading Robbins tale about this giant of a man and his love for giant trees.
This was a book I would likely read again, if only to re-visit the chapter’s descriptions of each new champion tree species. Whatever your thoughts on the survival of consciousness beyond death or the science behind cloning old trees, this book was a lovely lyrical journey by and about people who love forests and that is a wonderful thing to me.
From the preface:
“Forests hold the natural world together. They have cradled the existence of our species since we first appeared--trees and forests are the highest-functioning members of ecological society; irreplaceable players at the apex of the complex ecological web around us. They are ecosystem engineers that create the conditions for other forms of life to exist, on every level.” Jim Robbins
For the love of forests,
Thanks for reading!
Jill
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