![]() He suggests, for instance, that forests are “gigantic redistribution mechanisms-whoever has an abundance of sugar, hands some over, whoever is running short, gets help-it’s a bit like the way social security systems work.” Well, no, actually, this sugar-exchange system, to the extent it can meaningfully be compared to human relations, is far more akin to voluntary charity than to state-enforced redistribution programs. And while it may be a cheap shot to drag his national identity into the mix, it’s damnably hard not to since he is forever dragging a progressive German statist ideology into the mix. Wohlleben is a forester, making his living managing a beech forest in Hümmel, Germany. In short, while The Hidden Life of Trees claims to reveal “discoveries from a secret world”-including what trees “feel”-it ends up instead revealing more about our modern political landscape than of some sublime sylvan universe. We are also told, however, that trees don’t “like” plantations, have “friends,” and desire only to be left alone to engage in their own little Marxist utopias. This is genuinely interesting, if still scientifically debated, stuff. Trees, we are told, chemically communicate with each other, and will even support one another (even a cut-over stump!) by sending nutrients via underground mycorrhizal fungi. The Hidden Life of Trees is a collection of anecdotal and scientific zingers-some startlingly novel and others reassuringly passé-about forest societies and the individuals which compose them. I say almost since I’m also about equally certain I’m being had. Wohlleben’s prose has personified trees to such an extent that I feel almost certain it will appreciate it. ![]() I might even offer a silent little debt of gratitude. …” Prior to reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees, I wouldn’t have given such a destructive act a second thought. ![]() This afternoon the kids and I will be drilling a hole into the trunk of a venerable old cottonwood-a necessary step to complete a super-cool DIY suspension bridge which, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams, “must be built-has got to be built.
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