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    The Wood for the Trees: One Man's Long View of Nature
    The Wood for the Trees: One Man's Long View of Nature
    The Wood for the Trees: One Man's Long View of Nature
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Wood for the Trees: One Man's Long View of Nature

    Written by Richard Fortey

    Narrated by Michael Page

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A few years ago, award-winning scientist Richard Fortey purchased four acres of woodland in the Chiltern Hills of Oxfordshire, England. The Wood for the Trees is the joyful, lyrical portrait of what he found there.
    With one chapter for each month, we move through the seasons: tree felling in January, moth hunting in June, finding golden mushrooms in September. Fortey, along with the occasional expert friend, investigates the forest top to bottom, discovering a new species and explaining the myriad connections that tie us to nature and nature to itself. His textured, evocative prose and gentle humor illuminate the epic story of a small forest. But he doesn't stop at mere observation. The Wood for the Trees uses the forest as a springboard back through time, full of rich and unexpected tales of the people, plants, and animals that once called the land home. With Fortey's help, we come to see a universe in miniature
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateDec 6, 2016
    ISBN9781681683942
    The Wood for the Trees: One Man's Long View of Nature
    Author

    Richard Fortey

    Richard Fortey retired from his position as senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in 2006. He is the author of several books, including ‘Fossils: A Key to the Past’, ‘The Hidden Landscape’ which won The Natural World Book of the Year in 1993, ‘Life: An Unauthorised Biography’, ‘Trilobite!’ and ‘The Earth: An Intimate History’. He has been elected to be President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

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    Reviews for The Wood for the Trees

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    • 4/5
      I used to regularly walk and bird a certain path, through a prairie back to a wide, shallow wetland. After a few years, I had landmarks in my head: that's the Olive-Sided Flycatcher tree; that's the pond where the loon was once; the Black-Crowned Night Herons like to sit over there; this is the Chickadee Woods, and if I'm lucky, the Ospreys might be on their nest. It was like the bar in Cheers: "where everybody knows your name." Or, well, I knew theirs and liked to think maybe some of them recognized me and my dog. So I've always loved the idea of knowing a place so intimately that you know what all the trees are, when the pussy-willows bloom, and where the Red-Headed Woodpeckers swoop. Richard Fortey, after a lifetime of scrutinizing the stony remains of creatures that no longe exist as chief paleontologist of the magisterial Natural History Museum in London, decided it was time to get outside into the living world. He and his wife bought four acres of beech woods, and he settled into learning everything and everyone who lived there. He begins with the spring, figuring out what all those fetal greenlings are that start to poke up out of the leaf litter, and takes us through the year - and through the millennia as well. He counts the trees - and has an elegant cabinet hand-made from a fallen wild cherry tree. He captures moths at night and identifies them by the shape of the fringe on their antennae. He turns over logs and tells us that the tiny orange speckles are a sort of fungus. A bug he doesn't know? He pops it in a jar, gets on the train to London and has his friend the entomologist have a peek and give it its name. It's charming, fascinating - his own curiosity and erudition make it irresistible to look over his shoulder as he stoops down and says, "Oh, look at this!" Fortey credits his wife for the sections on the human history: the landowners, knights, charcoal-burners, and eccentric spinsters who have owned or crossed his wood through the centuries, and the history of his village is intriguing. While I myself am hooked by the history of the 100-year-old house I live in, it may not be as interesting to others, so I found some of this aspect a bit too long. Fortey's friendly ramble will appeal to those who like to turn over rocks and wonder what that many-legged critter is that scurries out, or who find joy in patting the smooth gray bark of a beech tree. He is the companion you would like to have on those outings.