Great book if you’ve spent any time in the forest / on the mountain around St. Helens. Really enjoyed learning about the different phases of the eruption and it inspired me to pay more attention to my surroundings when I’m on a hike or climb. Quote:

" The tree’s immensity begs a close, tactile inspection. Its bark is tough and thick but flaky, like a pastry. It testifies to great age almost as much as the tree’s size does. Swanson leans back and gazes toward its crown, which he can just make out through the overstory. "What is the Andrews?" he muses. "I have a friend who says, ‘It is a portal to other ways of knowing.’" With that he falls silent. I wait for him to go on before I realize he is not going to say anything more. We stand still and listen to the forest. One minute stretches into two, to three, to five, and then Swanson ambles off. I watch him leave in his bright yellow rain slicker and wonder if he is testing me in some way. I feel a flare of discomfort: I am unpre-pared, exposed. Then I realize maybe I am not being tested so much as welcomed. Swanson is welcoming me to this old forest, this wood he knows so well. In his quiet wake is a question: What is this place saying?
Among the trees I hear faint sounds: fat drops of water striking the earth, the breeze, branches sweeping the air, small birds chittering. But the quiet overwhelms. It is too total, too loud. Out comes my notebook, and I start scribbling a list of every noise. There is a chestnut-backed chickadee in the understory, a Hammond’s flycatcher calling overhead, the resonant whumps of a sooty grouse from deeper in the trees, the nasal monotone of a red-breasted nuthatch, the sweet warble of a Swainson’s thrush that sounds a thousand miles away. I broaden my attention some and hear a mosquito’s irksome whine, a plane high in the sky, two scolding chipmunks, all over a light patter of rain."

(tags: earthsciences nature geology forests conservation ecosystem pacific-northwest )