Witness Tree, Lynda V. Mapes
Witness Tree, Lynda V. Mapes
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Witness Tree
Seasons of Change with a Century-Old Oak

Author: Lynda V. Mapes

Narrator: Callie Beaulieu

Unabridged: 6 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/14/2017


Synopsis

Climate science can seem dense, remote, and abstract. But through the lens of this one tree, it becomes immediate and intimate.

In Witness Tree, environmental reporter Lynda V. Mapes takes us through her year living with one red oak at the Harvard Forest. We learn about carbon cycles and leaf physiology, but also experience the seasons as people have for centuries, watching for each new bud, and listening for each new bird and frog call in spring.

Lynda takes us along as she climbs high into the oak's swaying boughs, and scientists core deep into the oak's heartwood, dig into its roots and probe the teeming life of the soil. She brings us eye-level with garter snakes and newts, and alongside the squirrels and jays devouring the oak's acorns. Season by season she reveals the secrets of trees, how they work, and sustain a vast community of lives, including our own.

The oak is a living timeline and witness to climate change. While stark in its implications, Witness Tree is a beautiful and lyrical book, rich in detail, sweeps of weather, history, people, and animals. It is a story rooted in hope, beauty, wonder, and the possibility of renewal in people's connection to nature.

About Lynda V. Mapes

Lynda V. Mapes is the environmental reporter for the Seattle Times. She researched and wrote Witness Tree while a Knight Fellow in science journalism at MIT and a Bullard Fellow in forest research in residence with her oak at the Harvard Forest.

She is a newspaper reporter and author, an explorer and reveler in the natural world, native plants, and species of every sort.

Her photos, journalism, and books are the result of a lifelong fascination with the natural world and our connection to it. She works from all five senses-and especially, the critical sixth: a sense of wonder.

She lives in Seattle.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jean

Science and history are made dynamic in the style of a storyteller who uses language to draw readers in, as we follow her experiences spent a year in the Harvard Forest of research. She chose a red oak tree to focus her pursuit, all the while branching out to other trees and other scientists discove......more

Goodreads review by Laura

Richly detailed, important book. Chronicles the life of one oak tree in the Harvard Forest. A must read for fans of The Hidden Life of Trees or anyone concerned about our environment and world. I hope that is many of us. 5 strong stars.......more

Goodreads review by Skylar

“Living well in a damaged world is not only our task now, it has always been our task.” (206) I just finished Witness Tree, which I’ve been reading off and on for the last month (alongside several other books—I am a promiscuous reader). It was not exactly the book I expected it to be when I picked it......more

One personal year with one tree – the oak – at the Harvard Forest. One topic was fairly new to me: the chapter, “The Language of Leaves” shows researcher John O’Keefe studying phenotypes in the forest, the appearance of leaves. This means looking in exquisite detail how leaves develop through the se......more