How to Love a Forest, Ethan Tapper. Broadleaf Books (ISBN: 9798889830559) 2024.
Summary: A forester buys a piece of Vermont forest that had been mismanaged and implements restorative practices.
Ethan Tapper is a consulting forester and service forester in Vermont. He’s worked with both public and privately owned land, consulting with landowners on the best management practices. He’s had to navigate the space between commercial loggers who will log all but the diseased trees and environmentalists who want nothing to be done. The reality is that forests have been mismanaged and won’t recover on their own.
In 2017, Tapper put his money where his mouth was and bought a piece of mismanaged forest on what he named Bear Island. In much of the book, he recounts his walks through the forest and his actions to care for it. Surprisingly, he has a chainsaw in hand much of the time. He writes, “I truly understand how the cutting of a tree could be an expression of compassion and humility an act of healing, an act of love.” So, we walk with him as he cuts down diseased beech trees and sprays invasive plants. Opening up the forest to new growth. Planting oaks and maples. And hunting does to reduce the deer population that ravages the forest.
He traces the history of the land from indigenous peoples to early settlers, farmers and herders, loggers, and the coming of the construction of subdivisions. Then he goes below ground and acquaints us with the Wood Wide Web, the network of roots and microorganisms underground, working as a communicative and life-restoring system. Along the way, we observe a fallen tree and the processes of decay that bring about new life. But not all is new. We encounter wolf trees, ancient survivors of the centuries. Finally, we walk with him as he plants acorn into a patch cut.
One of the most moving chapters is his visit to a landowner after a big windstorm. The wind blew down whole stand of pines. A favorite old maple–a wolf tree–has split in two. The owner can see only devastation of forest she loved. But Tepper tries to help her envision the new life that will run riot in this place, the resilience of the forest.
Resilience and responsibility. We learn that these two go hand in hand. On one hand, forests are marvelous ecosystems. Yet human mismanagement and disease invite Tapper to exercise responsible care. Cutting, killing, pruning, and planting intelligently, working with the ways of the forest. All of these are part of Tepper’s work as a member of perhaps the ultimate keystone species. Tepper does not write from a Christian perspective. Yet he exercises the responsible dominion and care of tending and guarding this forest garden (Genesis 2:15). Instead of leaving it alone, his care enables it to flourish. Tepper expresses it in this way:
“Someday I will teach my children that this world is not ours to hold but that we hold it anyway, that each of us is a steward for one brief and precious moment in time. In our short lives, we must learn to pair power and freedom with humility, to embody responsibility and relationship, even when it breaks our heart.”
Tepper writes eloquently, expressing knowledge in the form of deep compassion for the forests of Bear Island. Not only that, we read the commitment that tends for a future he will not see. But is not this the kind of thinking we all must embrace? Thus, Tepper’s story serves as a kind of parable for us all, whether it is forest or farm or suburban lot that we love and care for.