I’ll be honest: I bought this book from a north-woods bookstore only because I know someone with the author’s name, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, it was the same guy leading a secret life I knew nothing of. Not the case.

Poetry isn’t really my cup of tea, but since this book is more like poetic prose, I figured I’d give it a shot. I’m glad I did, for not only did I learn a whole lot about trees in general, I also caught a glimpse of how a poet’s mind thinks.

Terpstra opens the book with a beautifully written seventeen-page essay-poem mishmash about the trees in his neighborhood being cut down by city maintenance. He then follows this essay with forty-three pieces (most of them less than a page, some of them just a few paragraphs) which look at the life and existence of trees in forty-three different ways. His imagination and creative eye masterfully capture the many nuances of trees in their habitats, and I found most of them so insightful that I’ll likely never look at a tree the same way again.

It makes me wonder how I myself might do in an exercise like this, to take two months writing a short, creative piece each day about something as “mundane” as a tree. I probably couldn’t make it through a week! Yet it’s something I certainly would love to try. Perhaps this winter….I could write about snow.

I don’t know whether it’s proper or not to quote an entire poem in this review, but I wanted to share a taste of what awaits you in this book with one of my favorites, titled “Place.”

A tree, when it first begins to shoot from the ground, immediately senses the potential lying within that one location and is persuaded to stay.

By never moving from its original location a tree is in the unique position of learning all there is to know about that one particular spot: the composition of the earth, the characteristic of each wind, the inquisition of water, both above ground and under, the traffic of animals, humans, and more — most of which is modified, or determined, by its presence.

Every tree therefore is a specialist, the one expert in its own self-defined field, and cannot be made redundant.

Insightful, thought-provoking, unique, and beautiful—this guy has got it all, and so does this book. If you love nature in general or trees in particular, I highly recommend this book. It almost makes me think that I might kinda-sorta like poetry.

©2020 E.T.