I can’t think of a better way to close the year than to share with you a remarkable book I’ve been reading. The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell is nothing short of breathtaking in scope and style, remarkably so given that the entire book focuses on one small patch of forest floor just a metre wide in an old-growth forest in the hills of southeastern Tennessee. He had asked himself “Can the whole forest be seen through a small contemplative window of leaves, rocks, and water?” As it turns out, much more is revealed. Throughout the cycle of one year, Haskell revisits this same patch, each time taking his readers on a deep dive into the natural world, exploring the connections between microbes and mammals, flora and fauna, us and everything out there and under our feet.

As I write this, I haven’t finished the book. When I bought it a year ago I thought I would tear through it because it’s just that good. But quite early into my read, I decided to slow down. Haskell made me do it.

Above: The final chapter of The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell

You see the book is divided into 43 short chapters, each only a couple of pages long. Remarkably, every chapter–blandly entitled with a date and general topic such as “March 13th–Snails” or “October 14th–Samara”–reveals something wildly fascinating and/or profound and always uncannily touching. I found I needed to think about each chapter a bit. So I slowed down until soon enough I started reading each chapter on the date he had written it. Following along the same time frame, my own daylight and weather often eerily synced with what was going on in the book, made his already imaginative writing all the more provocative.

My slightly battered copy of The Forest Unseen

At one point, reading “September 21st–Medicine”, I gasped. He writes about having to leave the mandala and check himself into the local hospital. I won’t divulge any details. But, he writes about his heart fibrillating. Now, by complete coincidence, I just happened to be dealing with a rapid, irregularly beating heart and was in the process of getting tested and meeting with a cardiologist. What he wrote about in this chapter would have been moving to me regardless but this weird serendipity of worlds aligning was, well, personal.

He writes how plants not only create ecological communities, they can offer a pharmacopoeia. He goes into detail about the medicinal properties of locally occurring willow bark, meadowsweet leaves, foxglove leaves (digitalis), mayapple and wild yam. One-quarter of all prescriptions, he points out, are filled with medicines derived directly from plants, fungi, and other living organisms.

In the hospital room, he felt separated from nature but realized “this was an illusion”. He knew several of the pills he needed to take were either directly or indirectly plant-derived. And he goes on to explain how that can be so, adding “My experience with botanical medicines has taught me that my kinship with the mandala’s inhabitants extends all the way to the tiny scale of molecules.” Haskell took me (in the time it took to read 5 1/2 pages) from worrying about my next doctor’s appointment to marvelling at the connections (mine very much included) between botany and biology.

And that was just what happened starting on page 164.

Then there’s the bit about shrew sonar (page 57), how one fern’s “botanical catapults” hurl spores skyward (page 123), how vultures compete with microbes in rotting meat and win (page 177) and how bright red birds hide in plain sight (page 202).

But it’s not just what Mr. Haskell explains in his incredible book. It’s how. Gracefully, lyrically. He writes as a scientist with the soul of a poet.

If you’d like to start the new year with a wonderful new way of thinking about and looking at the natural world, I urge you to get this book. But you’ll have to hurry. The first chapter is dated January 1st.