Book Club Poll for August/September 2024

The next topic is Trees!

Hello everyone!

Now that many of us have chosen to embarked on a journey together to learn more about the immense power for healing, nourishment, abundance and regeneration that is contained within a handful of seeds and (by the end of this month we will have also learned about) the ancient gift economy that is embodied in the living soil, next I would like to invite you all to combine that knowledge with a study of the learned elder rooted beings that become manifest when those photosynthetic embryos are planted in the Rich Earth. When we combine a handful of seeds with living soil, what we have is the potential for a thousand forests to be created.

Eastern White Pine Cone and Seeds

White Pine in a mixed forest in northern Ontario

Trees are our elder species on this beautiful planet, our home, Earth, they gracefully extent their arms to the youngster species which they share this planet with that are still learning to get their footing (such as humans) offering gifts of nourishment, healing, poetry for the senses, graceful guidance and patient loving wisdom.

a grove of birch trees growing near the shore of Lake Huron in Ontario

Forests that can provide not only shade, food, medicine and shelter from extreme weather conditions for countless beings, but they can actually change the weather, moderate climate extremes in entire regions and create their stable own rain patterns.

Trees are generous and caring beings. They are the lungs that inhale what we exhale, breathing life into countless species. They are the thoughtful soil builders and protectors, spreading their leaves far and wide every year to enrich the living soil beneath them and holding that soil together with their strong roots, protecting the ecology of the soil from mudslides and erosion.

x-ray image of a human lung beside the outline of a tree

Reaching out with their branches and allowing the leaves to catch silt and seeds on the wind, depositing them onto the ground below, increasing fertility and biodiversity. They even sequester CO-2 from the atmosphere and add it back to the soil structure turning gas into SOM which can give to the unfolding of countless beings for many generations to come.

Trees even help to stabilize and shape the weather of entire geographic regions by taking in water from the ground, breathing it out through transpiration (helping to form clouds) and then seeding the rain drops with their leaf litter particles. Thus trees even help to ensure that the clouds give their life giving rains to the patch of earth the trees call home.

Watchful, silent guardians of the Earth...they have sculpted and enriched countless landscapes and given homes to a myriad of species as they found their place in the world.

me looking up at the canopy of a 500 year old plus Douglas Fir on Vancouver Island, BC

Even after the trees themselves fall back to the earth, the soil that their leaves created will stay for millennia acting like a shadow of the love and life that the tree shared. An echo of love that whispers for eons to come telling the story of sunshine, wind, rain along with the strength and beauty of the tree that shared all that it was with the earth.

Thus I now invite you all to embark on yet another journey with me to learn from our rooted elders for the next book club adventure.

Here are the books I have as suggestions for August and September. If you would like to suggest any additions to the running in the poll (books that pertain to trees as the central focus) please share those in a comment and i`ll add them to the poll.

The following are my suggestions for books on trees.

This poll will be active and available to vote on until July 25th.

1. The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature

2. In the Company of Trees: Honoring Our Connection to the Sacred Power, Beauty, and Wisdom of Trees

3. Tree Wisdom : The definitive guidebook to the myth, folklore and healing power of Trees

4. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World

5. The Living Wisdom of Trees: A Guide to the Natural History, Symbolism and Healing Power of Trees

6. Nature's Temples: The Complex World of Old-Growth Forests

7. The Power of Trees: How Ancient Forests Can Save Us if We Let Them

8. To Speak for the Trees: My Life's Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest

9. The Healing Trees - The Edible and Herbal Qualities of Northeastern Woodland Trees

10. Trees of Power : Ten Essential Arboreal Allies

11. Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

12. Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest

13. Arboretum Borealis: A Lifeline of the Planet

14. Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings

15. Power of Trees: How to Refill Your Energy in Nature

16. In Search of the Old Ones: An Odyssey among Ancient Trees

17. Ancient Trees: Trees That Live for a Thousand Years

18. The Spirit of Trees: Science, Symbiosis and Inspiration

19. Book of State Trees - Nature Study Handbook

20. The Overstory: A Novel

Please offer your own suggestions for additions to the poll for which book (that has a central focus on the topic of trees) will be chosen for August and September’s Book Club in a comment below. I will create another poll with any pertinent suggested books in the next couple days.

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If you are a new subscriber or missed my past posts on Book Club and are wondering what I am talking about, here is a link to the post where I introduce and describe the concept and intent behind this series: