December 2023
* This is part of a small project of reading essays that focus on landscape and natural history, the idea being to familiarize myself with this genre, and to develop a better sense of what I like and do not like.
This is a short book about the author’s journey into forestry. I’m ambivalent about it. The first part of the book focuses on his own story, which I don’t find particularly interesting or inspiring. I also have to say that the writing is a bit precious – he is fond of invoking Mother Nature, and personifying the forest; he also tries to be lyrical in what seems to me a clumsy and prosaic way. However, once he becomes established in his career as a forester, I find the book more worthwhile: it is a good survey of the today’s thinking in forestry, about both its past shortcomings and its current approaches. But the combination of preachiness, romanticism and clumsy attempts at lyricism will keep me from recommending it to others.
Continue reading LS* – Finding the Forest, Peter Bundy