I used to think of trees as majestic, oxygen-producing shade-providers. Not anymore. Reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl transformed my view about these slow-growing humanoids.

Now when I make my daily visit to the woods, it’s with a mindset of concern of a level that only freeway rubberneckers can understand. I stop and gawk at the carnage of the forest: damaged bark, crooked trunks, fallen trees. The old me, in trucks piled high with limbless logs, would have seen future construction, the new me: hearses transporting dismembered corpses.

I once found windstorms worrisome because of the danger they posed to houses and humans. I still do, but I worry about the well-being of the trees too. Wohlleben’s compelled me to pity the solitary orphan tree species trying to survive amidst others that are all related and those that line city streets, cramp-rooted and lonely.

To read the rest of this blog, go to https://juleerudolfblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/06/lab-girl-the-lorax-the-hidden-life-of-trees-and-me/