The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth

            This book is about the boreal forest and how it affects all of life on earth.  The boreal stretches from northern Europe, Russia, Alaska, Canada, and into Greenland.  It is the second largest biom on earth, after the oceans, the lung of the earth more impactful than any other forest.

            Rawlence gets into the science of the trees occupying the boreal forest, including drawings.  He also personally goes up north to the communities where the treeline exists and often is seen advancing because of the warming of the planet.  He describes the biosphere in each place; and also the communities and the people that reside there.  Mostly the people are indigenous, native to the area visited, and their opinions and changing lifestyles because of climate change are some of the most fascinating in the book.  There is also a glossary of the trees that make up the majority of the boreal forest.

            But Rawlence’s observations and conclusions are at the heart of the book.  For instance:  “It has always been the case that life is a moral endeavor, the very act of living a legacy.  To look at the forest through Celtic, Koyukon, Sami, Nganasan or Anishanaabe eyes is to see the world of multiple selves and souls communicating with each other.  If we acknowledge all this other life and our dependence on it, we have to confront the question: What is the right thing to do?  The leaf talks to the wind, the flower talks to the bee, the roots talk to the fungi – the world is a chaotic, noisy place!  When we step into the forest we are making the world with our bodies, our feet, our eyes, our breath, our imaginations.  A million randomized branching futures are possible.  The forest is a sea of possibility, an infinite experiment in coevolution.”

            Another observation.  In talking to indigenous people about climate change and how it is changing or threatening their lives, most answered with less alarm than practicality.  They assumed that they would simply have to adapt to the changes that they were experiencing in the northern latitudes.  We who live among the very people most responsible for climate change and the warming of the planet may not find it so easy to adapt to the demands of life in a warmer world.  As in most of the books I have reviewed over the years, Rawlence does conclude with an optimistic tone:  “We must prepare our children for uncertainty but not as victims.  We and they are stewards, still charged with an ancient responsibility.  The earth is alive and enchanted, and to act within it is to enchant by living – to see, hear, feel, dance – to create the future with every step in full recognition of the fact that every move you make, however large or small, matters.”