The Forest Year

"In The Forest Year, Ethan Tapper returns to his beloved Bear Island to chronicle a full year of his experiences as he restores its wounded ecosystems. Ethan is a rare man who has learned to look deeply into the heart of nature, see it for what it is, understand his place in it, and accept his responsibility to heal it.  With touching prose, he shows us what a deep love of the natural world really is. Set another place at the table, Wendell Berry; Ethan Tapper has arrived!"—Douglas W. Tallamy, author of How Can I Help?

"So much humility and wonder shines through Tapper’s prose, along with a keen sense of time, this time, and what it means to live deeply, with care and purpose, on a fragile planet. The Forest Year is a well-earned, luminous, and ever-more precious tribute to this northern forest we are both so lucky to call home."—Helen Whybrow, author of The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life

"In The Forest Year, Ethan Tapper models natural history not on fleeting experiences with exotic trophies, but rather deep curiosity towards familiar neighbors. And for this humble approach, he is rewarded with durable connections to the expansive world of plants, birds, and the passing of time."—Jacob Suissa and Ben Goulet-Scott of Let’s Botanize

"The Forest Year is a much-needed reminder that nature's quiet hope is always within reach, hiding in something as simple as a flower or in the wings of a migrating bird. Ethan Tapper masterfully weaves together his experience stewarding Bear Island, his forested home in Vermont, with sharp observation and tender reflection, inviting us to reconsider what it truly means to put down roots and grow where you’re planted."—Andrew Conboy, @Andrew_The_Arborist, urban forester and founder of Community Canopy Project

"This is a beautiful book, full of respect for the land and a quiet call to rise to the occasion of stewardship; paying attention where it is due. If many in Ethan Tapper’s generation follow his model of being in the world, the world will be in better hands."—Kenneth M. Cadow, author of Gather

“In The Forest Year, Ethan Tapper takes us through the seasons and the hard work of healing a damaged landscape, showing that restoration isn’t transactional, it’s a relationship; one that begins when you see yourself as part of an ecosystem and commit to its health long after you’re gone.”—Griff Griffith, Conservation Storyteller and Host of Animal Planet’s Wild Jobs

“The Forest Year follows in the tradition of writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer and Nan Shepherd, offering a gentle and brilliant look at the science and spirit of the great American woodlands and their attending wonders.  But even more, Ethan Tapper shares a vision of one of the more difficult undertakings in this world's current predicament: living a creaturely and neighborly life devoted to a particular place, and doing your damndest to heal a few old wounds in the process.” 

—Ben Aguilar, The Berry Center