How to Read a Tree

In his extraordinary books about the overlooked layers of the natural world—including The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs and The Natural Navigator—Tristan Gooley has helped readers reconnect with nature by searching for secrets in stars, clouds, water, and more. Now, he turns his attention to perhaps nature’s most beloved feature: the stately, majestic tree.

Every single tree tells us an epic story if we know how to read it. This book uncovers the marvelous wonders of branches, trunks, canopies, bark, buds, flowers, stumps, and more. A pale line down the center of a leaf indicates water is nearby. A touch of reddish or purple bark signals new growth. Low-growing, young branches reveal a tree is struggling to survive. Tapping into this silent language of trees sharpens our understanding of the environment—to read a tree is to paint a unique portrait of the surrounding land, soil, weather, animals, people, and even time. You’ll never see a tree the same way again.