First — a head’s up to another one of my internet-radio conversations. Tomorrow at 6 p.m EST I’ll be talking (live!) to David George Haskell. David is a biologist teaching at the University of the South. He blogs here, but the proximate reason for the interview is the publication of his book, The Forest Unseen.
The Forest Unseen is simply one of the best natural history cum science books I’ve read in years. David’s concept — in less adept hands it would have been a conceit — was to take a single meter-in-diameter patch of old growth forest and visit it over the course of a year.
From those visits to what he called “the mandala” he drew essay after essay, pretty much all of them built on the idea of making a practice out of observation. Most of the chapters in the book begin with a single point of entry into the life of the mandala, and then Haskell’s writing flows and leaps as he finds his veins of connection.