The Forest Unseen
by David George Haskell

Tucked amidst many short essays on nature -- the fungi, flora, and microscopic beings of a forest -- I ran across this hilarious passage.  He was watching three raccoons traveling through the forest and said,

One thing was evident: these animals were adorable.

My zoological self was immediately embarrassed by these thoughts. Naturalists are meant to have outgrown such judgements...I try to see animals for what they are, independent beings, not as projections of desires leaping unbidden from my psyche.

On further reflection, he writes:

Perhaps I should not have felt so embarrassed at my immediate and strong attraction. What I interpreted as the humiliation of my pretentions as a zoological sophisticate was in fact an education in my own animal nature. Homo sapiens is a face-reading species.

He's right, of course. Humans react to faces, especially those that look like ours. To deny our place in nature is to deny our humanity. Earlier in the book he observes,

 To love nature and to hate humanity is illogical. Humanity is part of the whole. To truly love the world is also to love human ingenuity and playfulness. Nature does not need to be cleansed of human artifacts to be beautiful or coherent. Yes, we should be less greedy, untidy, wasteful and shortsighted. But let us not turn responsibility into self-hatred. Our biggest failing is, after all, last of compassion for the world. Including ourselves.

Not to say that very much of this absolutely adorable book is taken up with philosophical observations. He's as likely to detail the history of a snail as to lecture about humanity. But it's all great fun--this guy can describe the different approaches used by trees in transporting water against gravity and make it sound like a hot gossip item.

If you can make your brain slow down and read and think and wonder, you should be reaching for this book. And now I need get my magnifying glass, grab a hat and slip on the old sneakers...and go off to the woods.