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| Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees
ISBN: 9780520933125
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of California Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Trees -- Social aspects; Trees -- Religious aspects; Trees -- Environmental aspects;
With a scholarly voice leavened by poetic sensibility, Nadkarni (Rainforests) explores trees from root to canopy, tracing their powerful role in shaping human commerce, spirituality, even language--a fascinating section examines the preponderance of tree-based metaphors. The author, a renowned canopy biologist, pre-sents a wealth of entertaining arboreal facts and figures, but her personal anecdotes are the book's most compelling and inimitable feature: she describes a visit to a Baptist church where the pastor spoke of "the need to find an entity that will protect us... and hold us... when we are frightened" with "limbs that would support us forever, never tiring... helping us find quiet and calm in our lives." Nadkarni relates being so "amazed and pleased that the pastor would include a description of trees and their spiritual benefit in his sermon" that she didn't realize that he was talking about Jesus. Despite an occasional pedantic tone, the author's belief that "when humans become sufficiently aware of... a single tree, a forest fragment, or the whole biosphere, they will find ways to protect it" is inspiring and her enthusiasm, contagious. Photos. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Nadkarni Nalini :
Nalini Nadkarni is the author of Rainforests, with J. Johnson, Monteverde: The Ecology and Conservation of a Tropical Cloud Forest, with N.T. Wheelwright, and Forest Canopies, with M.L. Lowman. She teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at The Evergreen State College and is President of the International Canopy Network. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Natural History, Glamour , and National Geographic and she has appeared in numerous television documentaries. In 2002, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship to better extend her work to the public.
Nalini Nadkarni is the 2010 recipient of the National Science Board Public Service Award, presented annually to an individual who has made significant contributions in public understanding of science in the United States. |
