At first, I wanted The Forest Year to be an almanac — a book about birds and flowers, a tribute to the seasons, a celebration of the steady magic of phenology. But, of course, The Forest Year ended up being about so much more.

The Forest Year is about forests, about trees and plants and animals. It is about beaked hazelnut flowers and wild onions and lowbush blueberries and serviceberry and sweetfern and red oak and sugar maple. And it is about bluebirds and tree swallows and yellowthroats and chestnut-sided warblers and mourning warblers and rose-breasted grosbeaks and ospreys and chickadees. And it is about spring and summer and fall and winter, and all the shades and colors between. And The Forest Year is also a book about reciprocity and community and responsibility; a meditation on the magical and vital thing that happens when we decide to stay — in this world, with these ecosystems, with each other — and to engage in the ancient and beautiful and complex and radical practice called “stewardship.” This is a book about the treasures that cannot be attained by going far, only by going deep. This is a book about the wings that we may grow when we set down roots, wherever we are.

The Forest Year is a celebration of life, and the complex actions necessary to save this one, precious, irreplaceable world. It is not a book about raising alarms, a book about threats and perils, a book about fear or anger or despair. This is a book about abundance; about the joys and the beauty of a world worth saving — a world that we can and that we will save, if we take the actions necessary to do so.

I am not here to tell you about what has been lost from this world, the things that are missing. I am here to tell you that there is so much that is still here, and so much more to be discovered.

This is a book about hope.

— Ethan Tapper