American Canopy by Eric Rutkow

This book could not be better suited to me - a lover of trees and the instructor for Environmental History at Hamline University.  I bought the book in Bozeman with great anticipation and I am so pleased that I did.

Eric's bio says he graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as a lawyer on environmental issues and now is pursuing a doctorate in American History.  Through this combination he has found the tie between American History and the forests that cover our continent.  Both histories have both inspiration and devastation.  We love our trees, but we have consumed them without pause during the first two centuries that Europeans lived on the North American Continent.  Then we found a way to turn our actions around and began to protect trees like the Redwoods in Yosemite and other National Parks and we created national forests to harvest the lumber while including old tree preserves.

The consumption of trees for building railroads and bridges, even for the construction of old model T's was part of our greatest resource wealth and it made us a wealthy nation.  But the trees were being consumed quicker than they could grow and the history in this book looks at the people, places and events along the timeline of the American nation to see where and how those changes came to be.

The names that appear are a wonderful who's who of environmental history from the unappreciated Bartons - the first commercial botanist during the colonial period and Catesby the artist and explorer to Lewis and Clark and Daniel Boone, John Muir, Theodore and Franklin D Roosevelt, Pinchot, JFK, Gaylord Nelson and on and on.  If those names are not familiar with you - you definitely need to read this enjoyable and well written history.

From the time when the White Pines were designated for the King's trees to Johnny Appleseed and on to the giant forests of the Pacific Northwest where Weyerhaeuser established the last pieces of his gigantic footprint of his forest legacy we encounter the industry, the trees, and the people who make up this vivid story.

It makes me think of the marvelous trees that have marked my life - the Sacred Little Cedar on Lake Superior at Grand Portage and the old growth that surrounded us in the Porcupine Mountain Wilderness of Michigan during our walk around Lake Superior, the Ancient White Pines I lived beneath for 38 years at the Audubon Center, the redwoods of CA, the Sitka Spruce and Douglas Fir on the NW, the ancient Bristlecone Pines of NV/UT, the short and spreading willows of the arctic, and the magnificent giant Kauri of New Zealand.  Each tree an inspiration, each a part of the story of the planet, and most threatened at one time by the voracious consumption of humans.