Forester, ecologist, digital storyteller & bestselling author Ethan Tapper will discuss his new book, a forest almanac for our time, rooted in a full year observing a rural woodland and its birds. This meditative and lyrical ode to the land is a moving account of what it means to persist in the face of change. This event is presented in partnership with the Manchester Community Library and Merck Forest & Farmland Center.

Tapper’s groundbreaking first book How to Love a Forest offered a pragmatic and hopeful vision for our relationship with forests and other ecosystems. His new book, The Forest Year, lives inside the practice of staying, caretaking, and paying attention. Following the author’s forest through a year of life, the book explores flowers, birds, forest ecology, biodiversity, while also reflecting on stewardship, community, and what it means to be rooted in place.

The Forest Year is a meditative and lyrical ode to the land, weaving complex scientific and ecological concepts with beautiful narrative prose, making nuanced ideas easy to understand and deeply resonant. Both place-based and practice-driven, Tapper writes not as an armchair philosopher or an academic, but as a working forester and ecologist stewarding real forests in real time, blending emotional insight with ecological rigor.

"So much humility and wonder shines through Tapper’s prose, along with a keen sense of time, this time, and what it means to live deeply, with care and purpose, on a fragile planet. The Forest Year is a well-earned, luminous, and ever-more precious tribute to this northern forest we are both so lucky to call home." —Helen Whybrow, author of The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life

ETHAN TAPPER is a forester, ecologist, digital storyteller, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World. For more than a decade, Ethan has been recognized as a thought-leader in the world of ecosystem stewardship, winning numerous regional and national awards for his work. Ethan’s message of relationship, responsibility and hope reaches millions of people each year through his writing, social media channels with hundreds of thousands of followers, and the hundreds of walks, talks and keynotes that he delivers across North America each year.