Richard Higgins - Thoreau and the Language of Trees

There is real magic in this book. Richard Higgins has traveled widely in Concord, Massachusetts. He has walked where Thoreau walked, seen what Thoreau saw, and seen it with something close to Thoreaus own intensity. That intensity is the very rare, utterly crucial quality here. Higgins looks at trees one by one, andlike Thoreau or with Thoreaulooks at each twig, each leaf, each bud with a separate intention of the eye. Higginss avidity, his eagerness, his sharp focus, his descriptive brilliance excite the reader to see what he and Thoreau have seen and to feel what they felt. This is an electric, exhilarating book that lifts the readers spirit.

There is something in every chapter here for the general reader, and there is a bone or two in every chapter for the specialist. The book centers on Concord, yes, but Higgins understands that every place is a potential Concord. What is special about any place is not its geographical location but the way it buries itself in your heart, as cultural anthropologist Richard K. Nelson has put it so well. Higgins is not doing a cold postmortem on Thoreaus love of the trees around him. Those trees have worked their way into Higginss heart as well. As Thoreau and Higgins see the trees in Concord, so any reader in Pasadena or Peoria can look at the trees to be found there. The secret is Higginss lynx-eyed capture of Thoreaus own enthusiasm, his hunger for fact and detail, for every sight and sound and smell. Higgins does an extraordinary job of matching Thoreaus intensity.

Higgins knows what Thoreau knew: that we readers will care more about a particular tree than about trees in general, more about the Davis Elm or the Pratt Elm than about the generic elm in the Audubon field guide. As Thoreaus own writing appeals to all the readers senses, so does Higginss. We feel the wet leaves, the cold ground; we see the bare branches against the winter sky, taste the peeled bark, smell the pine sap, hear the wind soughing in the pines.

Higginss photography stands up cleanly and honestly to the great Herbert Wendell Gleason photos that also appear in the book. The judicious use of Thoreaus sketches of trees and tree bits brings the master closer, just as it brings the tree bits themselves closer. Higgins does justice to the keen sight of Thoreau, choosing sharp, tight images that convey the ardor and the focus of Thoreaus vision, that hard Thoreauvian edge.

Whether you have long loved Henry of Concord or have just come to discover him, you will find new things in this book, such as the beautiful couple of paragraphs on how Thoreau is religious to the bone if not very churchy; the powerful chapter that brings the story of the white pine down to the present; or the glorious final, unexpected chapter on trees as ships and the woods as oceans.

Between any two pine trees, John Muir wrote in the margin of a volume of Emersons writings, there is a door leading to a new way of life. Richard Higgins and his friend Henry Thoreau are two of the doorkeepers. Come on in. The trees spoke to Thoreau, and he learned their language. Those same trees have spoken to Richard Higgins. They can speak to you.

Robert D. Richardson