A forest almanac for our time, rooted in a full year observing a rural woodland and its birds.

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.

A moving account of what it means to persist in the face of change and to love a place through work, compromise, sacrifice, and humility, this book will inspire readers to think deeply about where they live and who they are.