The Forest Year: Finding Hope in a World Worth Saving by Tapper, Ethan

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.

Author: Ethan Tapper
Publisher: Timber Press (OR)
Published: 10/06/2026
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 8.49h x 5.77w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781643266510

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/17/2026
Booklist 10/01/2026

About the Author
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. More recently, he has been recognized as a writer - since its publication in 2024, How to Love a Forest has been named the winner of the 2025 New England Book Award for nonfiction, and received international acclaim. 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. Ethan works, writes, hunts, birds and runs a small consulting forestry business from his home at Bear Island - his 175-acre working forest, homestead, orchard and sugarbush in Vermont - and plays in his punk band, The Bubs.