Combining personal experience with concrete fact, A.K. Hellum’s Listening to Trees tells the story of a man’s lifelong journey to salvage today’s declining forests. In this enlightening account of Hellum’s half-century career as a forester, we become privy to our environment’s fragile state-of-being through the manipulation of forests that have been stripped of their resources and improperly regenerated over the span of a lifetime.

As Hellum guides us on his journeys through the forests of Thailand, China, Guyana, and the Philippines, we emerge with a new understanding of how the smallest elements of the world’s ecosystem can have a significant and devastating impact on the environment at large. While reinforcing Stan Rowe’s life’s work as an environmentalist, Listening to Trees serves as a staunch reminder of the fragility of modern forests while providing a glimpse into the soul of an environmentalist pleading for his beloved timberland.