Running for Your Life: Urban Forestry is Not An Oxymoron

Author Jill Jonnes takes a dry title, “Urban Forests: A Natural History of Trees and People in the American Cityscape,” and makes a terrific read.

She has done something pretty special for me. I am lucky to live in a place where street trees are treated with respect by owners, neighbors and passersby alike. No longer will I think of them as just more “furniture” on the street, decorative during leaf season, or in the case of the Callery pear, gorgeous in their white-ish blooms.

Now, after reading “Urban Forests,” I find myself looking up to the canopy above me. Streets in Park Slope, Brooklyn, can be seen as forests first, the homes just part of the scenery. Of course, this is even truer of Prospect Park, where some trees are hundreds of years old. They are the true old-timers; the rest of us, just passing through.

Next: Running for Your Life: “Considers” by Katherine Rundell