September 5, 2016
In this intriguing volume, British paleontologist Fortey (Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms) charts the discoveries he made over the course of a year on the four acres of Oxfordshire land that he purchased in 2011. Fortey’s “inner naturalist needed to touch living animals and plants,” and he recounts those experiences by devoting a chapter to each month. He begins in April, following the changing seasons and collecting “the wood’s serendipitous treasures.” Fortey gives further structure to his narrative—and his treasure collection—through the construction of a cabinet of curiosities that he and his wife, Jackie, commissioned a woodworking neighbor to build out of one of their cherry trees. It would be different from the “systematic collection” he worked with for years at the Natural History Museum in London: each item would be a memento of encounters in their small patch of woods. As Fortey spends time observing and pondering, he becomes enraptured by the forest floor draped with bluebells. Imagining a continuum of individual and collective relationships that stretches back centuries, he duly charts his historical explorations of the land in parallel with his naturalistic ones. Focusing on his small world, Fortey effectively compiles “a biography of the wood” and reminds readers that stories can be found anywhere. Illus.