How to Love a Forest: Discussion and Book Launch with Ethan Tapper
Free and in-person at NBNC
Tickets Required for in-person – Register Here
Watch the Livestream Here

In How to Love a Forest, forester and author Ethan Tapper helps us reimagine what forests are and what it means to care for them. As the ecosystems that sustain all life struggle, we straddle a status quo that treats them solely as commodities, and opposing claims that the only true expression of love for nature is to leave it alone. Proffering a more complex vision, Tapper argues that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. With striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts—like loving deer and hunting them, loving trees and felling them—can be expressions of compassion. Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world. 

This evening will feature readings, presentation, and an interview with NBNC staff.

Hosted in partnership with Bear Pond Books. How to Love a Forest will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

About Ethan: Ethan Tapper is a forester, birder, naturalist and digital creator, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest. He has been recognized as a thought-leader and a disruptor in the forestry and conservation community of the northeastern United States and beyond, winning multiple regional and national awards for his work. Ethan runs a consulting forestry business – Bear Island Forestry – is a regular contributor to Northern Woodlands magazine and a variety of other publications, and is a digital creator with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook. In his personal life, Ethan works, writes, hunts and birds at Bear Island – his 175-acre working forest, homestead, orchard and sugarbush.

About our Naturalist Journeys 2025 Winter Presentation Series: This year’s series focuses on making healthy and sustainable forests in Vermont. How should we weigh competing forest management goals? Is timber harvesting at odds with biodiversity? Can felling a tree save a bird? When can logging be a radical act of compassion? How do Vermont’s ecological foresters make choices? What happens when we restore a forest’s wild autonomy? We hope you’ll join the discussion. The series runs December through February.

Naturalist Journeys is made possible by our sponsors:

Hunger Mountain Coop
802 Coffee
Onion River Outdoors
Washington Electric Co-op
Stone Environmental
Waite-Heindel Environmental