This year has been full of a continued wrestling with the positives and negatives of social media, particularly Instagram. For the past three years, during the spring and fall semesters, I would log out of Facebook and Twitter and save my brain from both of those social media networks — knowing full well that having excessive "content" would cause me to waver from my school commitments. However, I would remain logged into Instagram. At the end of August 2025, I'm realizing just how much time has gotten sucked into that endless scrolling blackhole. I resent my own weakness for the dopamine scroll.

That resentment is moderated by some of the good that comes from discovering new connections and new ideas through social media. I don't think I would have been connected to Ethan Tapper through a blogroll or news article, but I was through Instagram's algorithm. Ethan is a Vermonter and a forester who has found a way to communicate his vision of involved, active, and restorative environmentalism (roughly) through short form video and his book, How to Love a Forest, published in 2024.

How to Love a Forest takes the reader through a forest from top of the crown to deep in the ground. Ethan explains why his views on forests have changed over the years (away from a prescriptive, protective approach and toward an expansive, active involvement approach) and how much humanity needs to change in order to ensure the long term survival of our species and the ecosystems on which we depend. Over ten chapters, I was introduced and reintroduced to the minute and large parts of a forest, their interactions, the mysteries of how plants communicate, the opportunity to make a difference, and the beauty of what was, is, and can be. 

I can tell this book was a challenge to write and shape into a cohesive, clear narrative. The ideas and actions are plainly shared, at times, and then bulked out with beautifully visual language that transports the reader a Vermont hillside. The simplicity of the key messages occasionally get lost in repetition and rework of language. There is more that Ethan can share as his writing skills develop further and his message strengthens and deepens.

This book constitutes book eleven of my ten book reading commitment for the summer. It's a tight book, less than 220 pages, and complemented Things Become Other Things as memoirs that share a bigger idea or a call to action.