In Trees: An Exploration

Join Robert Moor, the bestselling author of On Trails, as he discusses his new book, In Trees. In an enlightening conversation between Moor and Dr. Cassidy Johnson, Director of Rice University’s Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum, discover the art of “tree-thinking” for yourself.

Non-member ticket price: $25
Member ticket price: $10

Houston Botanic Garden offers free parking for daytime events.

A book signing will follow the program, and books will be available for purchase.

About In Trees: From the acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller On Trails comes a “gorgeous, honest, and soulful” (Bryan Stevenson) journey through the wilds of nature and the gnarls of history, exploring how trees—from the mightiest sequoia to the tiniest bonsai—can teach us to grow wise.

One day, on a whim, Robert Moor set out to climb a tree near his home—unwittingly embarking on what would become a decadelong adventure of intellectual and spiritual transformation. Pursuing the hidden wisdom of trees, he’d scale to the top of a giant sequoia with Sir David Attenborough, trudge through swamps in Papua to reach a treehouse-dwelling tribe of hunter-gatherers, and travel to a remote research camp in Tanzania, where he’d spend one very uncomfortable night sleeping in a chimpanzee nest. Galvanized by a radical new outlook on both our gnarled past and our ever-branching future, he’d ultimately fall in with a ragtag clan of climate activists risking everything to halt construction of an oil pipeline and save an old-growth forest.

Along the way, Moor would learn the art of “tree-thinking,” which, he discovers, has the power to break open some of humanity’s oldest questions: How do we set down roots in an increasingly chaotic world? Can we ever learn to pursue our future in the farsighted, entangled manner of an ancient forest?

A witty, relentlessly curious excursion through philosophy, history, science, and our far-flung world, what begins as an ode to the miracle of trees blossoms into a joyous, daring, and fiercely hopeful effort to “arborize humanity.”

In Trees, which was recently excerpted in The New Yorker and National Geographic, has been hailed as “brilliant” by Robert Macfarlane, “deeply thoughtful” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and “the most life affirming book I’ve read in a long time” by John Vaillant

About Robert Moor:

Hailed by critics as a “philosopher on foot,” Robert Moor is the bestselling author of “On Trails” and “In Trees.” Translated into more than a dozen languages, “On Trails” garnered the National Outdoor Book Award, the Pacific Northwest Book Award, and the William Saroyan International Prize. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, New York magazine, Outside, Emergence, and n+1, among other publications. He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia.

About Dr. Cassidy Johnson:

Dr. Cassidy Johnson is a biologist and local conservation practitioner with years of experience as both a classroom and outdoor educator. As a Teaching Professor for Rice Biosciences, she teaches a range of undergraduate courses, including non-majors’ biology, labs in conservation biology and plant diversity, and a community-of-practice ecological education field course.

Dr. Johnson is the first Director of Rice’s Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum, which encompasses the university’s 300-acre campus. The mission of the Arboretum is to support the institution’s educational initiatives and to connect the Rice community to the natural world. She is also working closely with the Arboretum Committee and Rice’s Grounds team to restore three native ecosystems, a wetland, woodland, and coastal prairie, in the 6-acre Rice University Nature Preserve. Before coming to Rice, she taught biology at Houston City College. She also served as a Houston toad specialist for the Houston Zoo’s ex situ Houston toad conservation program and was president of a local, conservation education non-profit, the Coastal Prairie Partnership. Dr. Johnson earned a B.S. and M.S. in Biology from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry & Cell Biology from Rice University.