Science Friday - Don’t Just Walk In The Woods—Touch, Smell, and Taste Them, Too

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

It’s been a hot and rainy summer in many parts of the US, and it’s been hard to spend as much time in nature as many of us would like. Heat waves and unpredictable weather have sometimes made it riskier to be outside. Maybe you’ve chosen an easier hike, or doubled up on water bottles, or stayed inside when you’d much rather be outdoors with friends and family.If you’ve been feeling apathetic about the outdoors, a new book called Forest Walking, Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America might be a helpful read. Co-authors Peter Wohlleben, a forester and conservation advocate, and Jane Billinghurst, an editor, author, and translator, teach readers how to engage with their local forested areas in a deeper way. And it’s what we’re reading for September’s SciFri Book Club.Diana Plasker, Science Friday’s senior experiences manager, sat down with the authors to talk about how to decode nature’s subtle signs and why it’s important to use all five senses when exploring your surroundings.Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

How can you use all five senses to level up your walk in the woods? You can eat Douglas fir, you can eat spruce, and you can try to taste which tree it is with closed ice. It's Thursday, August 22nd, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer Dee Petershmit. It's been a rainy and hot summer here in the Northeast, and it's been hard to spend as much time in nature as we'd all like to. Maybe you've chosen an easier to hike or doubled up on your water bottles, or stay inside when you'd much rather be outdoors with friends and family. Well, if you've also been feeling this way, I have a book recommendation.

It's called Forest Walking, discovering the trees and woodlands of North America, and it teaches readers how to engage with their local forested areas. Syphorized Diana Plasker, our senior experiences manager, talk to the authors of that book about how to decode nature's subtle signs and why it's important to use all five senses when exploring your surroundings. Here's Diana. Peter Vuelabin is a lot of life. a forester, conservation advocate, and bestselling author. And Jane Billinghurst is an editor,

author, and translator, in addition to her life as a naturalist and master gardener. They are the co-authors of that book, which is September's SciFry Book Club pick. You can find out more about this season's read on our website, Science Friday.com slash book club. Thank you both for coming on Science Friday. It's great to be here. Yeah, thank you for the invitation. So there's lots of books about forests and natural environments. So why did you choose? come together to write something that's more like an instructional guide, to teach readers how to engage more deeply in forests? This is very much more of a book where you take people by the hand, take them out into the forest, and explain to them how they can personally experience the forest.

So one of my tasks for this book was to take a long trip all around North America, visiting all different kinds of forests. So my husband and I got in our camping van and we did 17,000 miles over the course of four months visiting old growth forests around North America. So we'd have lots of information for the book. Amazing. So the book is all about using your senses to notice new things about forests. Was there a moment that you both remember when you went from the average nature lover to someone who pays deep attention while in the forest? Perhaps one special moment for me was when I started to work as a

forest and at first I thought a forester would be someone like a treekeeper and then one of my first duties was to fell old beach trees which I was told was good for the forest to recover and to become healthier and of course that's nonsense and then I started to read more about forest and and traveled around and found out that it's just the other way around that we should keep forest on their own and that there's so much to discover and much more than just to judge this is a beech that's an oak tree that's douglas fir but that there's social interaction which you can see which which you can smell which you perhaps can even taste so with all senses you can dive into the forest and that is that's that makes much more fun and that's a much more better way to

approach to a forest or to experience a forest and that is something which had to be written down. Jane, what about you? I grew up close to woodlands in the United Kingdom, and I spent a lot of time walking in them, but I don't think I ever really slowed down enough to pay attention until I started working with Peter. And once I did that,

I began to get totally fascinated by the small things that you can see in the forest, by the trees, definitely. And then once I began noticing them, I became really interested in knowing more about them. And then, as Peter says, beginning to understand that this whole forest is a system that functions together.

It's not just a collection of trees. So I really feel that having Peter explaining to me what's going on, then being able to go out myself and start looking, and then decide for myself which are the big, I find more fascinating. I feel like I'm just going down this road where I'm learning more and more, and it continues every day. I challenge myself to see something new every time I go out into the forest and to learn just a little bit more. Well, that's a great tip to sort of try and notice something

new each time you go outside. So what are some simple things we can all do to change a hike from average to sensational? Jane, what about you? Well, I think it partly has to do with the speed of which you're walking, so just slow down a little bit, an awareness of what it is you might find. I tend to focus on one thing when I take a walk. There is so much out there in the forest. So it's almost overwhelming. So I think today I'm going to look at mosses and I'm going to see all the different kinds of mosses and I'm going to look for moss spore capsules and I'm going to see where the moss grows and I'm going to think about how the moss is contributing to the forest that I'm walking through by storing the water and releasing it gently.

So it's almost like an air conditioning system for the forest. So where is the moss and what is it doing? What are the different shapes? So I try to focus on a single thing when I go out. Of course, I get distracted. But I find it really helps me dive deeper if I've got just one thing that a thread I'm following through for that particular walk. Peter, what about you?

I completely agree. And I think I would add some fun facts or funny things. For example, you can collect Douglas fir needles and make a forest smoothie together with bananas and grapes. It's always a lot of fun because children, for example, don't know that you can even drink trees. And yeah, that's one funny thing. Perhaps another is that you can try

to smell trees. For example, if you can smell this a little orange smell under coniferate trees on hot summer days. And that means that there is alert among trees, that they are warning each other from bark beetle attacks, for example, and you can smell tree language. But you have to know which tree is poisonous, which not edible, for example. You can eat beet trees. You can eat European oak. You can eat Douglas fir.

You can eat spruce. And you can try to taste. which tree it is with closed eyes. That's also very funny for the whole family. And by this, yeah, you experience a lot of different trees. So you experience that there's so much more to discover in the forest. Yeah, I have to get better at tasting trees, it seems. Well, this book is full of fun facts.

Peter, you just told us a few of your favorites. Jane, what about you? What are some of your favorite fun facts about the forest? Well, one of the things I like to do if there are young people in the group is take them and show them bark beetle galleries, the patterns that the bark beetles make either in the bark itself. You can see it in the bark. You can also see it in the wood. So they can trace where the beetle larvae started out their lives, where they moved and ate through the wood, where they exited through the bark. They can hold up the bark and have a look

through the holes. So to understand that this very artistic and very beautiful patterns have been made by little beetles that have been living in the trees. And then to explain that under a normal balanced system, this works very well. There's not too many bark beetles. The trees can manage to defend themselves. But in a drought situation, when there isn't enough sap in the tree and they can't push the bark beetles out, then that's when things become a problem. So I like people to understand that the ecosystem left on its own is a very balanced

ecosystem, but there are times when it starts to struggle and then these are signs that you can see in the forest that you're going out into. What sense do you think we should use more of while out in the forest? What's an underrated forest sense? Peter? Perhaps our ears. We can all do when we are out in the forest, sit down at a tree, lean against the stem, and then close your eyes, hear what's going on in the forest, and then afterwards,

draw a sound map. That's really cool because there's so much to hear. I've talked to blind people and there are some who can judge which tree species it is by the sound of the wind going through the crown. So that's really crazy what you all may hear out in the forest. There's so much about sound in nature. It's so underestimated and it's very, very important for warnings, for communications. and you can dive into that and be part of it.

And usually we just use our eyes. That's amazing. Jane, what about you, an underrated forest sense? So for me, it would be just feeling the air on your skin and getting a sense of how a forest changes the temperature around you, how when you step into a forest, you immediately feel that it's cool to find out where the breezes are coming, to look and see what's growing in those areas,

to get a sense that a forest is almost like a collection of different rooms that you can walk through to find different spaces within the forest itself. And you can look at the vegetation that's growing there and see that it differs, the understory differs, depending on whether you're on a windier, higher part of the forest, or if you're on a cool, low part of the forest, maybe next to a beaver pond. So you can begin to get a sense of how the forest mosaic is put together to support so many different kinds of plants and animals.

And one way of doing that is to just feel the air on your skin and to feel how that temperature is changing, to feel where the breezes are coming through. That really makes me want to go outside right now. So we're seeing a worrying increase in invasive species across the U.S. We reported last year on the spread of Beach Leaf disease in the Northeast. It's a disease that's likely killing off many of these familiar trees. Does your experience spending so much time in

forests give you a specific perspective on diseases like these? So I think that one thing, it would be very nice if people understand with the forest being an ecosystem that is kept in a certain balance, that there is an impact of invasive species coming in, so

that they can be, when they go out, hiking, they can think, are my hiking boots clean? Are my bringing in seeds? If people are gardening close to forests and woodlands to understand which of the plants in their garden might escape and go into the forest where I live, ivy's a big problem in our forestlands. It can smother trees. And it's often planted as an ornamental in the garden. So I think if people just put themselves in the place of being in the forest and think what belongs there and what doesn't, and if everyone could just do their bit to make sure that they keep it as clean and as whole of a system as they can. And even that comes with, you know, garbage and discarding things, or maybe there's an orange peel

that you're going to leave in the forest after you've had your lunch because you think, well, it's biodegradable, so it doesn't matter. But the point is that it is making a difference in that forest ecosystem. It's maybe encouraging other people to leave bits and pieces, or it's taking a really, long time to break down and it doesn't belong there and it's not what the animals are expecting to be eating or breaking down. So just a sense of respect when you go into the forest and understanding that every time you go and you do make an impact. So try to make that a positive impact when you're enjoying the forest. That's great advice. So I haven't been able to spend time

outside as much as I would like because it's raining heavily or there's a heat warning. I'm wondering if you have any advice for our listeners who can't spend as much time as they'd like outside, but are missing the outdoors in their local forests? So forests create different ecosystems. So sometimes you can be surprised. If you go out in a coniferous forest in the pouring rain, you actually don't necessarily get that wet because the trees act like big umbrellas. Or if it's really hot, a forest or a woodland could be a great place to go because of the shade because of the trees creating a cooler atmosphere with transpiring moisture all around you. So maybe give it a go and see what it seems like when you're sitting outside.

The weather could be quite different out there. And I think that that's a sign of the power of forests that they have to change their environment and a good reminder that they are actively interacting with the world around them and making it a different place, which is one of the reasons that they're so important for our planet. I love that. I love the advice of if it seems too rainy to go outside, maybe try going outside anyway and see how rainy it actually is. That's great. And I have a little addition. In Germany we have a word that says rain is liquid sunshine. Hmm. I love that. Peter, could I ask you to tell us how to say that rain is liquid sunshine in German?

In German, it would be, Regen is Flissiger Sonnenstein. Amazing. I won't try it for our listeners' sake, but we're going to try to adopt that here in the U.S. I really love the chapters about creative ways to spend time in nature with young people. What's your favorite way to engage kids while in the forest? Peter?

Yeah, first, what do I do everything when I have a little group of children with me in the forest? I encourage them to shout as loud as they can because they relax and even better the wildlife relaxes because they know instantly, okay, there are no hunters on their way that are just children. They do no harm. And so we can experience much more wildlife. So that's the best way to start. And most parents give the advice, be quiet, be quiet so that the animals, so that you can see more animals. But it's just the other way around. Jane, what about you? So there's so.

much on the forest floor that is worth investigating. It's really cool if you can look for the cones of Douglas fir, and you can tell the kids the story about the little mouse tails that are in the Douglas fir. So Douglas fir cones have these little brats, and they look like the hind legs of mice with a little tail. So many years ago, there was a huge forest fire, and the mice needed somewhere to seek sanctuary, and the Douglas firs offered them a safe place to be. And you can see that they're looking after the little mice to this day. And of course, Doug Furs were a great choice because when they get to about 40 years old, they've got a thick, insulating bark that is resistant to fire that runs along the forest floor.

And another thing you find that falls onto the forest floor. We have a lot of it here. It's a lichen called Old Man's Beard or Usnia, and it has central threads that run through it. And when these are well hydrated, it's lovely and stretchy. So you can pick up things from the forest floor and you can turn them into games of discovery. Amazing. I think it's about time we all get up from our desks and go outside. I'd like to thank both of my guests. Peter Volleben is a forester, conservation activist and best-selling author. And Jane Billinghurst is an author, translator, naturalist, and master gardener. They are the co-authors of this September's SciFry Book Club Pick, Forest Walking, Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America.

You can find out more, including How to Win a Free Book on our website, ScienceBriott.com slash book club. Thank you both for spending some time inside with me today. What's a pleasure. Thank you very much, Diana. And that's all the time we have for today. A lot of people help make the show possible, including Jason Rosenberg, George Harper,

Kathleen Davis, Shoshana Bucksdown. On tomorrow's episode, we'll round up the top news and science this week. But for now, I'm Cyfry producer D. Petersmith. See you then.