Reading & presentation by award-winning author
Date: September 27 (rain or shine–reading will be in the beautiful Middle Barn)
Time: 4pm
Place: Vermont Family Forests’ Wells Farm, 2542 Quaker St. Lincoln, VT
Event: Reading and presentation, followed by wood-fired pizza and libations.
The event is free, but please reserve your spot so we know how many pizzas to cook up. We’ll provide wheat crusts, red and pesto sauce, and cheeses. Bring a pizza topping to share!
We’re thrilled to announce that author Marina Richie will be returning to Vermont Family Forests’ Middle Barn at Wells Farm on Sunday, September 27, at 4pm to celebrate the release of her new book, Feathered Forest: Aloft with Birds in Ancient Trees. For those of you fortunate enough to have joined us in 2022 for Marina’s reading from her previous book, Halcyon Journey, you know that her presentations are an auditory and visual feast. In 2023, Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher went on to win the prestigious John Burroughs medal, awarded to just one book each year.
In Feathered Forest, Marina reveals the dynamic, vertical world of old-growth forests through the eyes of the birds who inhabit them and the researchers who study them—from soil to understory to midstory to canopy. In each chapter, a particular bird species guides us into their part of the multilayered, centuries-old groves that are critical refugia in a time of climate crisis. Her beautiful title evokes both the literal and metaphorical feathering of ancient forests—in Marina’s words, “an ecosystem as interlocking and miraculous as the feathers that are the secret to bird flight.”
Marina’s lyrical prose carries readers with her on intimate encounters with ancient trees and the birds who live among them—whether rope-climbing high into the canopy of a 200-foot tall Douglas-fir or hunting for truffles in the rich duff of an old forest grove. Chapters interweave experience, research, memoir, and reflections on meaningful action in response to the myriad threats to ancient forest ecosystems. Feathered Forest is a love song, a lyric poem, a winged ode to birds and wild trees.
Though Marina focuses her attention on the ancient forests of her home grounds in western Oregon, her words ring true wherever birds and forests entwine, and her stories of Cascadia resound with familiar birds of our own eastern forests, from red crossbills to pileated woodpeckers.
Festivities begin at 4pm with Marina’s presentation and reading in Vermont Family Forests’ Wells Farm Middle Barn in Lincoln. Afterwards, we’ll cook up pizzas in our earth oven and share libations, including apple cider from Wells Farm. Join us for this rain-or-shine event!
If you’d like to read a little more about Marina and her work, you can visit her website.
