Rewild your Writing with a Tree Font
Book Review: The Language of Trees
The Language of Trees by Katie Holten
Recently, I picked up a (digital) copy of this gorgeous book, The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten. A dear friend sent me a photo of the book she found at a bookstore and I was immediately enthralled by the cover and physical design of the book. It is a collection of essays about trees, nature, and human relationships to our natural world. A quick Google revealed a powerful list of contributors including Ursula K. Le Guin (a deceased incredible science fiction/speculative fiction female writer), Robin Wall Kimmerer (Native American scientist, author of Braiding Sweetgrass), and Suzanne Simard (forest biologist responsible for breakthrough research into how trees function as a communistic ecosystem through mycellial networks).
Cover Design
I feel remiss as a designer if I don’t talk about the lovely construction of the book. The paper bellyband 3/4 size dustjacket wonderfully contrasts with the stark white foiling on the black fabric cover. Unlike most books, the cover design doesn’t feature any English at all: only picograms of trees, even on the spine where the title would traditionally go.
This speaks to the theme the book carries of “rewilding” literature through the use of a font made of tree illustrations, which is available for all to use.
Tree Font
Speaking of the tree font let’s talk about it! It was developed by the author, Katie Holten, to ground our words to the natural environment.
“[The font] translat[es] our letters into trees, words into woods, and stories into forests.” - Katie Holten
Each letter represents a species of tree: A for Ash, B for Birch, etc to create a whole diverse array of letters, and an set of biodiverse trees that certainly isn’t a monoculture.
When written together the letters/trees form sentences, or a full forest on the page. As shown in this image from The Language of Trees:
“The Tree Alphabet is a living alphabet that can be planted, allowing us to seed stories, watch them sprout and grow.” - Katie Holten
The look of the font is inspired by a medieval Irish lettering system.
“Ireland’s medieval Ogham, sometimes called a ‘tree alphabet,’ used trees for letters. The characters were called feda, ‘trees’, or nin, ‘forking branches’, due to their shapes. This ancient writing was read from the ground up–each character sprouting from a central line, like branches on a tree.” - Kate Holten
Holten’s tree font is available for all to use and is available on her website, or you can play around with it live on this website “Write With Trees”!
Book’s Themes
The book is a collection of essays from a variety of writers featuring personal anecdotes, poetry, nonfiction essays, current research, activism work, and more. The book is divided into themed sections that follow a tree’s life-cycle and anatomy. A few being: Seeds-Soil-Saplings, Buds-Bark-Branches, Flowers-Fruits, and then proceeds to get more wider reaching and metaphorical in scope with sections like: Forests-Family Trees, Tree People, Roots and Resilience.
As a whole, the book encompasses a spectrum of the human experience and relationship to trees and forests. Both how humans over time have extracted and sustainably used trees for art and culture: the book features recipes for oak gall ink (which is a permanent ink that was used in medieval manuscripts), and acorn bread.
The book shifts through its themes seamlessly. Some of my favourite essays were:
The Ojibwe New Year by Winona Laduke, which details the six seasons the Northern peoples live by and the language that’s used to describe them.
Branches, Leaves, Roots, and Trees by Robert MacFarlane which details a collection of lost words from other languages that relate to trees.
Tree X Office by Natalie Jeremijenko, a passionate call to occupy trees.
Speaking of Nature by Robin Wall Kimmerer, on humanizing the language we use to talk about trees and ecosystems.
The book also covers many essays talking about Indigenous and BIPOC relationships to land and resources and was wonderfully inclusive. It also doesn’t shy away from discussing the harm humans as a whole are wreaking on the natural world we live in.
To All the Trees I’ve Loved Before
The book opens with a lovely essay by Ross Gay, who writes about all the trees they’ve loved before. I found it very inspiring to think about the trees that have special significance to my life over the years. A few of the trees I’ve loved before:
The horse chestnut tree in the nearby park that my partner and I read under and have made a natural ink from its chestnuts,
The garry oaks in a nearby wetlands that I’ve had picnics under with many different and dear friends,
A random chestnut tree on my walk to elementary school that had larger, bigger, infinitely better chestnuts than any of the other trees along the street that made my walk to school in the autumn exciting,
The twisting, gnarled, plum tree in my elementary school that was awfully fun to climb and sit in during recess and felt like safe haven away from a place in hindsight, I didn’t have a fun time at most days.
Conclusion
I thoroughly enjoyed the book as a whole. While I read a digital version, I feel the book would be best experienced as a physical read. It was a well-rounded, extremely interesting and well-curated collection of essays.
Each essay or curated submission was fairly short, which, in a poorly executed collection can feel surface-level, each essay felt cohesive, detailed, and engaging. Of course, there were essays that resonated with me more than others but that’s par the course for an anthology like this. I would highly recommend it if you like nature writing or want to learn more about trees, forests, ecosystems, and our different and unique human relationships to nature.
Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it? Tell me about a tree you’ve loved before! What’s been the best book you’ve enjoyed lately - fiction or nonfiction? Have a book rec you think I should read? Let me know!
I’ve got “Remarkably Bright Creatures” on my TBR list from now from a lovely friend who replied to a prior issue!
Small Update! I’ve opened a ko-fi account!
I’ve gone back and forth if I should make a monthly paid tier here for anyone who wants to support my writing financially (if they have the means and desire to), while allowing me to keep all the issues free. It just hasn’t really quite sat right, at least not right now.
So I decided to do a bit of an in-between system! If you enjoyed this issue and would like to support my work here, consider buying me a “coffee” here! It’s a $3 one time tip (or you can change the amount) to just give a little support if you like what I’m doing and want to support in a monetary way! Absolutely no pressure though. I’m not expecting this of anyone, just set it up just because :)
This is what feels more comfortable to me than setting up a monthly subscription tier for this substack right now! It’s entirely optional and only for those who wish to support a little and have the financial means to do so!
All issues here will be kept free until such a time where I figure out the approach for a paid tier (if that time ever comes). I really believe in keeping the bulk of my work free and accessible for educational purposes, so who knows if that day will come. Anyway, enough rambling. Even if you can’t/don’t want to support financially, I appreciate every open, like, comment and element of virtual support on this space just as much <3
Love this post and will have to try and find a physical copy of the book. It looks and sounds so lovely.
As far as tree related memories I can think of a few:
- We had a huge maple try in our backyard where we hung rope swings, watched birds and often enjoyed the shade in the summers. One year it got struck by lightning and it lost a large branch, but the rest still stood up until a couple years ago.
- Our family also had a single line of fruit trees along the south side of our property: cherry, apple, a couple pear and one peach. Every other year the cherry trees produced sooo much fruit that we’d have to invite friends and neighbors over to help harvest and share in the abundance.
- The last one was at my grandma’s house. A line of pine trees where I would search for hummingbird nests. Sometimes getting sticky with sap since it would fall under the trees.
Thanks for making me recall these tree inspired memories.
I'm impressed there are trees for letters like X and Z
"A few of the trees I’ve loved before" - this was such a nice reflection point and made me think about the meaningful trees in my own life