Australian journalist Andrew Darby, a veteran of the battles for the Tasmanian forests, nearly died and then decided to spend a couple of years bushwalking through areas of Tasmania in order to see, hear, touch, and feel remote trees millennia old, often hard to reach in the depths of remote valleys or on mountaintops besieged by the island’s harsh weather. Adding a layer of difficulty, he taught himself to trek in the wild at age seventy and he insisted he walk alone, all the better to experience the trees. The result is The Ancients: Discovering the World’s Oldest Surviving Trees in Wild Tasmania, a lovely, elegantly written paean to the grandeur and diversity of nature. The book’s chapters encompass his pursuit of King’s Lomatia (maybe the oldest surviving single tree in the world), King Billy Pines, Pencil Pines, Huon Pines, and more. Throughout, the author decries the butchery of gold diggers, miners, and the state’s logging arm. If you have hiked or walked any of Tasmania’s punishing woods, slopes, and gullies, The Ancients will bring back memories galore, but even if bushwalking is not your hobby, this will stiffen your resolve to protect what little wilderness remains on our Earth.
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