A Life Beneath the Canopy

How California’s Trees Shaped a Book, a Friendship, and a Calling

I first fell in love with trees as a high school student in the green underworld of the eastern deciduous forests near Williamsburg, Virginia. My teacher, Charles Dubay, believed we should know our world with both precision and appreciation. In his field biology class he taught us the trees twice—once in the fullness of leaf and light, when the crowns cast shade and shimmered in the wind, and again in the starkness of winter, when the branches and bark told their stories—bare.

My initiation

Learning to read the woods like a book, I began to see that trees were not just silent bystanders. They were elders, architects, and archivists of the land.

Years later, I journeyed west—toward ancient giants and secret groves. California, with its dazzling diversity of ecosystems, opened up a whole new language of trees. I wandered into the Klamath Mountains, where conifers cloak the ridges in a kind of wild reverence. Here, the trees are different. Older. Odder. Some, like Brewer spruce and foxtail pine, live only in these rugged cradles of stone. Others, like redwoods, stretch the bounds of imagination—and gravity.

What started as curiosity became devotion. And devotion, in time, became a book.

California Trees

Created with my friend and botanist Matt Ritter, California Trees is a love story for the forests, woodlands, and isolated groves that define this vast and varied state. But it’s more than that. It’s an invitation to slow down, to look up, and to learn the names and stories of the beings rooted in our backyards and beyond.

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Why Trees Matter

Trees give us everything. Oxygen to breath. Shade to rest beneath. Timber for our homes. Medicine, food, beauty, stabilize soil, and sequester carbon. They’re timekeepers and rainmakers. And in an age of ecological uncertainty, they may just be the most important allies we have.

We wrote California Trees not as a field guide alone, but as a bridge between science and connection. Through detailed descriptions, vivid photos, and stories of evolutionary marvel and resilience, we hope readers will come to know these trees—not just by name, but by character.

And once you know a tree, truly know it, how can you not care for it?

In a changing climate, love becomes a form of resistance. Appreciation becomes action. The more people feel connected to the trees around them, the more likely they are to protect them—not out of duty, but out of deep, abiding relationships. Whether you’re a seasoned naturalist or a curious wanderer, California Trees is an offering of beauty, wonder, and belonging.

👉 Explore the book and download your free PDF before April 1st at Backcountry Press.