The Vineyard Haven library welcomes Vineyard resident and professional forester Bob Perschel for a talk about his 50-year quest in pursuit of something larger than all of us, documented in his new book, “Numinosity: A New England Forester’s Search for the Ineffable.”
“Numinosity” is a collection of stories and poems, offering a rare and moving account of what happens when deep scientific knowledge of the forest meets a search for transcendence within it. Drawing on Jungian concepts of the numinous, those encounters with an awe-inspiring force that defies full articulation, Perschel’s poems emerge from the lived intimacy of forest work: marking timber alone in winter woods, listening to the life cycle of an ancient oak, and reckoning with the weight of human impact on a landscape.
Perschel has helped conserve 6 million acres of New England’s forests during a four-decade career as a professional forester. He chaired the 53-member Northern Forest Alliance, and co-founded the Forest Stewards Guild, a national organization of ecologically focused foresters. As executive director of the New England Forestry Foundation, he led the creation of Exemplary Forestry standards that use climate-smart management to offset significant regional carbon emissions. He holds a psychology degree from Yale College and a master’s of forestry science from the Yale School of the Environment. Bob lives in an oak forest on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard.
4 pm on Friday, Sept. 4, at the Vineyard Haven library, 200 Main St. in Vineyard Haven. Free and open to the public, no registration required. For more information, please contact the library at vhpl_programs@clamsnet.org or call 508-696-4211.
