Times can feel a bit dark these days, like they’re dimming with the light. The coming winter shortens days and lengthens evenings, and November’s elections had some sobering implications for the environment.

To lift your spirits and energize you to take action for the natural world, a smart place to start is by cozying up with a book. Scenic Hudson staffers have recommended their favorite nonfiction and fiction, classics and fresh works, that focus on nature. The common thread among these books is that they can really help us see trees, animals, plants, even fungi — and the way they coexist with humans — in new ways.

Whether you’re looking for holiday gift ideas or ready to order reads for the new year from the library, here are some pages to turn.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

(Rec: Morgan Bennett, Parks Stewardship Coordinator)

Considered a modern classic of writing about the natural world, this book beautifully touches on Indigenous wisdom and the reciprocity of life. It offers a way to look beyond how science is taught to us today and view life through a lens of Indigenous knowledge. This is also a book that’s close to home, since Kimmerer works as a a professor at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.  

The Overstory, by Richard Powers

(Rec: Lynn Freehill-Maye, Viewfinder Managing Editor)

Nonfiction works about the environment are more common, but Richard Powers uses this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to crack open our human hearts to plant life. Even if you read nothing but the opening chapter, which evokes the ways the way a single chestnut tree witnesses generations of an American family’s lives on their farm, you’d never forget it. But stay with The Overstory through its intertwined stories of scientists, immigrants, gamers, and activists — and the trees that give them life — and it will change the way you appreciate trees forever.

A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold

(Rec: Dan Smith, Natural Resources Manager)

A Sand County Almanac is one of the seminal and foundational books in nature writing and conservation, first published in 1949. It is almost a poetic memoir following Leopold’s care and restoration of an abandoned farm in Wisconsin, along with points earlier in his career with the U.S. Forest Service. As a conservation philosophy, it was ahead of its time, and it still has a deep impact on how many people think today. In particular, I consider the concluding essay of the volume, “The Land Ethic,” required reading for the conservation-minded.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, by Anna Tsing

(Rec: María José Gimenez, Language Justice Editor)

Always a fan of seeing the invisible made visible, I love learning about intricate patterns and connections between natural life forms and human lives. In a series of vignettes, this book reveals how hunting for matsutake, one of the most valued mushrooms, exploits ecosystems, pickers, and economic systems alike. It inspires reflection on underground and human networks of reciprocity and interdependence — and how land disturbed by human activity can become a place of sustenance, collaboration, and community building.

One Man’s Meat, by E.B. White

(Rec: Kevin Webb, Senior Land Project Manager)

This collection of essays by the author of Charlotte’s Web recounts his first few years on a saltwater farm in rural Maine, after half a life in New York City. White artfully reels you in with poignant, humorous stories about livestock, changing seasons, and rural characters, then gooses from behind with devastating insight on what it means to be part of a fragile world in a dawning age of immense human power.

Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck

(Rec: Joe Kiernan, Senior Parks Project Manager)

Cannery Row was the first thing I read by John Steinbeck, and I was hooked, you might say. It’s a short read full of poignant insights and wisdom about nature. Not “Nature” as something we are apart from, but nature as something we are a part of. Steinbeck watches the world and writes what he observes not as it ought to be, but just as he sees it in all of its messy sublimity, like any good scientist and all great authors.     

Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet, by Ben Goldfarb

(Rec: Alex Wolf, Conservation Scientist)

Crossings is a fascinating look at a structure most of us use daily without a second thought: roads. Roads have an outsized impact on wildlife populations, and this book delves into the issue to reveal facets that would never occur to most folks. One surprising impact of roads is noise — the author digs into the science of how road noise affects wildlife in ways I couldn’t have guessed. Interweaving personal narratives, history, and wildlife science, Crossings explores obvious and not-so-obvious impacts of roads on wildlife, impacts that have really only arisen in the last century or so. You’ll never see roads the same way again.

River of Mountains: A Canoe Journey Down the Hudson, by Peter Lourie

(Rec: Olivia Abel, Staff Copywriter)

I love a good adventure story even if — like climbing Mt. Everest — it’s not something I’m likely to tackle in my lifetime. But River of Mountains, which outlines the month-long canoe trip the author took from the Hudson River’s source in the Adirondacks all the way down to New York harbor, inspired me in a whole new way because I do spend time exploring this American Heritage River. This lively tale, recently re-issued, taught me so much about the human spirit; the river — past and present — and the amazing people and communities who continue to care for it.