The Eagle Tree - Ned Hayes

This is a beautifully well-written book that will open your eyes to the beauty and the need to protect the trees that are around you from the tree-tops down to their roots. This book will also help in understanding those that are on the spectrum and how they see those around them.

Fourteen-year-old March Wong knows everything there is to know about trees. They are his passion and his obsession, even after his recent falls—and despite the state’s threat to take him away from his mother if she can’t keep him from getting hurt. But the young autistic boy cannot resist the captivating pull of the Pacific Northwest’s lush forests.

One day, March is devastated to learn that the Eagle Tree—a monolithic Ponderosa Pine near his home in Olympia—is slated to be cut down by developers. Now, he will do anything in his power to save this beloved tree, including enlisting unlikely support from relatives, classmates, and even his bitter neighbor. In taking a stand, March will come face-to-face with some frightening possibilities: Even if he manages to save the Eagle Tree, is he risking himself and his mother to do it?

I loved this book! I highly recommend this book to tree huggers, people interested in climate change, nature lovers, hikers, or anyone that has ever climbed a tree even if you were to scared to climb down.

"I believe in trees. I can touch them. And they have true names."

"Trees do not require you to make certain sounds to be understood. They are simply present and ready for you to climb at any time. Trees are easier."

"Sometimes I think I would like to be a tree. Sometimes I think I am a tree, just located temporarily in a moving body, like one of the Ents from the Lord of the Rings"

"You cannot own all of a tree," I said.

"Sometimes I wish it was not so hard for me to make myself understood. I wish I could plug an electric cord from my brain into someone else's ears so that they could hear how I think and I could understand how they think."

"Human beings are on the cusp of destroying all of God's great natural world, which was originally gifted, according to the scriptures, to the human race, who would function as stewards of this great Earth. We have not been every good stewards in the last century."