Overview

"For Tom Springer, the usual four seasons can't begin to describe the mini-solstices of a Midwestern year: ""Does summer really begin on June 21? No, the first ripe Michigan strawberries say summer to me ... just as a sumac that flames crimson in an August fencerow sends up the first semaphore flag of autumn. While these milestones aren't measured by celestial reckoning, learning to know and observe them can greatly enrich a life."" The Star in the Sycamore takes readers on a journey of rare insight and local discovery. In the ecstasy of a dusk feeding frenzy, Springer catches a slew of fat bass and toothsome pike in ""a little river gone wild in the city."" In his love for country dogs, un-pampered on their beds of barn straw, he sees an ancient link to musky, wild pleasures that ""fur babies"" will never know. In his quest to learn dozens of star constellations, he reveals a striking connection between stars, trees and souls. Along the way, he meets people forever changed and healed by wildness. A combat soldier on a flight home, whose agitated demeanor grows calm and joyful as he describes an upcoming leave in the north woods. A burned-out nonprofit executive who becomes a native plant herbalist to cure herself and then the bodies and psyches of others. Through it all, Springer weaves humor, grace and a luminous sense of the ordinary."

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9781950659654

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Reviews

"""Tom Springer's elegant, earthy and generous book is exactly the sustenance I needed in this time of lockdown and sorrow. It's a treasure."" JERRY DENNIS, author of The Living Great Lakes and The Windward Shore""Springer writes what he sees - a modern-day Impressionist who weaves his vignettes with a cadence and tempo not unlike the signature in a collection of Longfellow poems. A Romantic in his own right, Springer's The Star in the Sycamore holds true to its byline and gives the reader a welcome escape from the madding crowd to ""discover nature's hidden virtues in the wild nearby.""LISA M. ROSE, herbalist, forager, urban farmer and author of Midwest Foraging and Midwest Medicinal Plants""Tom Springer does with words what artists do with their palettes: paint vibrant, insightful portraits of nature and what people do in it and to it: ""the red-tailed hawk, proud, fast and vigilant as only a bird of prey can be,"" the empty bottles of cheap wine despoiling a backwoods road, the urban herbalist foraging for marshmallow root and burdocks in the weedy margins of a city; even in lake algae ""the color of a kale smoothie."" ERIC FREEDMAN, Director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University"

Tom Springer's elegant, earthy and generous book is exactly the sustenance I needed in this time of lockdown and sorrow. It's a treasure. JERRY DENNIS, author of The Living Great Lakes and The Windward Shore Springer writes what he sees - a modern-day Impressionist who weaves his vignettes with a cadence and tempo not unlike the signature in a collection of Longfellow poems. A Romantic in his own right, Springer's The Star in the Sycamore holds true to its byline and gives the reader a welcome escape from the madding crowd to discover nature's hidden virtues in the wild nearby. LISA M. ROSE, herbalist, forager, urban farmer and author of Midwest Foraging and Midwest Medicinal Plants Tom Springer does with words what artists do with their palettes: paint vibrant, insightful portraits of nature and what people do in it and to it: the red-tailed hawk, proud, fast and vigilant as only a bird of prey can be, the empty bottles of cheap wine despoiling a backwoods road, the urban herbalist foraging for marshmallow root and burdocks in the weedy margins of a city; even in lake algae the color of a kale smoothie. ERIC FREEDMAN, Director, Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Michigan State University

Author Information

"Tom Springer writes about the natural world and how people can live more deeply in the ""wild nearby"" through conservation, observation and contemplation. He has spent more than 30 years as a writer, editor and manager, most notably for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the University of Notre Dame. His first collection of essays, Looking for Hickories (University of Michigan Press) was named a Michigan Notable Book. Tom's essays regularly appear in publications such as Michigan Blue magazine, Notre Dame magazine and Front Porch Republic, and have aired in spoken form on National Public Radio."

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