At the urging of friends, Waitsfield resident Leo Laferriere sat down in 2024 and wrote a short book about his life in the woods as a forester, hiker, husband, and father.
The book, ‘A Forester’s Notebook – Life from the Mountains,’ is a slim 43-page treasure that reads like an elegy. In it, Laferriere offers observations garnered from his time in the woods and fields of Vermont but also beyond the Green Mountain state as he travels north, east, and west.
It’s evident almost immediately that his vocation, forester, surveyor, Vermont Department of Forest, Parks and Recreation commissioner, was always more than work and the short tales he tells demonstrate his passion for forests and the earth and its creations as well as the sense of solace and refuge he finds there.
What really struck me was how much and how often he just stopped to listen and look, breathing in silence and observing what was around him, then sharing his observations like miniature paintings rich in detail, reverence, and symbolism.
Laferriere spent much of his professional life in the woods and rather than sink into complacency and the tedium of the familiar, continued and continues to see things with curiosity and open eyes.
When I asked if I could review the book he demurred initially, telling me that the book was “just some memories of an old forester who felt and experienced a special kinship to and with the land.” That special kinship is exactly what he captures in this small volume.
Only 65 copies of the book were printed and he shared those with friends and family. He has made one available at the Joslin Memorial Library and it’s well worth the read. It would be lovely to sit by the fire under the soaring ceilings of the library and read this book straight through but it’s also the kind of book you might want to savor in small bits and return back to a favorite passage. Or maybe both.
