A Buddhist and environmentalist carries her appreciation of trees beyond simple nature study or poeticism with twenty-seven evocative, thought-provoking meditations. Included are twenty-seven original lithographs.

"Kaza is deeply serious as she strives for the heartfelt in trees. . . . We get many wonderful moments down in the drinking roots of sycamores; up in the spring ecstasy of pollinating maples; sitting in the still wisdom of caves; and watching a nervous Kaza, with a diamond mind and a chain saw, cutting firewood that she praises."—Kirkus

"In The Attentive Heart we recover our primordial intimacy with trees. We are sheltered, nourished, and inspired by trees both physically and spiritually. Our loss of the forests and woodlands of the world is the loss of so many of our deepest interior experiences: the grace of the willow, the vigor of the oak, the flow of the American elm and the ash, the toughness of hickory. In this volume our sensitivity, our attentive heart, is awakened and from there we are on our own."—Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth

"Stephanie Kaza's book is a triumph—Deep Ecology writing at its most humbly, powerfully evocative. Her encounters with trees teach us to know—and, in knowing to love—both world and self. For here each tree, in disclosing its own story, its own beauty, reveals the beholder's as well. Each tells us, in a different voice, that if we are to preserve the natural world, we must let it feed our souls."—Joanna Macy, author of World as Lover, World as Self