Born of Fire and Rain

Go beyond the scenery of the Pacific temperate rainforest to witness how complex ecosystems survive in a world of upheavals

2025 National Outdoor Book Awards (NOBA) winner, Natural History Literature category

2025 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Finalist, Oregon Book Award in the General Nonfiction category, 2026

2026 Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction Finalist, sponsored by Literary Arts

If you live on a rapidly changing planet, you'd be wise to learn how it works. The giant old forests on a skinny stretch of land on the far west coast of North America have a lot to say about living in a twitchy world.

In this engaging book science writer M. L. Herring takes readers into the Pacific temperate rainforest at the tumultuous edge of a shifting continent in a precarious moment of time. Readers peek behind the magnificent scenery into a forest of ancient trees, exploding mountains, disappearing owls, tsunamis, megafires, and ten million people to learn what it means to be a forest in a world of upheavals.

Through Herring's words and pictures, readers drift into the canopy through masses of ferns and lichens, burrow into soil through hair-thin threads of fungi, and plunge headlong through a watershed flushed with rain and snowmelt. Readers experience the temperate rainforest through science and art as it faces a shifting climate and the shifting priorities of a constantly changing society. The book journeys beyond the grid of latitude and longitude and into places only one's imagination can fit, to discover what it means to be human in an ecological world.

M. L. Herring is associate professor emerita of science communication at Oregon State University, where she continues to lead workshops to inspire people to experience the world through observation, art, and ecology. She lives in Corvallis, OR.

Review Quotes:

"Lovely . . . punctuated with illustrations from Herring's sketchbooks, which she carried on her many forest journeys. The book is passionate, at times poetic, in which natural history, art, and care for the natural environment converge elegantly."--National Outdoor Book Awards

"Accessible and engaging."--Bryony Cottam, Geographical

"A great read for not only professionals who have not visited the ecosystem but also anyone interested in forest ecology."-- Choice

"Born of Fire and Rain is filled with deeply researched scientific stories about the adaptations and intricacies at work in ancient forests. Beautifully written and illustrated, inviting, and up-to-the-minute, this wonderful and remarkable book is a rewarding and enjoyable read. It will appeal especially to readers who liked Braiding Sweetgrass or Finding the Mother Tree."--Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Earth's Wild Music

"The Douglas-fir forests of the Pacific Northwest region of North America are nearly without rival in the world, and their distinctions have rarely been fully appreciated. M. L. Herring beautifully captures their story."--Jerry F. Franklin, University of Washington College of the Environment

"This is a passionate and extremely readable tribute to the Pacific Northwest forests, giving readers a true sense of the importance, ecology, and special sanctuary of these trees."--Meg Lowman, author of The Arbornaut

"This thrilling book, charged with awe, compassion, humility, and wonder, takes us on an unforgettable journey among ancient giants and unstable terrain. In the face of environmental disaster, M. L. Herring offers real hope for a shared future springing from new ways of seeing, imagining, and understanding our astonishing planet."--Fiona Stafford, author of The Long, Long Life of Trees

"M. L. Herring weaves together strands of science and nature writing, local history, and memoir to create a contemplative, deeply researched, and sensory-rich portrait of the Pacific temperate rain forest."--James Barilla, author of My Backyard Jungle