In August 2001, my wife and I purchased four acres of hillside land in Southwest Wisconsin. An enormous piss elm stood as the centerpiece, shading a well-groomed hillside. The tree dropped all of its leaves the following July, and they never came back. It remained incredible as it slowly shed its bark and dropped a few dangerous limbs. Eventually, the thrill of marveling at it turned to fear. We brought in a sawyer to top it in January 2004. What a mess. A heavy duty mess. So we organized it.

A tornado tore through the hollow in August 2005, snapping two-and-a-half stately shagbark hickories. With the help of family and friends, we gathered the wood to a central location and split it. The three trees have heated our home well into 2008. I loved those trees. This book serves both as a memorial to those trees and as a personal journal. It will appeal to almost every all-around tree-appreciator alive.

If I told you Treehugger is another concept book by The Heavy Duty Press, that it is the third title classified as such by The Heavy Duty Press, and that it was created four years after the publication of the well-received debut concept book by The Heavy Duty Press, Alchemy, I would be giving you a series of three related objective statements with a singular subjective hyphenated two-word adjective for the sole purpose of creating anticipation and excitement where there would otherwise be very little fanfare.

If I told you Treehugger is a 48-page spiral bound book including five perforated postcards with four-color digitally printed, computer-assisted, original collages (suitable for framing) on the front, with personal notations and observations by the artist (me, Mr Koppa) on the reverse side, clearly identified with twenty-five silhouettes of common trees’ leaves,I would be giving you a solid justification for why I am calling Treehugger a postcard book.

However, because ten of the 48 pages in Treehugger are the fronts and backs of five postcards, or because four of the 48 pages are the front and back covers and inside covers, or perhaps simply because it is spiral bound like a 60-page notebook that has 60 two-sided pages ruled for writing, my statement that Treehugger is a 48-page book is, I suppose, open for debate.

What I can say, with confidence, is that the front and back covers and the five perforated postcard pages are printed on Mohawk 80 pound cover weight paper, and that the remainder of the pages, whether you choose to consider them 34 of 48 or 17 of 24 (which would include the front and back covers), are printed on Mohawk 80 pound text weight paper.

I can also tell you that Treehugger is self-portraitish, not so much in an autobiographical manner, but more so in its introspective revelations, with the occasional autobiographical nuance. Treehugger is also a legitimate specimen book of common North American tree leaves and fits nicely into any breast pocket, making it an ideal companion for every walk in the woods.

I could mention the multi-faceted nature of Treehugger, like the Filbert Roth quotation reprinted from an email message to the artist (yours truly) by one-time "Andy’s Hunch on What to Munch" author Andrew Tenaglia, the afterword by our conservationist neighbor Jack Rath, and the creative log documenting the forty-one-hour evolution of the book, but that might be telling you much more than you need to know to dive head-first into ordering your own copy of Treehugger now.

I contracted Dairyland Printing of Viroqua, Wisconsin, to print 10 copies of Treehugger, the first non-letterpress-printed book from The Heavy Duty Press. Three copies of the limited edition (lettered A through J and modestly autographed by Mr Koppa (can you BELIEVE it?!)) remain for sale.

Given the labor and the cost of printing and binding 10 copies, we have calculated that Treehugger is fairly priced at $175. Therefore, the price is $175

Don't have the scratch? HEY! I've got an idea... Why don't you walk over to your local public or university library and ask the librarian whom you need to speak with if you know of a book that you feel would be an asset to your community? That way EVERYBODY gets to have the book. It just might work! (It's the special collections librarian that you need to see.)

All books by The Heavy Duty Press come with a ten-day all-your-money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied with your purchase of any book by the The Heavy Duty Press, simply return it within ten days of receipt in near mint condition or better and we will happily refund your money because we know that someone else is bound to come around somewhere down the road and buy it. That, and we want you to be happy.

Contact Mr Koppa by email to arrange for payment by check or money order.

Thank you for your support of The Heavy Duty Press.