The fear is related to the forest, not the plants. This feeling is very old, it goes back to Roman civilization. For the Romans, the forest was the place of the “stranger”: It was in the forest that the barbarians hid. Moreover, the French word “forêt” [forest] comes from the Latin foris, which means “outside”. In English, the word “foreign” refers to what you don’t know, that which is far away. It may be due to the ecological legacy of antiquity that the tree continues to be considered a material for trade, which is not very commendable. We have remained within this fear of the forest and the desire to sell wood.
Francis Halle, A Life drawing trees, Interview with Emmanuele Coccia # 6
Why do you fear the forest?
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- But who really owns land and nature? Humans have no more self-evident rights than grass, trees, and squirrels, not to speak of fungi and bacteria. Property, the conceit that state-backed human social relations give us absolute rights over things, does not go far in the realms of land and nature, wh …
What if everything is entangled
The wilderness of the forest is a quintessential symbol of nature. This wilderness seems to stand apart from us. The forest is where humans can get lost—like Hansel and Gretel—and where dangers await in the form of ferocious animals, as in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. For centuries, it seemed our only options were to control the forest, to chop it down and cultivate it, or to contemplate its beauty from a safe distance.
Yet the question arises: how much of this estrangement from the forest have we created ourselves? How much have we forgotten the knowledge that we are part of the forest, part of the world?
Our own body is a forest—a habitat teeming with countless living beings. This entanglement with other forms of life is not peripheral; it is vital to our survival.
of our Imagination
