Protecting Nature IS Their Mission; Enchanted Forests Interview
We’ve got trees on our mind, thanks to today’s Enchanted Forests interview. So, let’s give a shout out to the 1,700 land trusts in the US doing the important and expensive work of protecting our nation’s lands and waters. Tis the season for giving, after all.
And giving is what the Nature Conservancy, Land Trust Alliance, Trust for Public Land, Open Space Institute, and other nonprofit trusts do: create open spaces, protect family farms and historic sites, partner with local, state, and federal governments—as well as Native American tribal groups—to expand parks and recreation areas so that everyone everywhere can enjoy nature. You give to them so that they can give back to you.
We’re talking about tens of millions of acres of land and water preserved over the past couple decades in North America alone. It’s mind boggling and it only happened because angels among us looked around and said, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” If those conservationists didn’t act, if they didn’t raise the money, private landowners would have certainly gobbled up the land for development.
In her review, Kristen Rabe calls Boria Sax’s Enchanted Forests a “brilliant introduction to the art and literature of the forest, examining how people conceive of the wilderness beyond the edges of civilization.”
The scope of Enchanted Forests is remarkable. You discuss a stunning range of mythology, art, philosophy, and literature related to forests, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Disney’s Bambi. Talk about your background and your interest in such expansive, diverse ideas. How did the 80-acre forest you inherited in New York affect your perspective?
Rather than focusing exclusively on any specialty, I like to draw analogies between domains that appear very far apart. In the 1980s, when I began to write about literature, I was disappointed to discover that I had to spend far more time sorting through commentaries than with poems and stories. The topic of animals in literature and folklore was, however, relatively new. Browsing in used bookshops, I came across eighteenth and nineteenth century encyclopedias of animals, which were an uncharted world of comedy and romance, filled with turkeys that speak Arabic, beavers that build like architects, and dogs that solve murders. They revealed every bit as much about human society as about birds and beasts.
I started writing mostly about human-animal relations and never stopped. Indulging my fondness for paradoxes, I addressed subjects like Nazi animal protection, the modernity of the ravens in the Tower of London, and the Thanksgiving turkey as a sacrificial offering. As for trees, I think of them as just a kind of animal. By now, I have published roughly twenty books, which have been translated into many languages. I often violate academic protocols, not only by addressing broad themes but also by inserting humor and lyricism into my texts. I teach in the college program of the Sing Sing Correctional Facility and the graduate literature program of Mercy University.
The forest in New York State that I inherited at first seemed completely wild, yet, on closer examination, it was filled with reminders of the past. Arrowheads and pottery shards were found there. Stone walls ran through it. I found the remains of a concrete milk cooler, indicating that the land had once been used for grazing livestock. Written records were very scarce, but I discovered references to a mill that once stood there in publications from the mid-nineteenth century. Fragmentary though these traces were, they stimulated my imagination. The forest connected me not only with the bears and birds but also with Native Americans, colonial farmers, and many others across the globe.
Most books on forests today focus on ecology and science, stressing the importance of identifying species, preserving habitats, and restoring native ecosystems. How does that emphasis on a forest’s “biological composition” differ from the cultural and literary discussions in Enchanted Forests?
While I do discuss forest ecology, my emphasis in Enchanted Forests is far more on cultural history. This includes the use of forests as a communal resource, a refuge from social turbulence, a royal hunting preserve, a nostalgic reminder of a storied past, a new Eden, a commodity, and so on. It includes the forests of knightly epics and fairy tales. I don’t believe that utilitarian reasons, however compelling, will be sufficient to motivate many people to preserve and restore their forests. They will also need stories, memories, and visions of what forests might become.
You are skeptical about arguments that idealize forests as a sort of botanical utopia—that is, portrayals suggesting an “old-fashioned village” where trees nurture each other “with friendships and occasional enmities.” Where do these idealized descriptions go wrong? What’s a more accurate depiction of the intelligence and community of trees?
If we think of the forest as an idealized human community, we are in danger of missing the qualities that make trees so distinctive. Human society, especially in the West, is very individualistic. With trees, it is impossible to say just where an individual organism begins and ends. Trees do not have unique DNA signatures; several trunks may be connected underground; trunks of different species may grow together; parts such as branches may live on even when severed. In a forest, organic matter is constantly recycled, and so it is impossible to even distinguish sharply between life and death. Perhaps a case might be made that these differences between human beings and trees are ultimately superficial, but we must first at least acknowledge them. The forest challenges many of our most fundamental ideas, and so understanding it requires a special effort of intellect and imagination. The point, however, is not to find a perfect model. Our relations with the forests are too complex for any single metaphor to be sufficient.
Biblical passages portrayed the wilderness as an indeterminate place of exile or wandering; Tacitus and Dante associated forests with death, loss, and gloom; and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness linked the jungles of Africa with nihilism. What is the significance of these dark images of the forest in Western culture?
Untended forests have long been viewed as the antithesis of “civilization,” in part because forests reclaim land that has been abandoned by people after wars, plagues, or natural disasters. Tacitus viewed the forests of Germany and the people who dwelled in them with a combination of terror and fascination, in much the same way as early European explorers viewed the forests and Indians of the Americas. Dante admired gardens and cultivated woodlands, but he was appalled by the idea of a primeval forest, full of disorderly vegetation and twisted, misshapen trees. But forests that had been demonized in the Renaissance were later idealized by the Romantics.
I don’t think Conrad’s Heart of Darkness linked the forests of Africa themselves with nihilism, just the European exploitation of them. European intellectuals of the late nineteenth century intuitively sensed that there was something profoundly wrong with their culture. This was sometimes called “fin de siècle malaise.” Unfortunately, they usually articulated this only in very abstract terms. If they had paid more attention to places like Congo, they would have seen a very concrete manifestation of this nihilism. According to scholarly estimates, about ten million people were killed in Congo when it was a protectorate of King Leopold II of Belgium, and the forests were despoiled for rubber and ivory. The other European powers in the region such as France were not a great deal better.
The book notes that European mythology and folklore often associated forests with feminine power, while early American art and folk tales tended to use masculine images. Can you cite a few examples and discuss the significance?
Throughout much of the world, the folkloric figures in forests are predominantly female. These include nymphs (Greece and Rome), nixies (Germany), vily (Serbia), rusalki (Russia and Ukraine), ladies of the lake (Arthurian legends), and yakshis (India). Supernatural women closely associated with the forest in folklore include Melusine (France), Baba Yaga (Russia and Ukraine), and Morgan le Fay (Arthurian legends). The forest itself is usually viewed as feminine, and, in psychoanalysis, it is a symbol of unexplored femininity. In Arthurian tales, association with the forest and its magic often makes the women fully equal to the men, at times more powerful.
But one extremely unfortunate consequence of this gendering of the forest over the last few centuries is that many men have thought of forests as something to be conquered or subdued. This is very apparent in stories of the giant logger Paul Bunyan, which began as folklore but were quickly appropriated in the 1920s for advertising by a lumber company. He was among the most celebrated of American heroes simply for cutting down woods on a prodigious scale. In America of the early to middle twentieth century, what forests remained were often seen as bastions of rugged masculinity, in which women were not welcome.
In Enchanted Forests, you describe a fascinating shift in the politics of forested land. You note that, historically, preservation of forests was championed by those on the political right, including wealthy landowners and the ruling class. The left’s adoption of environmentalism as a driving issue is a recent development. When did this shift happen and why?
Prior to the late Middle Ages, the forests of Northern and Central Europe appeared endless. Their resources were a gift of God, to be shared communally by all. Hermits could retreat there in search of solitude. Healers could seek out medicinal herbs, while cooks could hunt for edible roots and nuts. Peasants could gather firewood. They could also lead pigs and other livestock into the forest to graze or forage among the trees.
Starting in the reign of Charlemagne, the Carolingian kings and nobles began to assert ever greater dominion over their woods. They set aside huge preserves for the royal hunt, especially of the stag, which became the center of elaborate rituals that affirmed royal authority. This practice soon reached Britain and other countries. Poaching deer became a symbolic regicide that was punishable with mutilation, torture, and death. As the modern era approached, a royal hunting ground became a sort of kingdom within a kingdom, intended not only to preserve trees but also royal charisma and medieval splendor, as the business of governing became increasingly bureaucratized. The forests became a fantasy world in legends, which also appealed to nostalgia for the endless woodlands of old, where one could simply ride out without direction in search of adventures. Storytellers expressed that longing in knightly epics and even, in partly democratized form, the tales of Robin Hood.
Until recent times, the political left often regarded concern with forests as self-indulgent and escapist. In his poem “To Posterity,” Bertolt Brecht wrote, “to speak of trees is almost a crime, for it is a kind of silence about injustice!” This changed for a host of reasons including the collapse of Bolshevism and a growing awareness of the importance of forests for stabilizing the environment. I suspect that a nostalgia older and deeper than that for medieval grandeur also played a part- ̶ for the communal woods of very early times.
The leftist attitude toward the environment changed with the formation of the Green Party in Germany during the 1980s. At the time, the Greens were not thought of as left wing but as a fusion of elements from the left and the right. The Nazis had identified Germanic heritage with forests so many people feared that the Green Party might lead to a revival of Nazism. But, contrary to widespread expectations, the Green Party came to be not only unequivocally associated with the left but also a model for leftist political organizations throughout Europe and the world.
The Japanese interest in “forest bathing” has received a lot of media coverage recently. How do Asian views of forests compare with those in Western cultures?
Japan, more than any other country in the world, has vigilantly protected its forests since the early eighteenth century, perhaps because in Shinto they are seen as a dwelling place of spirits. The Japanese practice of “forest bathing” is essentially a form of Buddhist meditation. For one thing, there is the same awareness on controlling your breath. It is more structured than Western forms of spirituality. Some people may prefer to simply take a stroll in the woods, while others will find set practices very helpful.
Kristen Rabe
