How it began
On the autumn equinox of 2018, after reading a Flemish article about forest bathing and feeling the call of it in my bones, blood and belly, I set up this website.
It was mostly a blog, where I wrote about my search to learn more about nature connection and the different landscapes with which I engage so intimately.
A few years in, I started inviting guest bloggers, who each wrote one or more posts as volunteers. This year, now that Wood wide web stories is earning an income, I can finally pay guest bloggers a small commission.
From blog to bog
The blog has, quite fittingly, become more of a bog: over 200 contributions from and about various countries. Some of these might be a little outdated by now, but I won’t remove them. They’re part of a collective learning story, the traces, the dreaming lines or learning lines of this walk through life. I have been renaming categories as some of these traces have settled into structures and patterns.
The blog (or bog) will stay open access, and I hope it will go on feeding the stories we want to sell in the years ahead.
Becoming a registered enterprise
This year also saw me start a part-time postdoc within the European project Ecologies of Care. It is a perfect match, and something of a dream job, one it feels as though I may have been quietly preparing for since 2018, because so much of it comes easily.
This year, I registered Wood wide web stories as a Belgian enterprise: a consultancy where needed, but mainly a place to birth and care for stories, workshops and other nature-connection experiences, with a focus on the Campine region and a little beyond it, in both Belgium and the Netherlands.
For now, it remains a side business, with no profit. The investment costs of this starting year are high.
But the dream is for it to become my main work in a few years’ time, especially if I’m unable to continue the postdoc beyond 2029, and perhaps to combine it with a book café and tea garden: a small, gentle place for coming together, talking about and experiencing nature connection, both the nature within us and the nature around us.
Home to a tiny house and a small publisher
Wood Wide Web Stories is also home to a tiny house in a circular, regenerative neighbourhood and now to a small publisher.
Yes, I have bought ten ISBN numbers through the Belgian book market, and I’ll open things up for submissions in due course. The next books will be published later in 2027 and 2028. I need to learn and improve as I go.
This year, I started with my own book, which feels like the eldest daughter of a family of books, paving the way for the other nine brainchildren and books (with the nine other ISBN numbers) still to come.
Closer to the time, I’ll also explain what kind of books I’m looking for. But of course, this eldest daughter can tell you already what kind of book proposals I will welcome in 2027.
Paid guest blogs: two calls, two symposia
For paid guest blogs, you will need to be able to invoice (or you can take the fee as a discount on the on-land symposium in Lithuania). These are special calls tied to the symposia marking the final year of our three-year learning circle:
- eco+thanatology — closed now. Soon, you will see more blogposts related to this keyword.
- eco+hygieia — call opening soon
New online learning circles for 2027
Under Wood wide web stories, I’ll also be facilitating two online learning circles in 2027: one on ecofeminist economics (with non-human familiars), and one on writing(with)Celtic plants, both hosted in the algorithm-free space of the Ecofeminist Society.
You can register for the waiting list for the 2026 membership call, which opens in November. There’s a webinar on Sunday 3 October if you’d like to learn more.
Here’s to at least five more years of Wood Wide Web Stories!
A note to fellow writers
If you write, this is where the bog becomes especially relevant to you: writing(with)plants, my practice-based book is available now in the bookshop. It grew out of exactly this kind of slow, layered, collective learning, and it’s made for anyone wanting to write their way (back) into connection with the more-than-human world.
Visit the bookshop and get your copy of writing(with)plants → the shop or treat yourself on a package of postcards, posters and the book via the webshop of Mary Feywood, the graphic designer and illustrator of the book.
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