“Of course, I knew there were forests, and I could see the trees, but I was blind to the value they provide.”
A woman in the polar night, a woman in lockdown
“In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen to spend there a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be […]
Geography of Fairytales: Why are the Germanic stories in forests?
According to Sara Maitland, whose fantastic book ‘From the Forest: a Search for the Hidden Roots of our Fairy Tales’, fairy tales are ‘site specific’. A geographer, I try to make sense of the place […]
Carolyn’s story: A Poem about Forest Bathing
Please meet my fellow forest therapy guide Carolyn Peduzzi. We belong to the Squirrel Tribe, a group of 20-30 guides, all of them situated in North-America, who started their practicum to become a certified forest […]
Changing the stories we live by #6: from Princess Mononoke’s Curse Spirits to the Corona virus
Last June, I got to know the curse spirits of princess Mononoke in real life. I organised a group excursion to one of the certified forest therapy bases in Japan. Now I see some similarities […]
Becoming the Frog – retelling my woodwide story of the past 6 months
“The Frog Prince” (German: Der Froschkönig, Dutch: de kikkerkoning) is a fairy tale, best known through the Brothers Grimm’s written version; traditionally it is the first story in their collection. Since some months, I have a […]
Ecofeminism in 2020 – or in the time of corona
Last year, in the same period, when I was doing a research internship in Mexico, I wrote an article called Ecofeminism in 2019. I wanted to post a blog ‘ecofeminism in 2020′, just before international […]
Peatland, bogs and other buried stories
In the end of February I was in Scotland and visited all kinds of initiatives around forest baths, foraging, Dòigh Nàdair – the path of nature and initiatives for more trees to find inspiration for […]
Japanese Wood: a nostalgic story of loss
This is my last post about Japanese woods – for a while. I decided not to return to Japan until my PhD defense. As a sort of tribute, I want to share some Japanese experience […]
Dendrophilia in the Time of Corona
Dendrophilia is a love of trees. In some cases, this presents as a sincere respect for trees or a desire to protect and care for them and is more a platonic love. In other cases, […]
