Commentary: Gossip From the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairytales by Sara Maitland
"The ice shrank back towards the polar regions, the forests chased it northwards as far as they could, and homo sapiens followed the forest."
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Sara Maitland's Gossip From the Forest is a forest travelogue + imaginative, retelling of Northern Europe's fairytales. Following in Maitland's footsteps, as she treks across twelve of Britain's cherished forests, I felt each round in the trail, each bend in the streams, and each rise in the sloping hills pull me ever nearer to the impetus of European folklore and imagination. In the pages of Maitland's work, I was delighted by the parallels she drew between storytelling and landscape, but not merely the aesthetics of the land, rather, the way humans and forests interact, work together, and thrive when in a dynamic union. The drastic difference between spectating nature and living in/with nature meant the difference between our stories being reflections of our lives rather than our stories being maps, pointing towards ancient relationships that we (largely White Europeans) have neglected.
Maitland's thesis, if you will, claims that the European fairytales that many of us know (even if we don't remember how we know them) reveal much more about the external than the internal; rather than exposing details of our subconscious and primal identities, as some claim, these stories unearth our ancient relationship with forests.
Following the twelve months of the year, we step foot into a different forest each month, as Maitland weaves her way through the history and present of the magical, physical realms that are so deeply tied to our equally chaotic and uncanny inner realms. Between each chapter, Maitland plays with us by retelling classic fairytales with her own spin, oftentimes tying the themes and underlying rhythms of the story to an aspect of forest life that she explored in a previous chapter.
Maitland's undeniably strong understanding of forest life and ecology-- from the forest floor to the tops of the canopies-- rings through her delicious vocabulary for flowers, trees, fungi, and land formations, revealing a genuine love for forests after a lifetime of living within them.
While exploring the local histories of British forests, this language creates a stunning portrait of the forest in question, but also a realistic one-- a step away from personification (which is usually how most writers capture nature), and a step towards something else, something magical, something hidden, something mysterious and yet, at the same time, something that is already a part of us. Thus her portraits speak to what is human about forests and what is forest-like in humans.
There is one example I wanted to share.
"Beeches tend to grow straight and then branch out horizontally higher up and carry their foliage above the branches; from the ground, looking up into the leaves, these dark spread-fingers of smooth wood resemble ribs, creating was has been often described as a cathedral effect; or perhaps, rather, the beeches inspired the cathedrals' fan vaulting... These various natural formations combine to give old beech woods a very moving atmosphere of religious awe and painful sorrow. It is compelling in its loveliness."
While I know, to some, this may sound entirely academic or metaphorical, but I think Maitland quickly avoids such a destination and instead veers into a playful understanding of ecology that seems to organically reveal similarities between features of our forests and our own inventions, rather than superficially forcing them into my imagination. It felt like her ideas were all already within me, and she simply planted mechanisms for them to be revealed to me again-- afresh.
At the end of each chapter's journey, we aren't quagmired in Freudian interpretations of fairytales that paint forests as a place for sexual awakening or trauma. No, not at all. Instead, Maitland supplies us with delightful ideas about how to reunite us with forests in ways that nourish us both, beginning with a drastic change in how we teach ourselves and, especially, children about them. A realistic and playful knowledge of forest life would, perhaps, impact social relationships with them. One idea Maitland shared I found particularly adorable and enticing. What if, when a child is born, they are "assigned" a forest (local, regional, or even far, far away)? Then, as they grow up, they are able to visit that forest-- to explore it, to return home to it, to know it as one would know a home town.
"They would not be given an individual tree: trees, especially saplings, die, which could be very discouraging for the sensitive. I am trying to revive the tradition of 'common land', not encourage the individualism of personal ownership. Everyone would have a 'special relationship' with everyone else who had been assigned that same hectare or so of the forestry estate of the nation.... it would be nice to think that patterns and customs of visiting would develop and it would become part of people's identity: your own forest-piece location, like your date of birth or your Zodiac sign, would establish bonds and mutual interests."
This points to why I loved this book so much. As a writer, I sat down with this book hoping to learn about storytelling in some way. But, as a human being, I discovered a new desire to explore the forests here where I live, to better understand how they work, and how humans can be involved in productive ways. I felt a sense of hope, reading about forestry projects in Britain that are succeeding (at least they seem to be.) Maitland introduces us to techniques that are used by humans to manage forests in ways that aren't aesthetic or commercial, but restorative-- ecological. But the understanding, naturally, came full circle. I closed the book, still a writer, but also a human being, with a renewed dedication to more deeply understanding the ecology surrounding my stories. My writing is centered in East Tennessee; my thinking, perspective, and ideology are born from those forests climbing through Appalachia. I walk away from Maitland's book with a strong yearning for my stories-- their ideas and the characters in them-- to be bound to those forests, because I believe, as Maitland does, that it is there we can access and remember best who we are: forest-chasers.