The Forbidden Forest

In keeping with the eerily appropriate Harry Potter references, the Krogerup Hojskole in Denmark is complete with a Forbidden Forest. 'The Forest' is merely a patch of trees, probably not more than three acres or 14 dunam, for my Middle Easterners. The Forest is thinly wooded, mostly with tall birch, beach, oak, maple and other deciduous trees.

And much like in Harry Potter, the Forest is Forbidden because it has a reputation for holding dark, lurking things. Several times, suggestions were made to go through the forest at night -- which, with plenty of ambient light around, is not difficult to navigate on wide, flat trails. Yet many people at our Climate Change conference were anywhere from reluctant to outright fearful. Not for fear of muggers or other people, but because it was dark and unknown.

It surprises me how deeply rooted the fear of the forest is. In Hebrew, "midbar" is the word for "wilderness" and most often translated as desert. While it is "raw" and as such perhaps closer to g-d, "there's nothing out there". Man is let loose upon the world to conquer and subdue nature, or in a post Earth-Day translation, are supposed to have stewardship and responsibility over it. People abandon their primitive animal past to cluster in cities.

This theme continues throughout world literature. Shakespeare's forest was wild, uncouth, a place for base animals and animal instincts. The City represented culture, civilization, and mankind at his best. So too in the American experience, where the terrifying Forest --full of savages and wolves and bears oh my!-- was felled with fire and field, beaten back to make room for Progress. Brazil's flag has a motto --anyone?-- "Ordem e Progresso" --Order and Progress.

In South America, Malaysia and Indonesia, the jungle (or if you prefer the more sanitized 'Rain Forest') loses an Illinois-sized chunk every year (!!) to clear-cutting for hamburgers, hotdogs, rubber trees, and paper. Order? In the North, in places like Manchester, Connecticut, stunning forest was replaced by a wasteland of strip malls all with the same unnecessary products. Progress? We are hacking down the lungs of the planet with such ferociousness you'd think that the forests were hunting us down instead. Instead they provide food, paper, lumber, rich soils, soil filtration, rubber, medicines, biodiversity reserves, animal havens, water, oxygen and carbon sinks, soil stability and filtering, etc. Shel Silverstein's "The Giving Tree" shows just how one-sided the arrangement is (and a good example of terrible codependency). But despite the profit to be made, the pace and scale of forest destruction is so appalling words cannot describe. Is it pure greed and stupidity?

Why such fear, hatred, and greed? How short-sighted can we be? Even many of my fellow Climate Ambassadors shared this fear and apprehension. If we have any chance in making a positive impact, we must start with our (sorry can't help myself) root feelings and assumptions and embrace the wild for allowing us to be. Otherwise...