I grew up surrounded by the forest in the northeastern United States. The forest-hill behind our house was covered in a seemingly endless expanse of birches, hemlocks, grape vines, beech trees, and laurel bushes. As a child I played often in the forest, making winter homes from fallen branches, clearing the tiny waterfalls and spring ponds of leaves, following the old stone wall deep into the interior, and hiding special treasures in hollow trees.  The forest was a powerful, alive place: to be respected, to be tended, to be attended to.

Arriving in Sweden in my twenties I found myself living again at the edge of large forest. Entering the forest day by day, season by season, year by year, a conversation began. A conversation with the ferns, the deer, the seldom-seen foxes, the large mossy stones, the spruces, the pines, my human troubles, the birch, the oaks, the waterways, the paths, the mountains, the lilies of the valley, the junipers, the rain, the snow, the dry summer moss.

Over time I began to understand the forest in another way. That it is alive and responsive to human presence, to songs, to our intentions and imaginations. The forest can hold us, reveal things to us, help us, as we also give gifts in return. Places in the forest offer themselves to be worked with in certain ways. The trees, the rocks, the clearings themselves are alive and potent.  Like our human lives, the seasons shift and make the forest dynamic with snow, lush with summer ferns, covered with icy river paths.