Into The Woods: Why Are We So Drawn To Trees?

Inspired by Ellie Tilley’s piece on fairytale forests, Stephen Frame considers the importance of trees to us – not just as writers, but as humans first and foremost.

This is a piece about trees, but it starts with a book. Why not? The two are inseparable.

A while back, I discovered a book called Imagine A Country: Ideas For A Better Future, by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp. The idea behind it gripped me immediately. A series of essays from a wide array of Scottish voices – artists, comedians, economists – setting out visions, dreams and ideas for an imagined Scotland they would like to live in. 

Reading through the essays, there were many common themes: the empowerment of youth, opening up art for everyone to share and take part in, better public transport. Among them, one idea came up again and again. Plant more trees. It struck me as odd. Then it didn’t.

I work in a forest. Mostly, the work involves sweat, getting poked by branches and swearing. But there are times when I’ve experienced a transcendent sense of contentment in my local forest. Trees have a hold on us, I’m convinced of it. A hold that is deep and primal in its reach.

You can start with Yggdrasil, the World Tree, and work down. Or you can start with just being in sight of greenery (a house plant will do), and work up. In his excellent  book :59 Seconds, Professor Richard Wiseman describes how simply being able to see plants helps us heal more quickly, aids mental health, cuts anti-social behaviour, boosts creativity, and generally put us in a better mood. 

If a humble houseplant can lift our spirits without our even realising, then what of trees, the most breath-taking manifestations of the plant kingdom? What happens when you put a whole bunch of these sacred objects together, to make a wood? 

What lurks in the woods?

On the one hand, you get more of that good stuff. Shinrin-yoku is the Japanese practice of forest bathing. It involves simply spending time amongst trees: looking, touching, breathing, perhaps just being. Mindfulness, meditation, spiritual connection. Call it what you will, these concepts are now firmly in the mainstream of thinking on mental health benefits.

And yet, there’s a paradox, for woods often present the hidden, the mysterious, the dangerous. What lurks in the woods? We could start with The Gruffalo. Now there’s a book that understands what I’m trying to get at. Tolkein and the Brothers Grimm, they knew the power of the deep dark wood. The Forbidden Forest in Harry Potter. The entrance to hell in Dante’s Inferno is in a wood. The frozen wood beyond the wardrobe in Narnia. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights’ Dream. Or, MacBeth, if you prefer a tragedy. The Bear and the Nightingale by Kathrine Arden, Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Sherwood Forest. The list is long. And let’s not even start on wolves. 

Interesting. We adore trees. Until they gang up on us. Then they’re a thing to be feared. Probably with good reason. Here’s something to try – I’ve done this myself, by accident. Find a good healthy wood, one with plenty of trees growing naturally close together, and little-to-nothing in the way of open ground. Take yourself off the path. Leave a trail of breadcrumbs, if you need to. Have a look round. Trees all look pretty much the same on quick inspection. What you might find is that, all of a sudden, you don’t have any points of reference. You have nothing to navigate by. Now imagine it’s a wood you’re not familiar with. Now imagine it’s getting dark . . .

(Photo of the Dunnet Forest Green Man supplied by Stephen Frame)

John Yorke, in his book, Into The Woods, which explores how stories work and why we tell them, had this to say: “In stories throughout the ages there is one motif that continually recurs – the journey into the woods to find a dark but life-giving secret within.”

Lost senses for survival

Are we both drawn to woods and fearful of them, at one and the same time? You could posit in that in times past, the woods were likely a means of survival. The woods by the village would be a place to gather firewood, to keep warm, and forage for food, to ward off starvation. Hence, the draw. On the other hand, becoming lost in a forest that might stretch for dozens of miles in all directions is a sure-fire bet for dying of exposure. 

But in our industrial society, those days are centuries distant. And yet, the allure, and the fear, remains. Ever considered going into a wood at night? A moonless night in a place out of sight of human lights? I haven’t. The thought of it is enough to give me an atavistic shiver.

Woods diminish the senses we once relied on for survival. You can’t see very far in a wood. Sounds are deadened, or come at you in odd echoes. I’ve turned a corner in our wood and faced a deer not more than a few metres away. Perhaps that’s where the fear comes from. If we don’t know what’s there, our imagination will handily sketch in something for us to get our teeth into. Before the something gets its teeth into us.

(Photo by Stephen Frame, who asks “is it storm damage or rampaging trolls?”)

Like John Yorke, I’m convinced that duality over woods, that fear and allure, goes back as long as we’ve been telling stories. It’s as old as humanity. It’s hard-wired into us. It’s why we continue to write about it, in all its different forms. I’ll keep going to my local forest: to work, to plant trees I’ll never see grow to maturity, to walk, to think, to sometimes just sit and watch and listen. If I hit a knot in my writing, it’s my go-to place. I’d encourage you to do the same. Go: to where the wild things are. But make sure you know the way back.