“I am leaves, I like to dance with the wind”

The collaborative place-based story ‘Forest Tongue’ explores modes of interlingual, intercultural and intersectional belonging. With our bodies, personal stories, and collaborative place explorations, we investigate the more-than-human connections in and with Gateshead Riverside Park.

“Here, now, this place feels restored,

transformed

exposed”

This collaborative place-based storybook explores the Urban Forest of Washington D.C., with stories from delegates of the 2^nd World Forum on Urban Forests 2023.

For many people, urban forests are nature close to home. For non-humans, urban forests are home. At the same time, engagement with and access to urban forests and their countless benefits for human and nature well-being is unequal. Beyond availability and attractiveness, cultivating a sense of belonging seems to play a role in mitigating this unequal access. But what does it mean to belong in an urban forest place?

As we explore Gateshead Riverside Park, we use our bodies to notice who and what is here. We investigate how we are connected to this place through a series of prompts. During and after each exercise, we record our responses. These become our stories of this place, here, now.

Seated under a sprawling tree, on a teal metal chair at a teal metal table on a flagstone patio, the water swirling in the glass while the sun pushes through the canopy above - this is where I am when I first meet Pigeon.

We are explorers of the urban forest of Kraków in Poland. With our bodies, we notice who and what is there, and who and what is not. Through prompts, writing, drawing, making, and sharing, we record our responses, telling the stories of this particular urban forest place.

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about the Urban Forest Stories sessions

Why do autumn leaves change colour? As days shorten, and night envelopes us earlier each day, I keep finding patches of bright autumn leaves on my way. Where do these colours come from, I wonder, and what might be their purpose, I ponder.

This morning, I heard rivers streaming up and down. Not north to south, but up, towards the sky, and down, into the earth.

If leaves could talk, what stories would they tell?

What resonated, what places came forward, themes and questions from ‘Writing Beyond the Environment: Writing from the Roots’ by Emergence Magazine

I pull the handles down, simultaneously, hearing my mother’s voice in my head, warning me to be careful with the locking mechanism. I push the heavy sliding doors open with my entire body. I grip the handle at the curve closest to the door, so it doesn’t flick back up and closed, and as soon as a gap appears, I push my right shoulder in. All the way open I push them, first the door on the right and then the one on the left, tripling the living room in size, turning outside inside in.

If I’d never hear them again, I would miss all the ambient sounds that make me feel like I am home. The sounds that make me feel comfortable, at ease, like I am in a trusted place, surrounded by love and warmth and well-being.

For all that all the things in this rooms fit just so, there are so many creaks, and openings, and gaps, and moments of space where nothing happens and everything seems possible.

Strength is smooth and flows and is fluid…

Can we talk about the natural world with the words we have? We don’t always have enough verbal language within our grasp to truly express how we experience nature, nor how nature experiences us. What happens when the sound of the landscape becomes the focal point of our writing? Can you write with the shape of letters?

See her for who she is.

The ebbing and flowing, the coming and going, the returning while leaving. I recognise this in the sea. She is always there, yet fleeting. She is always present, yet racing ahead. There is a restfulness in acknowledging this is her true nature. There is restoration in allowing her to lap at your being, to retreat, to come back in her own time.

The sea, the sea, the sea. The sea is salt and wet feet and strong winds, rain and sun and freedom, windswept hair and difficult conversations and freeing talks. The sea is breath, and breathing, and the act of being free. The sea is different, everywhere, and always the same.

The dunes of Kennemerland. The backyard in Heemstede, and in particular the trees: the cherry in the front yard, the apple, the plum and the sweet cherry in the back. My birth tree.