Letters to the forest
Hello, welcome to the fifth digest from the Forest Portal š±
A place for sharing occasional updates and musings on the growing project āConversations with the Forestā.
Firstly a quick update from the Surfers forest studio, the trees are still growing and new seeds are still sprouting, as some of the trees get bigger I am moving things around and finding spaces for bigger pots, soon the whole studio will be a forest.
Reflecting on the past year I am thinking about how life can feel so fast and slow at the same time, thinking about how to be present with each moment/leaf as it unfolds. The forest grows slowly and then sometimes it shoots up fast, one day there is a tiny new leaf sprouting and then suddenly a whole new branch. This past year has been a year of cocooning, re-membering how to trust in myself, trusting in the process, trusting in the capacity for slow and fast ways of working and trusting in what my hands need to make, this is both scary and reaffirming.
This week I am marking the beginning of the year in the forest with a long slow watering, repotting trees that have outgrown their trays, and topping up the soil in some that have sunken low in their pots. As these trees grow they make room for new seedlings to pop up in the refuge of their shade.
I remember talking to a friend about how I need to get out of urban spaces every few weeks, how I need to go to a forest, to a creek, a river, to submerge my body in water and feel my aliveness. My friend had grown up in a big city and recounted how he needed the cacophony of a city soundscape to feel at home in his body, replenished with the intensity of close proximity to others. Now years later growing a forest for the city, I love how these two spaces can collide, how we can imagine a future where forest and city are not so separated, where human and non-human bodies might find ways to exist equally in cityscapes and forestscapes.
As I am writing these notes, I am sitting at the creek, Currumbin creek, I walked right to the end where I could no longer hear the shrieks of holiday crowds. The water is clear and fresh, I can see a small catfish, and a small eel, they keep blending in and out of rocks, it reminds me of the feeling Iāve had this year, in and out, here and not here. Moments of feeling lost and moments of touching a deeper sense of purpose. Water beetles flit across the oily surface and cicadas burst into loud orchestral stridulations. In the distance, I can hear kookaburras. The composition sounds like home, it sounds like the creek I spent many, many, many hours swimming in as a kid. Through this continued practice of listening to the forest, I can access conversation.
Entering this new year and pushing forward with this project I am thinking about what connects bodies to place. What makes you come alive? how we can work with the forest to reconnect people to the place that once was a forest and is now called āSurfers Paradiseā.
In 2023 I am reaching towards inner reserves of determination and perseverance, for this project and in all my work, I am making the jump, trusting in intuition and in memory of one of my heroes Vivienne Westwood I am going to take her words with me through the year she says to āfollow your deep interest (forget yāself) and become who you are!ā
As part of the project, you are invited to write a letter to the forest.
Send your letter, your poem, your prayer to the forest, I will type it up and it will grow into the forest, it can be anonymous or named. If you prefer to make something in a visual medium or to handwrite a note you can alsoĀ come to the studio to collect some forest paper.
The forest will disintegrate your prayers into the soil. Unravel your words between fern curls. Diffuse language into root systems, carry messages through trunks and branches and into leaves.Ā
The āConversations with the Forestā Studio at 10 Beach Rd, Surfers Paradise, is open by appointment - shoot me an email or instagram message and come say hi.
In process this week:
š Reading: Green, Green, Green, Gillian Osborne & Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer
š Listening: My Name is Beauty - Jake Skeets
š± Propagating: Riberry, Hard Quandong, Peanut tree.
ā Asking: what makes you come alive?
š Other current projects: Hold me closer Tony Danza with The Farm, Supercut Billboard with Outer Space.