A first encounter

It was her way of coping with the heatwave. She had no money to make a long journey to a cooler climate. In her flat in the city center, between asphalt and concrete, it was sweltering. So she decided to explore the forest and had given herself a score. I felt her approaching from afar. And I set up an energetic protective field. I had never experienced a human up close before. I wanted to know what I was dealing with. She sensed my limit. She stopped about thirty meters from my trunk. She respected my need for privacy. She returned a few more times, but left me alone. I could certainly appreciate that.

Meeting

A few seasons later, news reached me that she had received a course on how to respectfully approach trees and communicate with us from a very venerable fellow tree who, just like me, wishes to remain anonymous. She came to visit me again, but this time she knew exactly how to approach me. I opened my field and let her come closer. After a few visits, she dared to touch my trunk. It was a peculiar experience, with so many bacteria and microbes released in the process.

Tree clerk

She regularly came to sit with me, and I tried to pass on a few messages that she received automatically. She typed them into her phone. That device, a large collection of minerals unknown to me, distracted her greatly every time. So I decided to intervene. With my magnetic radiation, I confused the device when she had typed in a whole section of a story. Poor woman, she was quite upset. The next day she appeared again, this time with a classic fountain pen and a notebook. That didn’t please me either. So I intervened again. I stilled the ink so it wouldn’t flow. She tried all sorts of things and eventually gave up.

Reports from the Forest - the novel

Only on the third day had she understood the message: she came to sit with me with pencil and paper. She wrote and wrote, filling several pages. In the evening, she typed those pages onto her computer and erased her handwriting. She reused the pages until they had turned grey and drab. And so we wrote a novel together, Reports from the Forest, on about ten sheets of paper made from the wood of my fellow trees.

Tina Horne translated the novel to English, Peter Jacquemyn made the illustrations. Brussels arts centre nadine co-produced the publishing of the book and riso-printed 100 copies in English and 100 in Dutch.

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