As a teacher of young children, treescapes are filled with borders - the most important ones are those that keep us safe - from physical harm, from getting lost and between possible and impossible.
There is also the border between treescape and non-treescape, and in some of the smaller urban forests in Stockholm the edge of the forest has been the visible border of where to play. Simply put, we stay within the trees in order to stay safe. Yet within the trees the border between earth and air is interrupted with roots reaching out to trip the non-aware up. Climbing branches break down the border between forest floor and canopy as the children climb ever higher as they break through their personal border of fear and anxiety.
Then there is that border of noticing - children fully absorbed in their play don’t always notice what else is happening around them - the forest has been transformed from a treescape to a playscape and the border between the real and the imagined is blurred. Dragons suddenly prowl through the trees, fairies dwell within them and in the winter months we have spotted polar bears.
Sometimes we are quiet and still enough to notice together - the sounds, the sights, the smells, the texture and the tastes of the forest - different seasons often highlight different senses.
The borders between seasons are sometimes blurred, sometimes incredibly distinct - each year has brought a different way, and as an immigrant to Sweden the seasons never made sense until I discovered how the Sámi peoples have eight seasons, eight borders to transition through, that finally enabled me to understand the Swedish year. That border between the colonial and Indigenous causing confusion because power trumped reality.
Time does not seem to exist within a treescape in the same way as it does in our human lives. There are so many times that are interwoven, entangled, circling and spiralling, and the children’s play brings yet another time into the “scape”, freed from the fetters of chronos and adult musts. There is the fleeting time of the liverwort like blue stars lighting up the sleeping forest in early spring, the time of the mosquito, the roe deer, the wild strawberries fruiting followed by the wild raspberries, blueberries and blackberries, the time of the aspen, oak, pine and black alders. Different cycles, different lengths, different seasons yet all creating a oneness in their treescapacity.
This also makes me think of size. Something that I first truly became aware of when I walked through the forest holding small Moomin figurines to take photographs. I started to wonder about what size the Moomins really are, because at times they are depicted as very small, and yet at other times almost human size when describing their pursuits such as fishing. The figurines though were a perfect size to transform the undergrowth into a forest - a tiny forest within a forest. And sometimes this happens to me - sometimes I feel small and insignificant within the forest, yet at other times I feel larger than life and empowered as if I am a part of it all. I see this reflected in the children often, not just in the forest but in life - that sometimes they look small, lost, powerless and in need of guidance and comfort, while at other times they are big, empowered and connected. I often find the forest is a place to tap into this power, this connection that can help them cross the border between feeling small and unseen to feeling more themselves. It is also a reminder to me to think of the borders between interaction, intervention and interference. The arboreal also provides the opportunity to cross the border between knowing and knowing. The children and I can know a lot of stuff about the forest but until we are there and truly discover it and bodily know it, we can’t truly understand. In the Sámi language there are two words diehtu and máhttu - the former is to know about and the latter is to know how to do or how it is. A treescape can break down the border between these words so that they can be entangled and enrich the experience of knowledge.
Info on máhttu and dietthu can be found ” Working with Traditional Knowledge: Communities, Institutions, Information Systems, Law and Ethics” Porsanger, Jelena; Guttorm, Gunvor; (doaimm.) https://samas.brage.unit.no/samas-xmlui/handle/11250/177065
And
Finbog, Liisa-Ravna (2020)It Speaks to You; Making Kin of People, Duodje and Stories in Sámi Museums. PhD Dissertation, University of Oslo