The Clearing

Trees and forests belong on earth, we do not. We are their guests, dependent on their oxygen and their materials for our existence. We are bad guests, misunderstanding and mistreating our hosts. We are reaching the point where this mistreatment will undermind our own capacity to live. Is it too late to become good wood-guests? If not, how? What new forms of awareness must we develop? This book book tries to answer these questions. Author Andrew Todd is an architect, winner of the WAN Award for the best wooden building in the world for the Hardelot Elizabethan Theatre. Anchored by his own roots making plant-based buildings, and by the example of his forest manager father, he takes us on a journey which looks at trees and forests from a kaleidoscopic range of viewpoints: as solid matter for building shelter, as ongoing habitat for timeless tribes, as the seat of Western origin myths. The Clearing takes us to the contested, multi-layered forests of Old and New England, to the tropical ra