Future Forests 

With nature restoration and rewilding efforts picking up in many countries, the world is full of forests in the making. In the case of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust project site of Kielderhead Wildwood, it is more accurate to speak of a future woodland. Between 2018 and 2023, the kickstart to this new native woodland was planted by a group of motivated volunteers and Northumberland Wildlife Trust staff. The native tree species planted at the Wildwood particularly included Scots pine, a small group of which were found growing on the site were determined to be genetically diverse enough to suggest they had once been part of a much larger stand of pines. The newly planted pines are meant to replace those that grew in their place many thousands of years ago, between the last Ice Age and the dawn of agriculture. 

The origin of the pines and the Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s effort to save them speaks to the imagination. For this reason, a parallel project was set up to produce a novel about Kielderhead Wildwood. As its writer, I chose to write about the Wildwood from both the perspective of the human Northumberland Wildlife Trust volunteers as the animals, plants and fungi present on-site. The novel’s human main character is a pensioner who dedicates two days a week to planting trees in the harsh conditions of the site. By showing the experiences of volunteers braving the harsh conditions of the site, I wanted to honour the hard work of the small group of dedicated people who, alongside the lovely Northumberland Wildlife Trust staff, made Kielderhead Wildwood a reality. 

Each of the chapters about the volunteer character in the novel is alternated with a vignette about a different animal, plant or fungus living at Kielderhead Wildwood. There are dragonflies, water voles, and of course Scots pines. One of these non-human characters imagines the emerging woodland at Kielderhead Wildwood as an entity and follows its change from the eroded landscape it was before 2018 to the rewilding woodland it has become today. The novel’s conclusion also suggests what the woodland might be like in the future. The resulting mosaic of human and non-human storylines shows the rewilding process from all sides: sometimes difficult, often requiring patience, but mostly very rewarding. 

To conclude this post, I have included a short excerpt from the ending of the book, in which Kielderhead Wildwood has started to resemble its long-lost self again: 

Oh yes, I remember now what everyone knew of me all along. Curled up, I forgot what stretching feels like. Tired and aching, I couldn’t remember what a thousand saplings picked up all too clearly. Them and I, the pines, bracken, the peat, the martens, the butterflies, the water voles, the downy birch, the golden eagle, the tardigrades, the heather, the live-bearing lizards, the water of the Scaup Burn itself - we were once an entirety. Slowly, inevitably, we will be once again. But I am not what I was. I am changed and warped. Feral life forms mixed with each other long enough to stay. The treelings spawned by planted stock are not like their ancestors, who braved Ice Ages and sent their seeds flying into the wind across the ice. Yes, I taste them now, on the soles of creatures padding in or flying over. Future forests like me. There are parks and there are gardens, sidewalk weeds and rising hills, but under all those names there are only forests, dozing deeper than even I was. I am not like Cairngorms in the North anymore, or part of old Cocwudu. I am not a New Forest or a Puzzlewood. I can only be a wilding wood, that wilds as only I can. And wild I shall. 

Thank you to the Northumberland Wildlife Trust for their invaluable help during the writing process of this project, and for their kind invitation to contribute to the blog.

    ~ Sofie Schrey

Find out more about the Wildwood Project:-

 Wildwood | Northumberland Wildlife Trust