Download and Share Forest Media

Hours in forest huts can turn into days where one forgets about time in the forest. The time becomes a present that acts as a mirror.

This mirror teaches us about the world outside and within forests around us. These forest communities are places where conflict is mediated conflict, where healing occurs, and forest knowledge is shared. This is also a place where ideas and insights to collective problems are discussed, where people often have ideas about food, climate, trees, and soil. These are places of vision, where lessons can be learned, shared, and traded openly.

Learning some of these lessons is a challenge; the forests and the communities have force you to grow and challenge traditional assumptions. The ideas sometimes seem to bite back, like some kind of oversized monster-leech crawling down a forest trail. The monster leech has bitten, and I've fallen in love with forests and people.

Sometimes, covered in mud, I have to laugh. Twelve leeches on one foot might be just too many. Usually, you can deftly pluck them off. It helps if you know how to use your fingernails. It helps if you don’t stand on one foot (you need a rock or log). It helps if you don’t forget. If you stand on one foot, like I usually do, you’ll usually wind up covered in mud. This has happened so many times in one community, I started calling myself baboy hutan. It means forest pig. It always insights laughter, which makes me even more rickety in travels through the forest. Usually I’m walking and laughing and falling. And that doesn’t work if you don’t like leeches. I actually think some of the kids only know me as baboy hutan. Or maybe they know me as baboy hutan puteh, the white forest pig.

There is one problem. The forest trails communities are connected to are in danger. Some have changed as trading routes have been replaced by roads, some have simply been replaced by more efficient routes, some have changed as forest products -- materials collected from the forest have changed. Others have been flooded or perhaps logged or planted out. It’s a complicated issue, without logging roads many communities would not have access to services. Other trails are rivers, and they have their own histories. Lajang, an old hunter told me that forest trails are not the forest but they are memories, pieces of shared history, pieces that help people see a forest whole.

As part of understanding the changing patterns of forest trade and how people interact and learn from one another, I always ask forest experts about changing trails. And the trails that are still intact. And if there are trails that are in danger or especially important. Usually this involves forest walks, sometimes it involves giving others cameras to document what they see along the trails, what is important, and important to share.

I have begun to collect images of forest trails, kind of like stopping and stuffing forest fruits in my backpack, or even like munching thimble berries on a trail in Montana. For fun, and because these places have deep meaning, I’m starting a public gallery of forest trails. While I might separate images geographically, I reserve the right to make the decision when the images start arriving. With your submission, it’s particularly important that you give the place name, forest name (if applicable) and short description of the importance of the forest trail. Feel free to reference natural history, changes, memories, and stories. Don't forget to include your name and age as well.

Guidelines: Please keep images of a reasonable file size, preferably .jpgs no larger than 500 pixels on the longest side. Please keep your submission to a maximum of 5 images. This is a long term personal collection project. An online gallery will be started when I have enough images. Images will be published online, collectively, on this site. All work will be credited to you, so I will need your name, contact information, and a few sentences about the state of the forest trail you are photographing. If you want more information, please see my image use policy.

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