The Forest of Fear

Abstract

Generally, city forests are popular places, as most other chapters of this book will show. Yet, like all forests, they also have a ‘darker’ side. Jones and Cloke (2002) mention that ‘places of trees’ can be places of fear as well as of exclusion. In his account of his childhood in Des Moines, Iowa, author Bill Bryson (2007, p. 159) characterises local woods as follows: “The woods were unnerving. The air was thicker in there, more stifling, the noises different. You could go into the woods and not come out again. One certainly never considered them as thoroughfare. They were too vast for that.” Van den Berg and Konijnendijk (2017) talk of ‘ambivalent landscape’ that evoke feelings of both fear and love.