80% of Gabon is covered by forests.
65% of Japan is forested.
48% of Russia.
45% of Canada.
40% of Germany.
33% of the US.
27% of France.
14% of Australia.
10.7% of the UK.
We each need four trees in order to breathe, I've heard.
A country with very little forest is a country with very little soul.
It's no surprise to me that Japan is the industrialized country with by far the largest percentage of forest. And I think there's a connection with the impression I get in Japan that it's the least toxic modern country I've visited. (Though all that forest
England was mostly covered with oak forests. But from the moment axes got strong enough to cut down oak trees, the forests began to dwindle. It's sad to think of these lines from Shakespeare's "As You Like It":
A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool; a miserable world!
As I do live by food, I met a fool
Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
In good set terms and yet a motley fool.
and reflect that, although there are still fools in England, there's not much forest left. Why couldn't the fools have gone, and the forest stayed?
I remember being told in school that most of Scotland's forests were cut down so that a naval fleet could be built to defeat the Spanish. They were never replaced, those forests. Scotland has been "bald" ever since. We lost our forest soul.
When I was a kid I lived in Auchterarder, in Perthshire. There were pine forests all around. Even after we moved to Edinburgh, we kept a cottage in Auchterarder. I have a particular affinity with pine forests, maybe because of this early experience of living in one. Just yesterday I walked by a fresh pine fence in Berlin and stopped to sniff the wood. That smell is so evocative for me! I love places with lots of pine.
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