A personal, eloquent portrayal of the meanings and cultural history of forests.

In 1985 Boria Sax inherited an area of forest in New York State that had been purchased by his Russian Jewish Communist grandparents as a buffer against what they felt was a hostile world. For Sax, in the years following, the woodland came to represent a link with those who lived and had lived there, including Native Americans, settlers, bears, deer, turtles, and migrating birds. In this personal and eloquent account, Sax explores the meanings and cultural history of forests from prehistory to the present, taking in Gilgamesh, Virgil, Dante, the Gawain poet, medieval alchemists, the Brothers Grimm, the Hudson River painters, Latin American folklore, contemporary African novelists and much more. Combining lyricism with contemporary scholarship, this book opens new emotional, intellectual, and environmental perspectives on the storied history of the forest.