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Forest Stories
from Forest Stories
By Chris Hewitson
In Forest Stories I consider historic deforestation and today’s reforestation of the Corbières forest in southern France. Through my reading, photography and field research, I have come to understand the forest as a diverse ecosystem supporting trees, plants, and non-human animals. As a result I now appreciate the ancient and ongoing relationship between the forest and its human neighbours.
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This area was a part of the first province of the Roman empire outside Italy. The Via Domitia crosses the Corbières in its passage from the Alps to the Pyrenees, with stretches still to be seen in the forest today. For when the Romans left, the forest remained intact.
From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, people used the forest as the source for their material needs. By 1830, there was very little forest left and it is only in this century that the forest has begun to return.
My intent for this project is that it should promote the forest’s rich history and its fascinating present as a re-emerging ecosystem.
The project also glimpses the future forest as a repository for biodiversity and as a ‘sink’ for CO2 in a future dominated by the climate emergency.
Deforestation
I live in the village of Coustouge set in the Corbières Massif in the department of the Aude in southern France. When I first visited Coustouge in the mid-1970s, I felt as if I had travelled back in time to the 3rd French République of the early 1900s.
That period may have been the Belle Époch in Paris, but southern villages had only recently begun moving away from a subsistence economy. At that time, Coustouge had a population of about 250 people for the majority of whom life was tough.
Many households had small kitchen gardens alongside the river where they grew vegetables. If they had room, households had a pig or two. Usually a boar for fattening and killing in the Autumn to turn into preserves for the Winter months, and a sow for breeding next year’s boar plus piglets to sell for cash. Elderly villagers in the 1970s told me
