Into the woods

Editor's comments

The man of the premeditated, programmed and limited lifestyle of the Technological Era yearns for his ancient roots more and more. Because the crude and monotonous landscape in the cities, the comfortable prisons made of asphalt, steel, cement and glass, no longer resemble the wide and wild horizons where we have come from and where we have evolved to until now – who knows if by too much... – as a species.

Like an antithesis to those hideous cities, like an antidote to the deafening noise and polluted air, men try to seek refuge in nature, to find themselves again, in the woods. Very few dwellings have inspired the poetic talent of the human race like the mysterious, deep forests that are still to be found in some parts of even the most developed countries. We identify the dawn of spring with the birth of new leaves; we associate summer with the memories of fresh hue of old trees; we draw autumn with the multicolored palette of the forest, dressed in its best golden, ochre and red clothes; and winter, the icy and dreadful winter, is perfectly depicted by the naked tree which is flogged by the cold wind and enveloped in fog. The firewood that crackles in the chimneys of our shelters in the mountains - a memory of the primitive flame that illuminated the faces of our ancestors in their caves - is still uniting us to the forest with chains that are indestructable. That forest of fairies, gnomes, wolves and bears: the forest of lost freedom.