Abstract
As a child, I loved my forest walks. These days it is difficult to connect this long-time joy with the knowledge of widespread deforestation and destruction of wildlife habitats, knowledge that induces grief and despair. This chapter illustrates how environmental destruction shifts common understandings of grief. It also contends that struggles for embodied, joyful connections with the natural world in and against contexts of loss, suffering, and trauma are vital for an educational praxis oriented toward transformative consciousness, restorative socio-political engagement, and ecological well-becoming. The chapter draws upon the writings of Joseph Campbell and Martin Buber, among others, and concludes with an analysis of a German folktale called the “The Silver Birch.”
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Notes
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She received her PhD in 2013, under the supervision of Andreas Hamann.
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Porteous notes another Russian version is of a young shepherdess spinning in a birch wood: “To her came a wild woman, who made her dance during three whole days till sunset. At the end of the dance the wool was spun, and the shepherdess was rewarded with a pocket full of Birch leaves, which changed into gold coins” (p. 278).
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Eppert, C. (2020). Forest Walks and Literary Engagement in the Anthropocene: Meditations on Grief, Joy, and a Restorative Politics. In: Bussey, M., Mozzini-Alister, C. (eds) Phenomenologies of Grace. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40623-3_4
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