Our lives are intimately intertwined with those of the trees and woodlands around us. For centuries, trees have shaped us and we have shaped them. They have have determined the tools we use, the boats we build, the stories we tell about the world and about ourselves, the songs we sing, and some of our most important rituals. 

In The Heart of The Woods, the companion piece to his Roger Deakin Award winning The Draw of The Sea, Wyl Menmuir travels the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland to meet the stories of the people who plant trees, the ecologists who study them, those who shape beautiful objects and tools from from wood, and those who use it to help others. 

In heading deep into the woods, Wyl explores what we get out of spending time around trees, the ways in which our relationship with them has changed over time, and the ways in which our future is interconnected with theirs. 

Written in close collaboration with makers, crafters, bodgers, and woodsmen and women in order to understand better the woods they know so well, the joys and frustrations of working with a living material, and the stories of their craft and skills, this is also a book about legacies – those a parent leaves to a child, the legacies left by specific trees in specific places, and those a society leaves to the next generation. The Heart of The Woods will delight anyone who enjoys walking among the trees, and anyone who, when lost, has found themselves in the woods. 


Chapters

WOODLAND A woodland in becoming and an ancient yew grove on the border of North Wales and England

RITUAL Willow coffin making in Cornwall

WOODLORE Science among the trees at Wytham Woods, Oxfordshire

HEARTWOOD Among the bodgers in a field outside Cambridge

BOAT A woodland community in the heart of Glasgow’s former docklands

LANDSCAPE Re-wilding the Scottish Highlands and an organised trespass in Devon

WISH The clootie well at Munlochy on The Black Isle, Scottish Highlands, a family tree on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, and the tree at Sycamore Gap, Northumbria

FOREST Swimming at Swallowship Pool, Devil’s Water, and Letah Woods Northumberland

MYTH Walks in the fictional woods at Wenlock Edge, Shropshire

WAY Traditional carpentry in Takayama, Japan

FIRE The stories we find among the flames and embers, Ennistymon, Ireland 

SOUND A pub on Ireland’s west coast and a guitar-builder in North Wales 

APPLE Wassailing in Cornwall

TREE An ancient yew grove in North Wales