Forests of the Night: Topographies of the Sacred in European Romanticism

Abstract

Earlier this year I walked for the first time in a myrtle beech forest, not far from Powelltown in Victoria, once the site of Australia's largest timber processing plant. It was quite late in the afternoon when we arrived there. Lambent late summer sunlight shimmered in the delicate emerald green foliage above our heads and slanted downward through a tangle of branches and ferns to cast a golden glow on the path where our feet fell softly on fallen leaves. Overwhelmed by the beauty of this remnant old-growth rainforest, we felt simply to be here was a blessing and a joy.