Meet the forest's inhabitants

To enable everyone to enjoy the parks and the forest while respecting others and nature, let's remember a few rules:

• Listen to this walk with headphones on. If you listen to it on the loudspeaker of your phone, you could disturb the wildlife in the forest. A bird might take umbrage at the voice of this unknown newcomer coming out of your phone.
• Take the time to adjust the volume of your mobile phone. Don't cut yourself off completely from the forest. You need to be able to hear the voices of the podcast, but also a passing bicycle, a crow calling out, or the voice of someone who would like to talk to you.
• Remember that you can pause your player at any time, take off your headphones and listen with bare ears to the forest beating where you are, before taking your headphones and the thread of this sound walk back on. 

Forest muse

Welcome to this place with your feet and your ears. Welcome to the Sonian forest. This walk starts at the Boitsfort racecourse, but you can also listen to it anywhere you might be in the forest. There is no specific route to follow. You can listen to it while walking a forest path, or you can listen to it sitting on one of the benches you'll find here and there in the forest or along the racecourse. 

This guided walk is designed for headphones. If you listen to it  on your phone's speakers, you might disturb the forest's wildlife. A bird might take umbrage at the voice of an unknown newcomer speaking through your phone. Take the time to adjust the volume of your mobile phone. Don't cut yourself off completely from the forest. You need to be able to hear my voice, but also to hear a passing bicycle, a crow calling out, or the voice of someone who would like to talk to you. 

Are you ready? Then we can start. You can press pause at any time to take off your headphones and listen with your naked ear to the forest beating around you before putting your headphones back on and pressing play.

John

I've got a Brussels address, but you could say I live mostly in the forest, and yet it feels like my back garden. I take long walks in the forest with my dog at least twice a day, sometimes three times, even at night time, because he loves the forest, too.

Teresa

I open my door and I see the forest, which is amazing. I feel very lucky. I hear the wind in the trees. I guess I hear the quietness of the forest.

Chris

Every single day is different. I walk the same route, but every day there's something different to see, something new to see, depending on the time, depending on the weather, depending on the season.

Forest muse

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm a forest muse. I accompany those whose feet bring them to the forest as yours have today. Not just your feet, but also your ears, your eyes, your sense of smell, your imagination.

Let's approach this in a mindful way, as if we were guests in someone's home, or as if we were entering a temple or sanctuary. When I enter a forest, I like to imagine a doorway, formed perhaps by two trees on either side of the path. I pause at the threshold of this imaginary entrance. In my mind, I introduce myself. I say, Hello, thank you for receiving me today. It makes the moment more formal. Don't you agree? And then I walk through this imaginary doorway. It gives me the impression that I'm entering the forest as if it were a different, slightly magical world. Did you also see and pass through this doorway into the forest? So here we are in the Sonian forest.

During this walk, I will introduce you to people who love the forest, who work in it, who look after it, who walk in it, who live in it.

Teresa

It's my little paradise. When people ask me where I live, I think it's one of the first things I say. I live right next to the forest.

John

I love it in the heat of the summer because it's cool and shady. And then in the autumn, when the leaves on the different types of trees change color in their own time into amazing tones of gold, bronze, and red, and brown. Then in the winter storms, they provides shelter from the wind and the rain. Perhaps I like it best in the springtime. The fresh pale greens of new leaf are illuminated by a welcome new sunshine, and the canopy is not yet too dense, so you can look up at the tops of the mighty giant beach trees and imagine yourself in an enormous natural cathedral.

Forest muse

We could try walking slowly, more slowly than usual, even very slowly, taking the time to feel the ground beneath our feet, the Earth that supports us. Try it with me.

Try to walk slowly and look around you, to sniff like a wild animal. To feel the air caress your face. To listen to the sound of the forest. Yes, you're right. My voice drowns out the murmur of the forest. Don't hesitate to interrupt me. Pause your player and take off your headphones for a moment to bathe your ears in the sounds the forest is offering you right now.

Are you back? I'm still here and ready to accompany you a little further along your forest path. Sometimes I like to approach a tree at the side of the path. Maybe a tree is observing you where you are right now, in a manner of speaking, of course. It's an invitation to get closer. Go ahead, get closer. Seize it with your eyes. Closer still. You can caress its bark with your fingers. Follow the pattern of its scars, the surface of the wood. Well, what you feel there under your fingers isn't really wood. It's bark. The wood is inside. The bark is like its skin. Look up. Let your gaze follow the trunk all the way to the top. I often lose my footing when I look straight up. Up there, if the foliage hasn't been wiped out by winter, it makes my head spin. So I return to the ground, and I look for the tree's roots, at least those that are visible, and I try to imagine the invisible ones stretching out beneath my feet.

You could also sit by the side of the road, closer to the ground. Remain motionless like an animal on the prowl. Direct your gaze towards the litter. That layer of dead plant matter covering the ground. Be patient. You're bound to see an insect or two coming or going, busy, concentrated on a task, tiny at the foot of these tall trees. I like to imagine that I'm one of these insects. I'm part of the world of tiny insects crawling under the leaves. There are alleys, boulevards, and galleries there that I know by heart. Sometimes, I even disappear underground.

To me, a forest is like a big family. What is a forest like to you?

Frederik 

A forest is more than a collection of trees. How to define a forest is sometimes difficult. What is the perfect forest? Sometimes I think a perfect forest is a virgin forest. It's a primeval forest untouched by humans and very rare to find still, certainly in the Western Europe. Nevertheless, the Sonian forest resembles sometimes primeval forests, because there are a lot of big trees. We've got a mixture of trees, and most of all, we've got a lot of beech. And the beech tree is a climax tree species. That means that if you let a forests evolve in a spontaneous way, it will evolve into a beech forest, a beach dominated forest. And that makes us the Sonian forest is so particular because we don't only have beech trees, we've got a lot of old beech trees.

Forest muse

Coppice, thicket, bracken… valleys, ditches, embankments, damp ground, springs, ponds, bark, litter, dead wood, moss, ferns 

I see the forest as a joyful mosaic, dense in one place, sparce in another. A mosaic of shapes, colors, and moods. And whether you're a goshawk, a wren, a nuthatch, or a titmouse, a deer or a fox, a vole or a shrew, a spider, a beetle, or an ant, you can create a home to suit you, with its own hiding places, larders, watchtowers. Imagine I had a magic wand and could transform you. What forest being would you like to become?

David 

If I would be a tree of the Sonian forest, I would be tree bearing fruit at the entrance of the forest, that kind of tree are welcoming the visitor, are getting them in the good mood with their fruit, with their flowers. And the fruits are really important to feed, for example, the birds. So I would be that kind of tree at the entrance of the forest.

John 

That's a good question. Would it be an animal or would it be a plant. Yes, I think the deer are enchanting, but I have always, always been mystified by birds, especially buzzards and occasionally you can hear the buzzards soaring in the air, but you can't see them. That's probably what I would be.

Madeline

I'd like to be a bat. They live long. They can live up to 15 or 20 years, so they get time to have a life experience, live lots of different things. They live in different places. Some species live in trees. They travel, they can fly, they can fly a few miles, go and to fetch food, and they sleep during winter, which is not bad, long rest. They have quite a social life also and this is what I'm studying also as a volunteer. I've been studying them for the last 15 years and I still discover all sorts of things about them. I'm not the one who discovers the things, but I hear about things and the people with whom I study them are just so full of different information. Bats are mysterious and fun and full of ways of life that we don't always imagine. We can't always relate their way of life. They speak a lot, they live at night. Here in Europe, they eat insects and live in different places, according to the time of the year. They're interesting, they need housing, old houses in town benefit them, old trees benefit them. With all the water here in Brussels is also why there's so many different species, so if I was a bat, I'd probably have lots of different friends.

Forest muse

The other day, I was walking with a little girl in the forest. She asked me, Why are the trees so tall? That's a child's question, all right. Have you ever wondered why trees are tall? It's true that in the world of plants, trees are the tallest creatures. Next to grass or daisies, they're giants. Why are they so tall? In the Sonian forest, some reach as high as 50 meters.

Frederik 

Why are the trees so tall in the Sonian forest? At first sight, you might say at places where beech trees reach 45, 50 meters of height. In the Sonian forest, the untouched soils have become more acid and have lost a lot of their minerals superficially and that's the keyword. In the depth that there is still the richness present, and it's in the depth that the tree roots find paradise. It's a paradise that explains their growth with beech trees that reach up to 50 meters of height.

Forest muse

Tell me, how many trees can you recognize by their trunks, leaves, silhouettes, habitats? It's not easy. Let me help you, here in the Sonian forest, the most common tree is the beech. Look around you.  They're straight trees with thin, smooth, silvery bark. Fagus sylvatica is their scientific name. Unlike oaks, which wrap themselves in thick cracked bark, the trunk of a beech is not very well protected by its fragile skin, which is sensitive to sunburn. It therefore carries a parasol of especially dense foliage. This means there is often not enough light under a beech tree for undergrowth to develop. In French, they are sometimes called clay-footed giants. They climb so high and are so shallowly rooted in the soil that a strong storm can knock them down like ninepins. It is said that the span of a tree's crown mirrors that of its roots underground. On your walk, if you pass a beech tree toppled by a recent storm, consider the diameter of the slab of soil the roots lifted when the tree fell. When I see the roots of a fallen tree revealed in this way, I like to honor the tree by thinking about what kept it standing all those years. I also like to touch the earth still trapped between the roots, rolling it between my fingers, smelling it. 

Madeline 

Walking in the forest at night is really fun because you meet also other animals like foxes, you hear the owls. It's another life, it's a life that people don't often experience. I guided tours in the forest at night in winter with a full moon and lots of people don't dare go in the forest in winter. Some people are really delighted and discovered something special.

Forest muse

Beech is thus king of the Sonian forest. This is a legacy from the 18th century, when Belgium, which did not yet exist, was under the reign of the Austrian Habsburgs. The forest had been decimated, and the Austrians decided to restore it. They commissioned Joachim Zinner to repopulate the forest. Joachim was a landscape gardener, born in Vienna in 1787. Joachim was a fan of beech trees and planted lots of them. 

Beech trees that were cultivated to grow tall and straight. In these tall beech groves, don't you think it's easy to imagine you're walking into a cathedral? The trunks of the beech trees would be the pillars, tall and straight, like a link between earth and sky. The green, quivering canopy would be the ceiling. The foresters speak poetically of a beech cathedral, so let's hear what they have to say about the history of this forest.

Frederik 

In the 1700s, the Austrians that were here the boss, said that the Sonian forest was too heavily impacted by humans. There was too much wood that has been harvested, there were a lot of bare grounds inside the forest, and the Austrians decided that they wanted to restore the Sonian forest. Zinner was an Austrian that was occupied, that was busy restoring the Sonian forest and he chose the beech tree because he loved the beech while other foresters preferred other tree species. But it's due to the presence of Mr. Zinner that we've got actually a dominance of beech trees since the second half of the 18th century. That makes it very unique in the whole of Western Europe that we've got here a beech-dominated forest. It's one of the rare beech-dominated forests in the Atlantic Beech region, and that makes it unique. It's uniqueness is that important that it makes part of a UNESCO World Heritage all over Europe. We've got a very big responsibility as foresters in this matter.

Forest muse

The oldest beach still standing is said to be 250 years old, others are not far behind.

Frederik 

I love all the trees in the forest, but there are some impressive trees that I find adorable. We've got a lot of big beech trees, a lot of big oak trees, and sometimes I wonder what all these old trees have seen changing in this world. Would be great to see what happened the last 200 years with the eyes of a tree. I prefer, personally, the lime tree or the linden, which is my favorite tree.

Forest muse

Here in the Smithsonian forest, we give trees time to age. These old stands are rich in dead wood. In the past, foresters used to remove dead wood from the forest. They feared, wrongly, that insects attracted by dead wood would attack healthy wood. That was before. 

Today, a tree that grows old in the forest dies of old age or disease or is felled by a storm. And even when it's dead, it remains in the forest, either standing upright or lying on the ground, until it decomposes and returns to the earth.

David 

When you're on a path, you can have a look around you and you will see a lot of dead wood. This dead wood is the main difference between a forest and a park. So really a forest, it's a natural place. It's a place where animal can live. It's a place for the  nature and so on. It's not an artificial place. The dead wood is really important for all kinds of animals. They can live there, they can feed them there. Some people could be shocked by the dead wood because it looks a bit messy, but first of all, it's not messy. We have to change our way of looking at it. Secondly, it's really important for all animals.

Frederik 

Estonian forest is an old growth forest. It means we've got a lot of old trees, but we've got not only old trees, we've got a lot of big trees. As an average, we've got more than six big trees, bigger than 80 centimeters of diameter per hectare. If you compare that to primeval forest, you find the same number of big trees per hectare. That makes the Sonian forest really unique, it shows its wildness, it shows its spontaneous development, and it makes it comparable to some primeval forests.

Forest muse

In the hollows of its bark, in the folds of its branches, in the shade of its leaves, in the nodules of its roots, in the rottenness of its stump, each tree throughout its life offers shelter and food to a myriad of living beings that we passers-by, don't even suspect.

David 

I really like some specific places in the forest, it's the place with springs. For example, the Woluwe River that crossed Brussels and Flanders has its springs here in the Sonian forest nearby the Hippodrome de Boitsfort and I really like to have a walk there because we see the water coming up from the ground, it's really something special when we can really feel the energy of the nature.

Frederik

The Sonian Forest has a lot of wild aspects, nevertheless, it's not a primeval forest, so it's been heavily touched by humans. The soils are unspoiled, but the trees and the tree species and the actual aspect of the Sonian forest is manmade.

Forest muse

Let's slow down again, shall we? So that we can feel the ground beneath our feet. We could even go barefoot to feel it better, feel its energy.

This ground is a real history book. Just imagine, we're walking here on soil that has never been changed by man, ever! Since the last ice age, around 10,000 years ago, there has been no cultivation here. You can see the glacial relief, the little valleys carved by erosion.

Frederik 

Not only we have a lot of old trees, we've got also very old soils, soils that have been untouched since the last ice ages. So never man has transformed these soils into something else than a forest floor.

Teresa

I'm often in the forest because I run, I run with friends. I think what I love most about running in the forest is, first of all, the fresh air and just being surrounded by nature, being away from noise, also just the surface you run on. I mean, there's some hard ground, but it's just very different from running on the street.

Chris

And the other thing, because this forest has not been managed too much, it's been managed enough, but not too much, It's still very ancient. It's still got its ancient shapes and forms and sometimes if you're alone in here, you could be a thousand years ago or you could be yesterday. It's really timeless.

Forest muse

When I walk in the forest, I sometimes become aware of time, the geophysical forces that have shaped the earth, which have shaped the ground I walk on and which support all this life. Then the short time shown on watches, which have been ticking away for just a few decades and transforming everything in dizzying ways.

This forest is here for so long. These soils inherited from the last ice ages. What will they be like tomorrow? The earth is getting hotter, experiencing droughts, floods, and storms… The beeches are suffering… and I'm worried.

Frederik 

The major guideline for the Sonian forest is climate change, we want to mitigate it's effects. The expect effect which are, for example, the beech tree, which is the dominant tree species in the Sonian forest, actually will suffer. He'll suffer heavily on places that are actually still suitable for him, but probably by 2100, it won't be it anymore. What we do in the management is introducing tree species that are more adapted to the effects of climate change. For example, lime trees, hornbeams, sessile, oak. These are tree species that should resist better to climate change. We lost already some tree species, we lost the spruce tree, which was not really an indigenous tree species, and that was not growing well before either, but it was a sign of the times. It means that was the alarm bell that said to us, there is an effect of climate change. We are trying to mitigate these effects of climate change by planting, introducing tree species, mixing the tree species where it's possible, where there are still other tree species in the mix with beech trees. We try to favor the other species instead of the beech tree.

Chris

At night, if I come into the forest and it's a clear night and you've got the moon, you've got these amazing black shadows coming down with silver light between them, it's just totally magical. In the mist, the forest is quite Gothic, you can imagine all sorts of things emerging from the mist in the forest. In the snow, it's like Narnia. It's like the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe. In summer is a whole different thing, at the beginning of summer, like now, you've got the leaves coming through. They're this amazing acid green, and you've got the light coming through them and lighting them up like stained glass. Again, in the mornings, with a little bit of mist and the light coming through the mist and illuminating the leaves, it's really truly magical.

Forest muse

I invite you to take off your headphones for a moment. Just listen. Listen to the forest rustle. It chirps, hums, quivers, crackles, whispers… 

Let's listen again. Imagine having hearing so acute that you could hear a bird land on a branch, an insect wander across a leaf, a slowworm glide along the ground, a field mouse turn in its burrow, a dung beetle push its ball of earth, an ant climb a tree trunk, a mosquito land on a fern, a tick wait for a fox. Perhaps we could even hear what the trees are saying to each other through their roots.

A forester once told me: “keeping a forest perennial means keeping a forest teeming with life”.

Teresa

The best thing about the forest is when I get to see animals. If I come back from a run and I've seen a deer, then it's the biggest gift of all.

Chris

If you're lucky and you're quiet and calm, and you can get actually quite close to the roebuck that we have here, “chevreuil” in French. They're fabulous, so beautiful and just gentle creatures. You see them sometimes in groups. The most I've seen at one time was 13, which is exceptional. They're normally in family groups of about three or four. At this time of year, they're changing their coats, so they're going from a very dull, dun, brown to this amazing coppery orange. Every day, every time I see them, it makes my day, it makes an everyday special, they're lovely to see. We've also got foxes here, which sometimes leave the forest and rifle through the dust bins, but we don't talk about that, but they're around. I've seen one pine martin once, which is very unusual. 

Other than that, there's a wide variety of birds, we've got buzzards and northern goshawks, and they're fabulous, I just love to watch them circling on the air currents. They've got this high long cry, you just hear them and see them wheeling, sometimes in groups of two or three. Then there are all the other little things. Before I came to Belgium, I had never, ever seen a wren bird in my life and there are lots of them in the forest. They're tiny little things, they sit under branches and chirp at you and you have a look to this tiny little bird sitting there watching you. Lots of robins, lots of crows, also woodcock, which is unusual, and quite a lot of jays, which are beautiful, lovely birds, but they've got a horrible cry that sound really awful, but they're really pretty to look at.

Forest muse

This forest on the outskirts of the city… What luck to be able to escape there by getting off a tram… 

Chris 

It's the most amazing place. I mean, it's a miracle to have something like this right next to Brussels. I'm especially lucky that I live within two or three minutes of the forest.

Teresa

My daughter loves the forest as well, she's in the forest every day, she walks, studies in the forest, runs in the forest, bicycles in the forest. I guess we're both very attached to what we call “our garden” because my garden here is very small. Still, I have a garden, so I'm very lucky.

It's peaceful, it's a bit cooler when it's warm and it's also a bit cooler when it's cold.

Forest muse

It's also a creative haven for many artists. As muse of the forest, I've accompanied several of them. I particularly remember Els, Els Moors, who was our national poet in 2019. As she walked here, she wrote some of her poems. I'll read you one:

while I was walking
I moved my steps
I walked within me and with me
my body moved forward

and everything I knew or said
was intended to
be
in this being of mine

the sun poured light
in circles on the ground
and the shadows of the leaves
wove patterns that kept watch

wide awake I dreamt
my childhood for as long as I could
persist
ahead of me I was going to be the
first
to reach me

it was only when I got tired
I forgot myself that I discovered
the strength and fragility of what
without me

had advanced

I think this poem expresses so well how we can both lose and find ourselves in the forest in the gentle, meditative sway of walking. 

Scientific studies in Japan, Canada, and the United States have shown that walking in a forest has a beneficial effect on both our mental and physical health. The air is naturally less polluted than in the city. The light in the forest sooths our brains. Looking at the architecture of the trees as they divide from branch to branch is said to help reduce stress. Forest soil contains special bacteria capable of boosting our immune systems. Trees are said to emit certain chemical substances, such as terpenes, that stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system and help us to relax, as does birdsong. After all, the forest's French name, “La Forêt de Soignes”, sounds like “La forêt qui soigne”: the healing forest.

David

The forest is a bit like the garden of the citizen. A lot of people are coming here daily or during the weekend, they come here to breath, to be on their ease, to be far from the agitation of the city. They come here to have a sensation of a wild. We are really lucky to have such a forest nearby our home, nearby our garden. We are a  lot of visitors in the Sonian forest, and it's really important that every visitor takes his responsibility in the co-protection of the forest. We are here not in our home, we are in the home of the rebox of the flowers and of the other animals.

Madeline

If you do touch something, you don't take it with you. You might not tear a flower, you'll look at it, it's quite easy as much of them are growing along the path, so it's quite easy to have a look at them. You can also use your ears, which won't harm anybody, and listen and smell. So you can do lots of things in a respectful way coming into the forest. Then when you leave, the best thing is that nobody know you came, a bit like walkers in the nature. When you come in, you can do some sport and walk and talk and rest, and then you'll leave, leaving no trace of your visit, but you'll leave traces in your mind. You'll remember all sorts of things if you have time for that afterwards. Coming into the forest will call for respect.

Forest muse

I'm going to leave you now. I'll let you continue along your way. I've enjoyed accompanying you under the foliage. 

Now, you can take off your earphones and with your bare ears, listen to the whispers and cries of the forest. Come back whenever you like, every day in the forest is different, every walk is different. Long may we be welcomed into the home of roedeer, foxes, woodpeckers, squirrels, gosshawks, beech trees, lime trees, mushrooms, and ferns.

David

If I would have a magic wand, I would make everybody, every visitor of the Sonian forest more aware of all the biodiversity that are living here. If everybody would be more aware of this, I think that it would be really good for the Sonian forest.

Chris

Every day I come into the forest and I just thanks that we've got this amazing place. It's just such a wonderful, I hate to use the word, but wonderful resource. It's a wonderful thing to have here. It's a gift.

Forest muse

During our walk, we came across the following in order of appearance. Frederick Vaes, Head of the Forest Department at Brussels Environment. David Kuborn, Director of the Sonian Forest Foundation. Madeline Hammond, Nature Guide. With the voice of Katrina Sichel, and the voices of several lovers, users, and residents of the forest, Teresa, Chris, and John. Written and directed by Anne Versailles. Final mixing, Bastien Hidalgo Ruiz, produced by Kascen for Brussels Environment.

During our walk, we came across the following in order of appearance : Frederick Vass, Head of the Forest Department at Brussels Environment. David Cubon, Director of the Sonian Forest Foundation. Madalyn Hammond, Nature Guide, with the voice of Katrina sickle, and the voices of several lovers, users, and residents of the forest, Theresa, Chris, and John. 

Written and directed by Anne Versailles. 
Final mixing, Bastien Hidalgo Ruiz, 
Produced by KASCEN for Brussels-Environment.

An initiative of Brussels-Environment with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)